Bill Clinton’s True Legacy: Outsourcer-in-Chief

[FreakinDJ]

Progressives who justifiably condemn the repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that resulted in deregulating banks have Clinton to blame. According to the findings of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee, “The decision in 2000 to shield the exotic financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives from regulation, made during the last year of President Bill Clinton’s term, is called ‘a key turning point’ in the march towards the financial crisis.”


But the only thing worse than being a taxpayer forced to bail out reckless banks is losing your job because it’s been outsourced or offshored. As Richard McCormack pointed out in the American Prospect, in the beginning of this century American companies stopped making the products Americans continued to buy, from clothing to computers. Manufacturers never emerged from the 2001 recession, which coincided with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Between 2001 and 2009 the U.S. lost 42,400 factories and manufacturing employment dropped to 11.7 million, a loss of 32 percent of all manufacturing jobs. The last time fewer than 12 million people worked in the manufacturing sector was in 1941.

Clinton had the gall to accuse those who opposed China’s entry into the WTO of “aligning themselves with the Chinese army and hard-liners in Beijing who do not want accession for China.” Clinton claimed that the agreement that he championed “creates a win-win result for both countries,” arguing that exports to China “now support hundreds of thousands of American jobs” and “these figures can grow substantially.” (Clinton’s press person at the Clinton Global Initiative did not respond to my requests for feedback.)

Clinton then went on to enact NAFTA, or the North America Free Trade Act, which as American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner has observed, “was less about trade and more about making it easier for U.S. based multinationals and banks to take over Mexican companies.”


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-white/bill-clintons-true-legacy_b_1852887.html

[Hoyt]

1. Actually, consumers "outsourced" most of those jobs by choosing cheaper and better cars, etc., from

overseas. I don't think most of jobs were directly sent overseas. Companies here just went out of business because they could not compete with foreign products. American jobs were not directly sent to Toyota or Samsung. People/consumers said, rather than a big, gas guzzling, chromed tanks, I'll save some money, gas, and get a better performing, long lasting, auto from overseas.

Sure, some of our factories actually moved, but they largely moved to compete and stay in business. They could have stayed here, and faced dwindling sales. And, lots of jobs were just lost to obsolescence -- nowadays we don't need as many clerical workers, phone operators, book printers, etc. The classic example is buggy-whip manufacturers.

I'm not disputing how bad the situation is for workers, but we ought to define the real problem to seek a solution. And, we need to find a solution quickly.

[Jitter65]

3. Of course you are correct. But folks with intent to continue to smear the Clintons will not

pay attention or seek out verifiable facts. "Outsourcing" began with Reagan's "contracting out" of many government functions back in the 80's. Many low wage government employees lost fair paying jobs with good benefits because of this. Many needed up on welfare roles because they lost so much. Following soon behind was outsourcing of labor intense manufacturing jobs for decades before NAFTA. NAFTA was an ill-enforced attempt to level the playing field between Mexico and the US and to provide jobs IN MEXICO to keep our borders from being overrun by Mexicans seeking good work in the US. It was never indented to be used as a mechanism for cheap labor. And actually, the number of jobs lost because of NAFTA is closer to 130,000 than to the 800,000 that is popularly printed in the press and further pushed by Clinton detractor. In fact, there were jobs created by NAFTA that never go reported but small businesses that benefited seem to never come forward.

These facts along with some others is what Democrats need to arm themselves with instead of feeding the negative frenzy against our own candidates just because of personal dislikes. You will never hear a Republican claim that Reagan's contracting out of government functions caused terrific hardships especially among lower income women and minorities or that Reagan swelled the government rolls with higher paying jobs, or that he increased the deficit, or that he used "poor judgement" trading arms for hostages to Iran. You won't hear a lot of information about what the GOP did to our economy in the past because Republicans won't talk about it and the Democrats won't even bother to learn about it. It's just too easy to lob smears at our team members that we don't like.

