Free Trade Agreements

Tariffs And Republican Depressions: Benjamin Harrison, Herbert Hoover, Now Donald Trump?

Ronald 1 Comment

Protective tariffs made sense in the time of Alexander Hamilton and the time of Henry Clay.

But in the late 19th century, big business corporations were able to create higher tariffs that were detrimental to the American worker, consumer, and economy, with the assistance of the corrupt Republican Party of the period.

In 1890, under Republican President Benjamin Harrison, we saw the passage of the McKinley Tariff, named after the future President, and it undermined the economy and contributed to the disastrous Panic of 1893, which affected the nation until 1898.

In 1930, months after the Stock Market Crash, Republican President Herbert Hoover, ignoring the pleas of hundreds of economists, signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which caused a great worsening of the developing Great Depression.

As the decades went by, most Republicans and intelligent Democrats realized that high tariffs were not good, and free trade agreements developed in the 1990s.

Some far left liberals and some far right conservatives joined forces to fight this, and now Donald Trump has declared the inception of “Tariff Wars”, which will bring down the American economy, harm consumers and farmers, and cause unemployment to rise.

Trump is alienating the whole world–including China, Canada, Mexico, the European Union, and more–and instead will destroy the economic lives of millions of his own supporters, if he is not stopped from his crazy, lunatic actions!

Assuming we cannot stop what he is doing, the Republicans will suffer a blood bath, that will put the Republican Party in the dustbin of history.

It is time for Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in Congress to show some “cajones”, and turn against Trump before he totally destroys the nation economically, and takes unto World War III against North Korea, who would be helped by China, and Iran, who would be helped by Russia.

The White Working Class And Donald Trump, The Ultimate P T Barnum!

Ronald 3 Comments

Donald Trump, a billionaire, the wealthiest Presidential candidate in American history, has particular support from the white working class, which has become victims of corporate influence in politics, including the effects of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and other free trade agreements, which have been supported by the vast majority of both Democrats and Republicans, going back to the Bill Clinton Presidency.

So many jobs have gone overseas in the past few decades, limiting the ability of the white working class to gain high wage jobs, and on top of it, the growing immigration issue of undocumented immigrants, heavily from Latin America and Asia, and the insecurity felt about the reality of minority groups collectively moving toward a majority of the population by the 2040s, fuels the Donald Trump support.

But it is truly ironic that Trump employs immigrants for his hotels and other properties over native born workers, in order to save money!

The white working class is totally with its head in the sand, not realizing that Trump is a phony, who says what they want to hear, but has no real clue on the issues, and has avoided specifics on domestic and foreign policy, other than to talk about a wall on the Mexican border; to ban all Muslims from entrance to the United States; to promise everything will be fine in the future and that the world will come to “respect” us again, while having intelligence and foreign policy experts warn that he has no clear perception of the challenges of military and foreign policy!

If someone rails against the politicians, and yet provides examples of promising what is not possible to achieve, then indeed such a person is a “used car” or “snake oil” salesman, misleading ill informed voters, and one can be sure that the ultimate disillusionment will be far greater as a result, when the white working class realizes they have, once again, been bamboozled by a true PT Barnum character!