Why Free Trade Isn't Free & The Hire American Campaign

Senator John McCain supports free trade. Sounds great. I would want it if it where free, but it's not.

In America--wage and environmental laws, that as a "free" nation we have decided are necessary to protect our well being--add to the costs of production. As a consequence, the same sneaker that we manufacture in America that is labor and environmentally friendly costs more than the same sneaker made in China. Why?

Though it may come as a surprise to some, constructing a chimney with an air scrubber or cleaning waste water before it is discharged back into a river costs money. Requiring over time pay and other work benefits further add expense to manufacturing.

Hence, China sells the misery of its people and land to us in the form of a cheaper sneaker. It thereby enriches its oligarchy, not its people. This not only impoverishes the Chinese worker because of the squalid conditions they must work in for low wages, but bankrupts the US worker because of job loss and the pollution that knows no border and needs no passport to go where it is naturally taken.

As a result, the American manufacturing-blue-collar worker, who once had a well paying job must not only lament the loss of his job to his under-paid, Chinese brother, but must breath in China's polluted air sent via the jet stream directly to his back porch where he must idely sit contemplating what to do to reverse this trend.

In his contemplation, instead of learning Chinese, he might resolve, once he gets his welfare check, to buy only American products. That has been all the rage for years--with one small problem. It needs the, "Hire Only American Campaign." You see, while all us American workers are "buying American," the American entrepreneur, to avoid the expense of our environmental laws and high labour costs, is taking his capital over seas.

So, the "Buy Only American Campaign" must be matched by its equivalent the "Hire only American Campaign." Haven't heard of it yet? No you haven't, and you won't. The American worker has been betrayed by the American capitalist. That is why free trade is not free and that is why trade agreements must require that foreign manufacturers comply with our labor and environmental laws before they should be allowed to compete in our great country against those who are willing to keep their capital at home and hire Americans.

And who wants to do this? Senator Obama. You want the best for everyone not just the foreign oligarch and American capitalist?

Vote for Obama.

Loren M. Lambert
July 4, 2008 (c)