Tag Archive for ‘Jobs’

Trump and Trade

This morning brought the surprising news that, according to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Donald Trump is running second among GOP presidential hopefuls, at 17%, behind Mitt Romney’s 21%.

I am far from a fan of the obnoxious, egomaniacal Trump, but his rise in the polls could be good news: The issue Trump has been pushing most assiduously is the damage our trade policies are causing America, especially our enormous trade deficit with China. If Trump causes other GOP candidates to begin addressing the trade issue, breaking the hold that free trade orthodoxy has on the upper reaches of the GOP, he will have performed a far greater service to our country than anyone could reasonably have predicted. Ordinary Americans overwhelmingly recognize the great damage free trade has caused our economy. It is about time that an enterprising politician decided to catch up with them.

Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner

“Blacks for Gray, Whites for Fenty,” ran the nuanced headline on page one of the Washington Examiner. The story told of how black Mayor Adrian Fenty, who got rave reviews for appointing Michelle Rhee to save District of Columbia schools, was crushed six to one in black wards east of the Anacostia River, as he rolled up margins of three to one in the white wards west of Rock Creek Park.

The Dread Specter of Economic Nationalism

As Greg Kaza recently noted here, the decline in American manufacturing is a serious problem, one that accelerated under Bush and is continuing unabated under Obama. You would never know that from reading Jonah Goldberg, who wrote this morning that inveighing against corporations moving headquarters or jobs overseas is a leftist phenomenon with historical roots in the programs of Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, and Johnson. Unmentioned by Goldberg is the opposition of each of those presidents to the historic GOP program of high tariffs to protect American manufacturing. Also unmentioned by Goldberg is the possibility that Americans might be concerned about the outsourcing of American jobs as a result of the facts so ably highlighted by Kaza, not as a result of brainwashing by “progressives.” Any politician wishing to lead America out of our current morass must be able to address those facts, a task beyond both the Obamaites and their current opponents in the GOP.

Manufacturing Bust

President Barack H. Obama, if current trends continue, will become the first Democrat to preside over a net national loss in domestic manufacturing jobs since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started reporting monthly employment data in 1939. Seven percent of manufacturing jobs nationwide (873,000) have disappeared since Obama took office.

A Sellout of Our Unemployed

In writing the $789 billion stimulus bill, Congress revealed that, for all its “Buy American” blather, it does not truly put America first. It does not believe that 10 million jobless Americans, in the country their fathers built, should receive any preference in hiring 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens who broke into this country and owe her no loyalty, allegiance or love.

As GM Goes, So Goes the GOP

Understandably, Republicans are seething.  When Hank Paulson demanded $700 billion to haul away the trash in the dumpsters of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs—assuring us we could hold a garage sale of the junk—they rebelled. They acted as the nation, by 100 to one, demanded. They killed the Wall Street bailout.  The Dow quickly sank another 1,000 points, and, charged with criminal irresponsibility by the elites, the GOP buckled, reversed itself, rescued the bailout—and was wiped out on Nov. 4.

Now we hear from Paulson that the $700 billion Congress voted will not, after all, be used to buy up all that rotten paper on the books of the big banks. Some banks are using the cash to buy other banks.

So Republicans are right to be enraged. They are victims of the biggest bait-and-switch in political history. But they are now about to do something terminally stupid.