The Gutting Of America’s Industrial Might

[eightymesh]

35 Facts About The Gutting Of America’s Industrial Might That Should Make You Very Angry


Did you know that an average of 23 manufacturing facilities were shut down every single day in the United States last year? As World War II ended, the United States emerged as the greatest industrial power that the world has ever seen. But now America's industrial might is being gutted like a fish and both political parties seem totally unconcerned. Yes, we will always need trading relationships that are fair and balanced with other countries that have economic systems that are similar to our own. However, the truth is that most of our trading relationships are neither "fair" nor balanced. For example, China manipulates currency rates so that Chinese products are much cheaper than they should be, they brazenly steal our technology and we let them get away with it, they deeply subsidize their most important industries and they exploit their citizens by allowing them to be paid slave labor wages. How in the world does that resemble the "free market" at work? Predatory nations such as China do everything that they can to distort the free market. So why in the world would any rational economist ever recommend that we should keep trading with other countries that are cheating us blind? After you read the facts in this article about the gutting of America's industrial might, hopefully you will get very angry. We need the American people to start getting very upset about these very important issues.

Both major political parties promised us that globalization would be wonderful for the U.S. economy. Well, in the first decade of this century less net jobs were created than in any other decade since the Great Depression.

The "free trade" polices of the globalists have been an abysmal failure. Tens of thousands of factories, millions of jobs, and hundreds of billions of dollars of our national wealth have gone to countries that engage in predatory trade practices and that exploit slave labor pools.

How in the world are American workers supposed to compete against workers that make less than a dollar an hour (with no benefits) on the other side of the globe?

If you support the version of "free trade" that most of our politicians are promoting, then you are supporting the one world economic system that the global elite are trying to establish. In this one world economic system, American workers will increasingly be forced to compete for jobs with the cheapest labor on the planet. This will continue to force the standard of living of American workers way, way down and it will continue to absolutely destroy the middle class.

The following are 35 facts about the gutting of America's industrial might that should make you very angry....

#1 According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years.

#2 Sadly, it looks like this trend is picking up momentum. During 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day were shut down in the United States.

#3 Since 2001, the U.S. has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities.

#4 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. economy losesapproximately 9,000 jobs for every $1 billion of goods that are imported from overseas.

#5 The United States has had a negative trade balance every single yearsince 1976, and since that time the United States has run a total trade deficit of more than 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.

#6 Back in 1979, there were 19.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States. Today, there are 11.6 million. That represents a decline of 40 percent during a time period when our overall population experienced tremendous growth.

#7 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.

#8 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of all jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#9 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

#10 The Economic Policy Institute says that since 2001 America has lost approximately 2.8 million jobs due to our trade deficit with China alone.

#11 All over the United States, road and bridge projects are being outsourced to Chinese firms. Just check out the following excerpt from a recent ABC News article....

In New York there is a $400 million renovation project on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge.

In California, there is a $7.2 billion project to rebuild the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland.

In Alaska, there is a proposal for a $190 million bridge project.

These projects sound like steps in the right direction, but much of the work is going to Chinese government-owned firms.

"When we subsidize jobs in China, we're not creating any wealth in the United States," said Scott Paul, executive director for the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

#12 If you can believe it, the United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

#13 The U.S. trade deficit with China rose to an all-time record of 273.1 billion dollars in 2010. This is the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.

#14 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#15 The new World Trade Center tower is going to be made with imported glass from China and imported steel from Germany.

#16 The new MLK memorial on the National Mall was made in China.

#17 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe? Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.

#18 In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.

#19 Even in high technology products we are being destroyed. In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in "advanced technology products" of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.

#20 China has now become the world's largest exporter of high technology products.

#21 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China's share had soared to 20 percent.

#22 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#23 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.

#24 The United States now has 10 percent fewer "middle class jobs" than it did just ten years ago.

#25 Today, American workers are bringing home a much smaller share of economic pie. Over the past decade, the ratio of wages to GDP has been declining very steadily.

