How utterly @#$%ed up is it that two-thirds

[JDPriestly]

160. The only argument in those articles that is persuasive concerns China's dominance of world

trade. I do not think that TPP will in any way affect that inevitable dominance. We are just tagging along. It is a stupid thing to do.

We should build a strong economy here. We should at least be able to manufacture our own socks and not rely on the Chinese or people in other countries to produce them.

Republicans talk a lot about self-reliance. But thanks to our trade policies, we utterly lack economic self-reliance. And it is showing. The morale of our young people is far worse than I can remember. Same for the work ethic which used to be such a great advantage for our country.

That aside, we created the China that now looms over trade and our own economic success or failure. We created it with trade agreements. We thought we were buying a friend. We weren't. Nothing against the Chinese people, but China as a nation could care less about American workers. They run up a huge trade balance excess; we conversely run down a huge trade deficit. The greater our trade deficit becomes, the less desirable we will be as a trading partner, the less power we will have as a nation.

There is nothing more stupid than our current obsession with trading with China. We should be focusing on creating high quality jobs and products in the US. We can sell and buy from other countries, but our economy is declining because of our dependence on foreign manufacturing and on free trade.

No to TPP. We built the monster that is the Chinese economy. Now we will be devoured by it. No to TPP.

And I reiterate, nothing against the Chinese people.