By Rick manning

President Donald Trump is very bad at being an isolationist, in fact, he is probably one of the worse isolationists in American history. 

Think about it.  President Trump is pushing Congress to pass the USMCA, which tears up the 40 year old NAFTA agreement and replaces it with one which protects our national sovereignty while expanding trade between the three countries on a more favorable footing for U.S. workers.

President Trump has talked to India’s Prime Minister Modi about building a bi-lateral trade relationship between our two nations.  He is similarly working with the President of Brazil along the same lines.  He has already rewritten the South Korean trade deal to better accommodate U.S. interests, and has expanded trade relations with Japan creating a massive corn and technology purchase. He is also negotiating deals with the United Kingdom (post-Brexit), and the European Union. 

And all the while, his trade team continues to hammer away at the China trade challenge.

Rather than being anti-trade, President Trump is probably the most trade focused U.S. leader in modern history.  But his goal is different than many in the past.

The current world trading system was based upon a need to win the Cold War with the Soviet Union by spreading capitalism across the globe.  At its core, it was a transfer of wealth from the United States to the rest of the world in the guise of allowing foreign products to be sold in the U.S. with relatively low tariffs, while leaving tariffs on U.S. exports to these developing countries high — the essence of non-reciprocity.  This had the effect of allowing those countries to not face U.S. competition in their markets so their domestic economies could thrive from the trade imbalance cash infusion that followed. 

For America’s part, we received less expensive items in our stores as major parts of industries like our domestic electronics manufacturing got outsourced to Asia. When China entered the world market in a big way and was granted Permanent National Trade Relations status by the U.S. in 2000 and entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, the entire world shifted.

U.S. and other foreign multi-national businesses took the certainty that Chinese goods would have inexpensive access to the U.S. markets and invested heavily in the Chinese economy, building factories knowing that they would benefit from cheap Chinese labor while exporting the once U.S.-made toys and other goods to American consumers.

What was a giant sucking sound of U.S. jobs heading south to Mexico from the Bill Clinton negotiated North American Free Trade Agreement became a tsunami as manufacturers flocked to make products in China with the promise of not only having access to U.S. markets but also being able to sell to Chinese consumers.

With China targeting key industries like steel, aluminum, rare earth mining, electronics, autos and high tech chip manufacturing, more and more blue collar jobs were exported around the globe.

A system originally designed to help get the post-World War II world back on its feet was now sucking the life blood out of America, while still delivering low cost electronics for its trouble. The ugly truth is that, as a result, the U.S. Gross Domestic Product has not exceeded 4 percent since 2000, with what used to be the expected normal growth rate of 3 percent beyond reach since 2005.

This is why President Trump is realigning our trade relationships around the world. 

By emphasizing intellectual property protections, the President is ensuring that America’s ingenuity and problem solving is not stolen by foreign countries like China and then sold back to U.S. consumers at ten cents on the dollar.

By emphasizing ending currency manipulation, the President is ensuring that deliberate, foreign government created inflationary tariffs are not imposed on U.S. products.  Currently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the trade war with China has NOT resulted in increased costs to U.S. consumers or producers, while generating more than $30 billion in new tax revenue from the Chinese.

How is this possible?  The Chinese have forced their wholesalers to eat some of the increased tariff costs while making the Yuan even less valuable than the dollar to keep the costs of Chinese products low.

But this only serves to emphasize the importance of the entirety of the Trump trade agenda.  Passing the USMCA, and continuing to create new agreements built upon the inviolability of intellectual property rights puts up an economic wall around China, either trapping them in their anti-property Marxist doctrine or forcing them to accept private property rights for their own economic survival. 

The USMCA is the first shoe to drop in this paradigm shifting strategy, and it is why it needs to be voted through the House and Senate.  Yes, more, fantastic jobs are projected to be created in the United States, and quite frankly in Canada and Mexico as well. But the language of USMCA on private property and currency manipulation will serve as the models for the entirety of a series of bilateral trade deals.

Trade deals that will encompass the largest economies in the world, except China, and which will create a freedom economic noose around Beijing’s neck. 

Isolationist?  No, President Trump is an American President looking out for American economic interests while putting together a new international trade regime to replace the broken one that was crippling our nation’s economic future.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

Video: Is the CIA pushing to impeach Trump to cover up origins of Russiagate in Ukraine to help Biden?

 

To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xn1sRGzXo4

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Is Joe Biden the fall guy for Russiagate?