#26 Now that millions of our jobs have been exported, there aren't nearly enough jobs left for all of us. Right now, the average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is approximately 39 weeks.

#27 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

#28 If you gathered together all of the workers that are "officially" unemployed in the United States today, they would constitute the 68th largest country in the world.

#29 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

#30 As the number of good paying jobs declines, America's middle class is rapidly shrinking. In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods". By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods".

#31 In the United States today, corporate profits are at a record high, and yet employment numbers have still not rebounded. Obviously something is structurally wrong.

#32 The Obama administration says that there are certain things that "we don't want to make in America" anymore. If you don't believe this, just check out what U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk recently told Tim Robertson of the Huffington Post about the Obama administration's attitude toward keeping manufacturing jobs in America....

Let's increase our competitiveness... the reality is about half of our imports, our trade deficit is because of how much oil [we import], so you take that out of the equation, you look at what percentage of it are things that frankly, we don't want to make in America, you know, cheaper products, low-skill jobs that frankly college kids that are graduating from, you know, UC Cal and Hastings [don't want], but what we do want is to capture those next generation jobs and build on our investments in our young people, our education infrastructure.

#33 Jeffrey Immelt, the head of Barack Obama's highly touted "Jobs Council",has shipped tens of thousands of good jobs out of the United States.

#34 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 millionmore U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades.

#35 One recent poll found that 41 percent of all Americans believe that "the American Dream has been lost".

Yes, it is fun to go out and fill up our shopping carts with "cheap products" from the other side of the world, but when we do that it destroys our jobs, our businesses and our communities.

Our addiction to cheap foreign products is incredibly self-destructive. Essentially what we are doing is that we are ripping apart pieces of our own home and throwing them into the fire in an attempt to keep it going. Eventually we will cannibalize our entire home.

And we never really think about what it is like for the slave laborers that make all these cheap products for us. The following is from an article in the Telegraph about what conditions at one major Chinese manufacturing facility are like....

So far, at least 16 people have jumped from high buildings at the factory so far this year, with 12 deaths. A further 20 people were stopped by the company before they could attempt to kill themselves.

The hysteria at Longhua, where between 300,000 and 400,000 employees eat, work and sleep, has grown to such a pitch that workers have twisted Foxconn’s Chinese name so that it now sounds like: “Run to your Death”.

[gremlin]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1108141/posts

Radio Flyer Inc., maker of the little red wagon loved by generations of children, plans to move its manufacturing operation to China.
The 87-year-old company said it would keep its headquarters and distribution business in Chicago but decided the Chicago plant where the metal wagons are built is too expensive to maintain. With the plant closing, Radio Flyer will lay off nearly half its 90 employees.

[Bluebeard]

A way to turn around our deficits is to put tariffs on imported items. No raising taxes, just put a tariff. An interesting fact I heard on the radio stated that the ONLY thing the US sells to China is chicken feet. There is zero demand in the US for chicken feet, so they ship it back to china. As soon as the chicken feet hit mainland china, the chinese put a 108% tariff so the chicken feet are more expensive than the home produced ones.

You gotta wonder what the people in charge are thinking about having zero tariffs. Obviously preventing large US deficits isn't one of the things they are thinking about.

[russau]

we can only thank our socalled "representatives" for this to have been allowed to come about! a couple of years back i needed a new pair of "tennis" shoes and i went to a local retailer and they had New Balance shoes on sale. the display models had ,"made in America"' in them so i got fitted up and he handed me a box from the back room. BEFORE i got up i opened the box and these were made in china.i gave them back to him and said ,"i dont want this chinese shoes! you showed me "made in America" and thats what i want. he said they dont have anymore of them. i left and went somewhere else. maybe if people just stopped buying chinese junk, they will stop bringing it into the country. or just go out of business! sometimes, we are our worst enemy!