[oasis]

15. +1

[FreakinDJ]

5. Cherry Picking the facts - blaming the Consumer - So Very Wall St

Forget the Off Shore Tax incentives

Corp Inversions

Arms Length Intra-Corporation Pricing schemes which accounts for 70% of all trade globally, (that might be sufficiently over your head thou)

Your analogy is the typical Wall St / Forbes ragazine reply which no longer works on better informed millennials, (Damm you Al Gore for creating the internet) and plays quite nicely with Hillary's past Walmart history

What a majority of working Americans object to is both parties are now catering the Wall St interest and outsourcing. No Bill didn't invent it but he surely played a major roll in it

[Hoyt]

8. Corporate inversions will be taken care of, and they don't move jobs.

[FreakinDJ]

11. Single Issue won't solve Outsourcing

But I would hope you already know that

You took such an authoritarian position blaming the consumer for outsourcing one would expect you had some knowledge of the many forms of Tax Avoidance Wall St has purchased from Washington Lawmakers and Cronies

Hillary make any mention of the MANY profitable MultiNational Corporations making ZERO tax payments and receiving a TAX REFUND in the $Millions (its raining Corp Money in America)

These 26 Companies Pay No Federal Income Tax
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/25/corporation-tax-rate_n_4855763.html

15 Fortune 500 Companies Paid No Federal Income Taxes in 2014
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/04/09/15-Fortune-500-Companies-Paid-No-Federal-Income-Taxes-2014

Hillary isn't going to fix this - just Sugar Coat it some more

[Hoyt]

16. As long as consumers want cheaper foreign products, the only way to stop that

is a big tariff, forcing consumers to pay more and shoring up dying or non-competitive industries here. And that will hurt us long term economically and otherwise. Studies have shown the majority of people are not willing to pay even a few percent more for American made goods when comparable foreign goods are available. Not saying it should be that way, but it is.

[NCjack]

17. Perhaps increase in wages inline with increased productivity would help.

[CanadaexPat]

18. Bingo - Fordism worked well for everyone.

[Hoyt]

20. I agree. But, how do you handle increases in productivity

that are more the result of increased investment in robots, production techniques, etc. If I improve what I do, definitely deserve more. If output improvement is not due directly to me, not sure pay increase is only way to share in that. I strongly support significant tax increases to be used for safety net, guaranteed income, etc.

[FreakinDJ]

23. Your going off the deep end here

We were discussing Corp Taxes that give incentives for outsourcing

Can you stay on topic long enough to deal with reality before going off on deflecting the topic

No one mentioned Hillary's favorite deflecting point of tariffs

[Hoyt]

24. As long as you believe jobs going overseas is primarily because domestic corporations sent

the jobs there, it's hard to stay focused on your misreading of the problem. Ford did not send jobs to Japan, and RCA did not send jobs to China. We friggin lost them to manufacturers in those countries that did a better job of selling to Americans.

[FreakinDJ]

27. Denial must be comfortable for you

The equation doesn't work with out the tax breaks

[stonecutter357]

9. +1000

[amborin]

30. this is a neo-liberal "interpretation" of job-killing & manufacturing sector-killing FTAs

[KT2000]

31. A kind of second tier

that exists for the purpose of outsourcing is private equity and holding companies. Some exist to buy midsize manufacturing companies in the US only to move the jobs to China. They are US companies only on a computer system.

The consumers are not just WalMart shoppers - they are the American military, medical establishment, government agencies etc. At this level I doubt cost savings are realized.

When manufacturing is outsourced, it is often the American company that decides lower quality is OK if it means greater profits. China is often blamed but it is really the American businesses who push for lower prices - because they can. Lots of complaining but there is no push back for poor quality goods. What is the alternative? Nothing.

Congress is aware of this but private equity firms are in their portfolios so they avoid the issue.

