Who said we had to compete for the same jobs in a global economic arena and why?
The U.S. Federal Government sponsored the moving of factories outside of the country in 1956. This was the same year the Suez Canal crisis exposed an international money crisis. It started in England. The major countries created a new money policy which apparently evolved into the globalization of money.
The globalization of money was followed by the globalization of production. However the two processes separated from one another and the big money interests chose free trade as tool to create new money products. They created economies based on making money on money instead of making things. Making things was changed to produce things at the most cheapest labor costs possible down to using impoverished workers, wage slaves and even child labor. The money changers called it free trade. It was not free trade or any kind of trade that is defined or practiced in history. It was mainly about making production portable, ready to be moved again and again for the sake of cheaper labor. Sir James Goldsmith, a former corporate raider who evidently had a economic conversion experience told the U.S. Senate in 1994, he was very concerned about having four billion people in the world who were willing to work for next to nothing and how this would affect the pursuit of the ideal life. He wrote the book The Trap and predicted the coming of our economic crisis as it is today. He told the Senate that millions of workers would lose their jobs if free trade continued.
Apparently, the money changers wanted to make money products as a separate entity. They chose to grow more money values instead of providing the ideal life for workers in a society. The money changers thought the could loan money to impoverished nations and make them exporting nations. This way, the money changers could make money on the interest of the loans. As the same time, they could provide consumers with cheaper products. Consumerism became the main support system for the so called free trade process. However, they forgot that consumers are also workers and as consumers took the bait of cheaper prices, they shop their way out of their jobs. Free trade became an economic cancer.
At first it spred slowly but by 1992, more than 2,000 U.S. factories were moved t0 Mexico. They called the main program the Maquiladora Factory Program which used impoverished Mexican workers to make products for the American consumer. Soon after President Clinton passed the NAFTA Free Trade Agreement joining hands with Congressman Newt Gingrich and Senator Bob Dole in 1994, the number of U.S. factories moved to Mexico quickly doubled to more than 4,000. Even Rush Limbaugh who was at the height of this power on talk radio applauded the passing of free trade. History will show that free trade was consummated by a Democrat controlled congres.
About a year later, President Clinton had to rush billions of dollars to Mexico to say the peso and the Mexican economy. Congress gave him only $20 billion dollars of taxpayers money. President Clinton said he needed more than that and went to the international money sources for more. None of this stopped the massive migration of Mexican workers to the U.S. who were seeking economic survival.
Free trade proved to be a growing economic cancer as a new working poor class replaced the middle class in the USA. It became a road to nowhere. It was indeed a race to the bottom. In the end President Obama had bail out the money interests. He put them back in charge of the process while ignoring the suffering of workers. The U.S. has gone through the most massive dislocation of jobs and human capital and still the money changers call for more of the same thing. See tapsearch.com/tradetraps and at tapsearch.com/tapartnews