[joe of pville]

Yesterday, I was listening to the Mark Levin Show on KSFO out of S.F. and he was talking about what goes into the making of a pencil and the equipment and minerals that are used in the process and how this administration is shutting down all the manufactures that are included in the making process. From those who made these machines that have become successful and hire people to work for them are being made as something wrong because they became successful. They are making class warfare out of every inventive American. People that worked hard to create something are said that they don't pay there fair share. I am one who is sick and tired of hearing this president put these people down!

[MIKE MCKEEVER]

BLUEBEARD YOU TALK LIKE A POLITICIAN--CHICKEN FEET ????? CHICKEN FEET ???? YOU SHOULD AT LEAST USE GOOGLE BEFORE YOU MAKE A STATEMENT LIKE THAT

THE US EXPORTS MORE THAN CHICKEN FEET TO CHINA-THE FIRST NUMBERS ARE IN BILLIONS - THE SECOND NUMBER IS THE PERCENT CHANGE (INCREASE) SINCE 2009


Table 2: Top US Exports to China, 2010 ($ billion)
*Calculated by USCBC
Source: ITC
HS# Commodity description Volume % change over 2009
85 Electrical machinery and equipment 11.5 21.9
84 Power generation equipment 11.2 33.6
12 Oil seeds and oleaginous fruits 11.0 18.1
88 Aircraft and spacecraft 5.8 8.0
90 Optics and medical equipment 5.2 31.2
39 Plastics and articles thereof 4.8 10.5
87 Vehicles, excluding rail 4.5 134.4
28, 29 Inorganic and organic chemicals 4.5* 34.2*
47 Pulp and paperboard 3.0 22.0
74 Copper and articles thereof 2.9 62.0


Table 9: China's Top Import Suppliers, 2010 ($ billion)
Source: PRC General Administration of Customs, China's Customs Statistics
Rank Country/region Volume % change over 2009
1 Japan 176.7 35.0
2 South Korea 138.4 35.0
3 Taiwan 115.7 35.0
4 United States 102.0 31.7
5 Germany 74.3 33.4
6 Australia 60.9 54.1
7 Malaysia 50.4 55.9
8 Brazil 38.1 34.7
9 Thailand 33.2 33.3
10 Saudi Arabia 32.8 39.2

YOU SAID THE "ONLY THING" WE EXPORT IS CHICKEN FEET----YOURE WORDS--AND YOU WANT TO LEAD OR IS THAT MISLEAD US POOR MINERS WITH YOURE FACTS ?

[dickb]

Ok Mike that's 1/2 of the information.

Lets compare apples with apples.

Show US Imports from China in Billions of dollars and Percent increase from last year.

Until our trade deficit is balanced this problem will never be solved.

Were supporting everyone else's economy while killing our own.

Any idea who wins in this situation? Hint, it isn't the American work force.

Just My Humble Opinion

Dickb

[MIKE MCKEEVER]

HI DICKB

I DONT DISAGREE WITH YOU. THE TRADE DIFFERENCIAL IS ABOUT 3.5 TO 1 -- I THINK FROM ALL IVE SEEN
MY POINT WAS THAT WE DONT "ONLY EXPORT CHICKEN FEET" AS ONE SAID.
IF SOMEONE STATES AN ITEM AS "FACT" IT SHOULD BE ----- THAT WAS NOT EVEN CLOSE --
I DO BELIEVE THERE IS AT LEAST ONE PERSON ON THIS FORUM WHO BELIEVED HIM.

I JUST DONT THINK ITS RIGHT TO GIVE OUT BAD INFORMATION -- ALTHO I AM INTERESTED IN MOST OPINIONS.
EVEN IF I DONT AGREE WITH SOMEONE I CAN ALMOST ALWAYS RESPECT THIER OPINION IF BASED ON LIFES EXPERIENCES.

MIKE

[Bluebeard]

Mike-

I am impressed you expect so much from me.

No worries though, I apologize for getting the information wrong. Like I said I heard it on a radio program, and it was from someone who I figured probably had his facts right (or maybe I mis-understood what he said), but either way I was wrong and I apologize for my transgression.

[Reno badboy]

Touchy,nit-picky bunch a ol' farts here huh!?!?