About Time

Financial Times is following a story about a breakdown in the codependent trading relationship between the United States and China. President Barrack Obama, in response, it is said, to lobbying from the United Steelworkers, has levied some rather sharp sanctions against products imported from China. On this issue, we support President Obama 100%. Foolish trade deals made by the USA have bankrupted the nation, sapped our national resolve, and rotted the can do nature of our people.

Free trade must be stopped

We remind those readers that are theoretically in favor of free trade that trade with Asia is not free. Asian governments, most notably China, but also Japan and South Korea, are not free trading nations, but mercantile ones. Their goals of trade are imperialistic in nature, designed to undermine productive capacity of the west to further their own industries, and their workers, despite all of the May Day celebrations, will not benefit from them. Trillions of US dollars of wealth earned by workers in these socialist nations around remain not redistributed, but locked up in bank accounts held onto by the robber barons of these nations for no other reason than to keep the value of the dollar high.

Foreign dollar holdings can clearly be used to manipulate the value of the dollar. Foreign held currency reserves held by Asia are nearly as great as the total M1 money supply as managed by the Fed. In very real terms, the Chinese actually have nearly as many dollars as the United States. This leverage clearly does not benefit the United States.

Lately the jousting of currency has become a complete charade. The USA has essentially gone bankrupt. Lacking sufficient buyers for its massive federal debt, the United States has taken to printing money. The Federal Reserve, America's central bank, prints money, and then uses that money to purchase Treasury bills. Previously, Chinese mercantilism could be tolerated if they at least bought some US debt. That brought at least some currency back into the United States. Now, without even Chinese debt purchases, there's little point for Americans tolerate the ridiculous lack of balance in trade with China.

It is time to bring this imbalance to a close, end this injustice, and put Americans back to work. We will disagree with the President on many issues, but his raising of tariffs is a strong first step in the right direction on the issue of trade.