The Liberal Patriot

America is more Secure – Think Again

J.G. Schwam - October 28, 2004

America is no longer economically self-sufficient. So much of our manufacturing capability has been sold off or shipped off shore that by this very insufficiency we are vulnerable. This vulnerability not limited to present or future attacks from true enemies who seek to oppose us with military or by terrorist means. We are also vulnerable if our trade, military or foreign policies become so onerous that some chose to oppose or disrupt our policies or economic goals with economic retaliation.

Daily, American manufacturers sell off or move all or some of their factories off shore. Just days ago, one our nations crown jewel machine tool manufacturers Ingersoll International a globally respected leader in the design and manufacture of precision milling machines announced mid shift, to it’s 300 Rockford Illinois employees that it is closing it’s plant there, a facility located there for 112 years. Every single one lost their jobs. The reason, Ingersoll lost a contract to manufacture precision drilling machinery used in the manufacture of the F-35 fighter, our nations latest, to a Spanish company. A policy encouraged and enacted daily, across hundreds procurement tables under Rumsfeld’s avaricious rule of the Pentagon.

How are we more secure when technology critical to the manufacture and maintenance of our military is no longer manufactured by American companies or even on our own shores?

This is not an isolated incident. The controversy was briefly raised and dismissed when Daimler Benz, the German manufacturer of Mercedes Benz and more trucks worldwide, than any single American manufacturer purchased Chrysler. Chrysler is now managed from Stuttgart, Germany. Out of thirteen, only two Americans remain on the board of directors of what was once, one of America’s largest companies.

Once considered a strategic asset, Chrysler’s plants are crucial for manufacture of the US Army’s M-1 Abrams main battle tank. Only Chrysler has the expensive and complex tooling needed for the M-1’s assembly. If the current chill created with Germany by the Bush administration escalates to levels even more absurd than the current level as unlikely as that may be, Daimler Chryslers German managers could simply say, no we won’t build tanks for you. We own the factory, sorry.

Or Spain Could say sorry, no F-35 drills for you. Should China, lest we not forget a communist country decide to trifle with us in time of disagreement, stop exporting micro chips the effect would, in a matter of days, be crippling. None of these scenarios, perhaps under different circumstances is absurd.

America’s national security interests are not served by allowing more and more US assets be they skilled personnel, money, natural or technical continue to be increasingly, controlled or shipped off shore.

In 1999 Deutsche Bank another German company took over one of New York City’s oldest money center banks Bankers Trust, shifting the control and revenue derived from tens of billions of dollars of American taxpayers and business’s money offshore.

French electronics conglomerate Thomson owns RCA and Michelin who owns B.F Goodrich. Uniroyal, formerly U.S. Rubber is also French owned. Of the three largest American tire makers only one is still American owned. The list could go on and on. While our xenophobic government continues to sneer at these strategic partners, our bankers and purveyors of greed sell our nation to the highest bidder. They make millions brokering the deal, while thousands of jobs leave our shores.

The 160 year old Stanley Works of New Britain Connecticut considered an invaluable strategic asset of the north in the Civil War now is unable to provide statistics on what percentages of its products are even manufactured in the in USA. A company spokesman could only say that 60% of its products are manufactured in high cost countries such as the USA, France, Germany and the UK. The remaining 40% comes from low cost countries such as China, Poland, Thailand and others. The exact number of Stanley jobs lost by this outsourcing is not available.

The job drain to lower cost producing countries is not limited to the long-term declines predicted and being realized in the manufacturing sector.

In the last few years 1.3 million American’s have lost their jobs to lower cost workers being brought into the US by US companies like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, General Electric. Citibank and dozens and dozens of others. These companies lay off American workers and bring in foreign workers on L-1, H-1B or similar visa permits to work in the USA for wages far lower than most heads of American families can afford to.