Sept. 27, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to former Vice President Joe Biden’s ironic tweet that “I believe our elections should be decided by the American people — not foreign governments”:

“Former Vice President Joe Biden is either the least self-aware person in modern politics, an outrageous liar or a dupe. Biden was responsible for U.S. policy in Ukraine during the Obama administration, and much of the false narrative about President Donald Trump being a Russian agent came from Ukraine, the United Kingdom and other Western intelligence agencies, which his administration put a bow on and shipped to the FISA court so they could spy on the Trump campaign in 2016. What did Joe Biden know about Russiagate and when did he know it?

“It is likely that the former Vice President both lacks self-awareness and was set up to be a not-so-innocent dupe. What is incredible is that he still doesn't realize it. At least, when former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Berry was caught smoking crack in the Vista Hotel, he had the awareness to say, 'Bitch set me up.'

“At some point, the former Vice President's advisors need to protect him by cluing him in that he is the worst possible messenger on Ukraine as this scandal highlights his own culpability and avarice to the benefit of Democratic Party rivals. If there's one good thing to come from this, it is that Joe Biden is being exposed as someone completely incapable of performing the most basic duties of the Presidency before a vote is ever cast. A note to Hollywood, Lee Majors is still available to play Biden in the movie.”

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2019/09/is-joe-biden-the-fall-guy-for-russiagate/

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ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from Breitbart.com, Tony Lee comments on a Vanity report that former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is pressuring Fox News to come out against President Donald Trump:

Paul Ryan pushing Fox News to ‘decisively break’ with Trump

By Tony Lee

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who currently sits on the board of Fox Corp., is reportedly urging Fox News to “decisively break” with President Donald Trump, according to a Thursday Vanity Fair report documenting the network’s “management bedlam.”

Vanity Fair’s Gabe Sherman, citing four sources, reported that Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, who has long tried to move Fox News to the center, “is already thinking about how to position the network for a post-Trump future.”

Ryan, the longtime Trump antagonist, has reportedly been suggesting to Murdoch that “Fox should decisively break with the president” as Murdoch holds “strategy conversations with Fox executives and anchors about how Fox News should prepare for life after Trump.”

Vanity Fair cited “an executive who’s spoken with Ryan” who simply said: “Paul is embarrassed about Trump and now he has the power to do something about it.”

Trump has repeatedly attacked Fox News of late, accusing the network of showcasing Democrats—and potential presidential opponents—in town halls. On Thursday, three Fox News anchors—Chris Wallace, Bret Baier, and Martha MacCallum—reportedly discussed being the “targets of the president’s tweets,” with Wallace telling the crowd at Advertising Week in New York: “It’s a very surreal thing. I think we all kind of embrace it as: We’ve got his attention, so we must be doing something right.”

MacCallum reportedly added, according to the Hollywood Reporter: “Contrary to the opinion of some people, he’s not our boss.”

Since retiring from the House last year, Ryan has said he viewed his resignation as an “escape hatch” and promptly trashed Trump in a book, saying he wanted to “scold him all the time” because Trump “didn’t know anything about government.”

Ryan also blasted Trump for cheating on his wife and calling Stormy Daniels “horse face” and claimed he and the other adults in the room prevented Trump “from making bad decisions. All the time.”

“We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was,” Ryan reportedly added. “Now I think he’s making some of these knee-jerk reactions.”

Ryan, whose trade and immigration agendas have always been at odds with the America-first platform that got Trump elected, also told the New York Times that he saved the country from “tragedies” before telling an audience in Florida that if 2020 is “about Donald Trump and his personality, he isn’t going to win it.”

In 2016, Breitbart News obtained an audio recording in which Ryan told House Republicans that he was not going to defend Trump after the infamous Access Hollywood tape surfaced.

“His comments are not anywhere in keeping with our party’s principles and values,” Ryan said in the audio recording. “There are basically two things that I want to make really clear, as for myself as your Speaker. I am not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future. As you probably heard, I disinvited him from my first congressional district GOP event this weekend—a thing I do every year. And I’m not going to be campaigning with him over the next 30 days.”

After the 2012 election, Fox News started drifting away from the right, as Rush Limbaugh noted on numerous occasions. As Breitbart News reported, Limbaugh even said that it was “quite telling” that Fox News did not want him to discuss his opposition to the Gang of Eight’s amnesty bill and added that “Fox News is not considered the conservative network that it used to be” to many in the heartland.

During the 2016 GOP primary season, Fox News used Megyn Kelly to undermine Trump’s candidacy before being more supportive of Trump when he ultimately became the party’s nominee against Hillary Clinton.

After Trump won the White House, he started to essentially live-tweet various Fox News programs, often giving the network, which was well on its way to the center before Trump’s election, his stamp of approval.

Permalink here.

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