More Trade and More Aid

[groovedaddy]

A FEUD over trade has erupted in Washington, and American workers are caught in the middle. Congressional Republicans (and some Democrats) are threatening to hold up approval of free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama if President Obama keeps insisting on renewing expanded benefits under Trade Adjustment Assistance, the main aid program for American workers harmed by foreign trade.

Supporters say the program — which offers retraining, relocation and other benefits to workers who lose their jobs due to competition from imports — offers vital protection. Opponents label it an unaffordable boondoggle. If our country fails to resolve this dispute, our economic future will be bleak.

As former advisers to presidents from different parties, we are coming together to urge a way out: rethinking how we help displaced workers in order to revive political support for the free trade our economy needs.

Three principles guide our proposal. First, trade is indeed worth it for America. Annual national income today is at least $1 trillion higher than it would have been absent decades of trade and investment liberalization. With unemployment at 9.1 percent and 24.6 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, we need to rebalance our economy away from the excessive consumption that helped bring about the global financial crisis, and create jobs linked to exports and international investment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/opinion/09slaughter.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

[blue97keet]

1. We need "free trade" like we need another Gulf oil spill

First blow out the well, and then try to clean up the mess and compensate the victims! Just continue the pattern of running up the trade deficit and gutting the industrial base. More "NAFTAs" will not re-balance anything or turn the dynamics around 180 degrees, but only continue the pattern of over consuming imported stuff while reducing domestic production. Why do jobs need to be linked to exports and not to self-sufficiency (if imports far exceed exports anyhow)? And why do any workers need to be displaced at all from jobs that have not been eliminated altogether by technology? The trade imbalances the fueled the financial crisis are indeed linked to years and years of "free trade" policies, and cannot be fixed by still more of the same old same old. If "free trade" was not economic pseudo-science it would be reckless petroleum engineering.

[Supposn]

2. Reduce the trade deficit; increase GDP & median wage

Warren Buffett’s concept to significantly reduce USA’s trade
deficit.

Blue97Keet, it's not our global trade but our trade deficits’
that are a significant net detriment to our economy.  Trade
deficits’ amount of detriment to their nations’ GDPs are
significantly larger than the deficits themselves.
 
I’m a proponent of a proposal to reduce USA’s trade deficit of
goods that was first introduced to the Senate in 2006.  This
simple concept is not simplistic and is worthy of
consideration. 

The basic concept is for exporters who choose to pay the
federal fees to acquire transferable IMPORT Certificates for
the assessed value of their goods leaving the USA. Importers
would be required to surrender IMPORT Certificates for the
assessed value of their goods entering the USA. Surrendered
certificates are cancelled.
This may seem as a boon to exporters of USA goods but it’s
actually an indirect but effective export subsidy and the
trade proposal’s entirely funded by U.S. purchasers of foreign
goods.

The version of this trade policy I advocate would exclude
values of specifically listed scarce or precious minerals
integral to goods from goods assessed values.
This trade policy would significantly decrease USA’s trade
deficit of goods and increase the aggregate sum of USA’s
imports plus exports and our GDP more than otherwise.  The GDP
bolsters the median wage.

Wage earning families benefit from cheaper imported goods but
every day of every year they’re dependent upon their U.S.
wages.  Regardless of how small the additions to imports’
prices due to Import Certificates, (unlike tariffs) USA’s
assessed imports could never exceed that of our exports.  U.S.
wage earners can have cheap (but not the absolute cheapest)
imported goods.  We cannot afford the absolute cheapest. 
  
 Refer to: www.USA-Trade-n.Blogspot.com ,
              
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_Certificates
or Google:  Wikipedia, import certificates 

Respectfully, Supposn