Dell, the USA’s largest computer manufacturer recently laid off hundreds of technical support personnel, closed its US based call center and now routes nearly all of it’s consumer and corporate technical support calls to India where it’s phone support personnel are paid less than the US minimum wage.

Across America the list goes on, across every business sector. The list of affected trades and employment sectors could fill this page.

The drain is not limited to blue collar jobs. Analysts with the forecasting firm Forrester Research say that in the next 15 years, U.S. employers will move 3.3 million white collar jobs to countries whose pay and benefits are a fraction of what these professionals now earn in America. This on top the nearly uncollatable amount of jobs that are already gone.

Private conversations with well-placed Wall Street executives indicate a consensus. The USA is no longer competitive. The only solution they see is lower US manufacturing and increasingly, service sector wage costs. This frightening belief means that wage growth outside of incentive based job opportunities such as finance and merchant banking, high wage jobs will become a thing of the pas in the USA. As US employers lay off skilled workers and managers Wal-Marts march into southern California scares the bejeezus out of supermarket operators there. They see lowering payroll costs as the only solution to holding their labor costs inline the with the competition looming from the non-union Wal-Mart. Sadly they may be correct there may not be enough fat in their organizations to compete against the Wal-Mart attack against US wages and manufacturing jobs.

Wal-Marts mission of being the lowest cost retailer in the USA has been highly successful. A Wal-Mart spokesperson could not provide accurate information on what percentage of apparel and white goods sold by Wal-Mart was made in the USA. His self-described non-precise answer was that he could not say if it was a shocking 62%, 82% or another figure.

Many of its suppliers such as Sara Lee Corporation’s Hanes subsidiary, maker of Champion, Hanes, Bali, Playtex, L’eggs and others mainstream American brands grow increasingly concerned with the downward pressure exerted on their market by dominant marketing conglomerates, principally as a Hanes spokesperson implied, Wal-Mart. Hanes struggles to maintain it’s long standing manufacturing relationships and not bug out and race to the dire desperate poverty of countries at bottom of the so called [wage] race to bottom, to remain competitive and meet the demands of a Wal-Mart dominated marketplace.

No nation can survive at the whims of trade with unstable nations such as Bangledesh, assorted African dictatorships where American manufacturers “search for the bottom” has led them. There are those see China as a looming military superpower. Their space program turns Donald Rumsfeld into a schoolboy ready to dive under his desk when the siren sounds. Yet we expand trade with them to the point that if they stop shipping us socks we’ll have to go barefoot or get blisters. Because we just don’t make them here anymore.

American companies no longer see value in supporting their own economies through measures that in tough times may hurt their bottom lines and force their CEO’s to live on salaries only two or three hundred percent greater than the rest of us, but America will be more secure. Our jobs will remain here and fiscal sanity will return our markets.

America is insecure if we depend on so called allies we continually alienate with obtuse foreign polices and neo-colonial adventurism, for products necessary to defend ourselves. We are allowing our government, our manufacturers, our retailers and even our military to export our national security a the behest of lobbyists who operate for interests solely driven by greed.

Let every free trader take note. If you bind a third world worker into servitude and thirty cents an hour, for that wage it is verily that, he is not your ally. Hhe loathes you for the huge profits he knows you make on his back. .

He loathes you when he learns from CNN/fn, that while he struggles to by food for his family on his sub-subsistence wage that the Reeboks’ or Wal-Mart socks he contracts for, paid their CEO more money than 500,000 of his countrymen make in a year.

He is not your ally. These policies make us vulnerable and insecure.

Further, politicians be warned, take not for granted the historic party loyalty of skilled workers shunned by political power brokers that enable policies that cause their jobs, along with their lifestyles and aspirations to disappear…offshore.

This kind of free trade is not fair. Nor is it without a dire price to our own economy. We must work to preserve American jobs not expel them to nations that, loath us for reasons we give them. We must work to find a fair trade model that works, not free trade model that answers the question of why they hate us, or we will be alone in the world, angry, hated, vulnerable and not so rich anymore.

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