[merrily]

2. Not only outsourcer in chief and not only repeal of Glass Steagall, for which he and Greenspan

lobbied hard. The Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (that may not be the exact name), for which he and Greenspan also lobbied hard, left mortgage derivatives unregulated. In turn, that led, by 2008, to near economic collapse of the US and worse in a number of European nations, not to mention many foreclosures in that economy. For that particular toxic financial cake, repeal of Glass Steagall was only the icing. However, both those bills were instrumental in the "too big to fail" debacles.

As though that were no enough, there were also DADT, DOMA, "ending welfare as we know it," the Telecommunications Act, turning the White House into the Re-Elect Bill Clinton Historic Inn at taxpayer expense, trade agreements, bombing Iraq, turning the Democratic Party into the "New Democrat" Party (their term, not mine), losing Congress, perjury leading to impeachment and more. (I always leave out some doozies, so I've stopped trying to be inclusive.) Tried to mess with OASDI, too, but didn't quite make it. (Bowles, from his administration, did, however, get to co-head the Cat Food Commission that Obama appointed.)

In fairness, there were also positives. I will leave it to others to decide whether those outweighed the negatives and whether we have Congress or Bubba to thank for them. (As an aside, until Hillary, I'd never seen a First Lady take credit for bills Congress passed during her husband's administration.)

[FreakinDJ]

4. Notice Hillary doesn't attack High-Tech outsourcing - just Corp Inversions

The Clintons have always played to Silicon Valley even when Apple has led the charge for Slave Labor and Outsourcing

[merrily]

6. She also pushes the story that tech companies cannot find qualified Americans to

take jobs (unsaid: at the wages for which tech people here on visas will accept).

[FreakinDJ]

7. Hillary supports increasing H1B visas to astronomical levels

Who needs STEM students when we can import workers at a 33% discount

[pampango]

10. How exactly would keeping China out of the trade organization that the rest of the world belongs to

have helped? Would keeping it out have kept it a poor, agrarian country isolated from the rest of the world? Apparently the Chinese army and 'hardliners' thought so and thought such a country would be easier for them to control.

Maybe instead of allowing China to join the WTO we should have gone really 'liberal' on them and imposed a Cuba-style trade embargo on those 'lousy communists'. Maybe republicans were right all these years about the value of trade embargoes. I think not.

And are we to believe that the same WTO that we mistakenly allowed China to join was going to 'protect' us from those dreaded poor Mexican workers if only we had not enacted NAFTA?

And the 'international trade as the cause of all our problems' boogeyman has to explain the fact that our level of trade is 1/2 that of Sweden and 1/3 that of Germany. The problems in Sweden and Germany should be 2 to 3 times worse than they are here if international trade is to blame. They are not. Why not?

[FreakinDJ]

12. How exactly does China burning so much coal the ash lands in Canda and the US benefit the world

Geez asking for Ecological Concessions prior to entry was out of the question

Even when Gephart opposed Bill and Hillary's push for NAFTA it was over Ecological and Worker's Rights ....

[pampango]

14. I agree that high environmental standards should be part of trade agreements and

organizations. And those high environmental standards should apply to all parties to such agreements. Countries that join such agreements and organizations should be required to meet the same high environmental standards as those countries that are already members.

[NurseJackie]

13. I just checked ... Hillary will still be the nominee. (Your post changes nothing.)

[Kokonoe]

19. The Clintons have nothing to do with any of that while in power!

La La La La








and left power broke. Are you misogynist

[Skwmom]

21. And his wife continued that legacy along with insourcing. Why do you think Trump is touting America

First?

[FreakinDJ]

22. Clinton polling down to +8 now

[Octafish]

25. If people are fighting for the few jobs left...

...and working harder to keep from getting fired, they aren't going to notice Wall Street ripping off their savings, inheritances, and children's futures.

Army is hiring, however, those who qualify.

[Phlem]

26. Yep. Lost my Job during Nafta

and have not recovered since. Now I'm supposed to vote for Hillary, contributor to the TPP?

That is plain insanity.

Fucking lunatics are running the asylum.

[snagglepuss]

28. knr

[amborin]

29. K&R