You've hit on a crucial point I've brought up but some people have no reference point as to how we got in this mess. Your quote is part of what happened after Vietnam and during the Iraq war.
Were the US steel and auto industries so lousy they needed to be sold to Japan? We were given various reasons by media droning their failures into our heads, all of them easily disproven.
No, but they helped finance the Vietnam War. There are payments that are in currency and payments that are made in kind. That and other moves set the way for lowering wages. Do I blame the Japanese? No, not at all.
Was the rest of our manufacturing base, the ports and other resources now in the hands of the Chinese so badly managed or unprofitable that they needed to be sold off?
No, they carried the debt for the Iraq war. Cheney thought the American currency was going to become so worthless he converted his money into foreign currency while he was VP. It was reported by that windbag Kramer, as if he was amazed. Cheney knew he was hurting the value of the dollar. And the Chinese knew, too.
Why should they not be paid, why should they wait for decades for money, why should they care what happens to our communities here? Why should they not be given something in kind like Japan? Their countries were disadvantaged by lending us money for these adventures.
This is possibly another way of looking at the trade deals that were signed over the last few decades, but it may not be related. Tom Delay and pals made money from sweatshops in the Mauritanias. Other corporations in our history helped with coups, like the UFC in Guatemala. There is money in these things which suddenly become some kind of 'national interest,' but the American get only the crumbs from these deals.
Obama said that every dollar for the Iraq war was borrowed from China. IMHO, that's we now have to buy everything from them. My representatives met with us on the cost per district from the Iraq war we had to pay as our quality of life went down. This is not really a secret, it's not discussed because the media's job is to keep our eyes off the flow of these monies.
From the year 2007, Obama explains the direct effects of going to war and borrowing money for it on our communities:
Okay, there are likely gaping holes in my analysis, but that may be a tiny part of what is going on.
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