February 15, 2006
Our Hollow Prosperity
By Pat Buchanan
Now that the
U.S. trade deficit for 2005 has come in at $726 billion, the fourth
straight all-time record, a question arises.
What constitutes
failure for a free-trade policy? Or is there no such thing? Is
free trade simply right no matter the results?
Last year,
the United States ran a $202 billion trade deficit with China,
the largest ever between two nations. We ran all-time record trade
deficits with OPEC, the European Union, Japan, Canada and Latin
America. The $50 billion deficit with Mexico was the largest since
NAFTA passed and also the largest in history.
When NAFTA
was up for a vote in 1993, the Clintonites and their GOP fellow-travelers
said it would grow our trade surplus, raise Mexico's standard
of living and reduce illegal immigration.
None of
this happened. Indeed, the opposite occurred. Mexico's standard
of living is lower than it was in 1993, the U.S. trade surplus
has vanished, and America is being invaded. Mexico is now the
primary source of narcotics entering the United States.
Again, when
can we say a free-trade policy has failed?
The Bushites
point proudly to 4.6 million jobs created since May 2003, a 4.7
percent unemployment rate and low inflation.
Unfortunately,
conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts and analysts Charles
McMillion and Ed Rubenstein have taken a close look at the figures
and discovered that the foundation of the Bush prosperity rests
on rotten timber.
The entire
job increase since 2001 has been in the service sector -- credit
intermediation, health care, social assistance, waiters, waitresses,
bartenders, etc. -- and state and local government.
But, from
January 2001 to January 2006, the United States lost 2.9 million
manufacturing jobs, 17 percent of all we had. Over the past five
years, we have suffered a net loss in goods-producing jobs.
"The
decline in some manufacturing sectors has more in common with
a country undergoing saturation bombing than with a super-economy
that is 'the envy of the world,'" writes Roberts.
"Communications
equipment lost 43 percent of its workforce. Semiconductors and
electronic components lost 37 percent. ... The workforce in computers
and electronic products declined 30 percent. Electrical equipment
and appliances lost 25 percent of its workforce."
How did
this happen? Imports. The U.S. trade deficit in advanced technology
jobs in 2005 hit an all-time high.
As for the
"knowledge industry" jobs that were going to replace
blue-collar jobs, it's not happening. The information sector lost
17 percent of all its jobs over the last five years.
In the same
half-decade, the U.S. economy created only 70,000 net new jobs
in architecture and engineering, while hundreds of thousands of
American engineers remain unemployed.
If we go
back to when Clinton left office, one finds that, in five years,
the United States has created a net of only 1,054,000 private-sector
jobs, while government added 1.1 million. But as many new private
sector jobs are not full-time, McMillion reports, "the country
ended 2005 with fewer private sector hours worked than it had
in January 2001."
This is
an economic triumph?
Had the
United States not created the 1.4 million new jobs it did in health
care since January 2001, we would have nearly half a million fewer
private-sector jobs than when Bush first took the oath.
Ed Rubenstein
of ESR Research Economic Consultants looks at the wage and employment
figures and discovers why, though the Bushites were touting historic
progress, 55 percent of the American people in a January poll
rated the Bush economy only "fair" or "poor."
Not only
was 2005's growth of 2 million jobs a gain of only 1.5 percent,
anemic compared to the average 3.5 percent at this stage of other
recoveries, the big jobs gains are going to immigrants.
Non-Hispanic
whites, over 70 percent of the labor force, saw only a 1 percent
employment increase in 2005. Hispanics, half of whom are foreign
born, saw a 4.7 percent increase. As Hispanics will work for less
in hospitals and hospices, and as waiters and waitresses, they
are getting the new jobs.
But are
not wages rising? Nope. When inflation is factored in, the Economic
Policy Institute reports, "real wages fell by 0.5 percent
over the last 12 months after falling 0.7 percent the previous
12 months."
If one looks
at labor force participation -- what share of the 227 million
potential workers in America have jobs -- it has fallen since
2002 for whites, blacks and Hispanics alike. Non-Hispanic whites
are down to 63.4 percent, but black Americans have fallen to 57.7
percent.
What is
going on? Hispanic immigrants are crowding out black Americans
in the unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled job market. And millions
of our better jobs are being lost to imports and outsourcing.
The affluent
free-traders, whose wealth resides in stocks in global companies,
are enriching themselves at the expense of their fellow citizens
and sacrificing the American worker on the altar of the Global
Economy.
None dare
call it economic treason.
Copyright
2006 Creators Syndicate
