Seeing Michigan as a do-or-die state, the man who made his money buying and selling companies like baseball cards put down his Wall Street portfolio in order to connect with the workingman. In a state where one in nine residents receive food assistance, and foreclosures were the staple long before today's national crisis, Michigan is the canary in the coalmine for an America that has sold her manufacturing prowess for pennies on the dollar.
For the past seven years, while free trade gurus were praising $20 sneakers and commending the benefits of placing the consumer before the country, Michigan was trying, in vain, to stop the bleeding. Over 400,000 jobs have been exported to China and Mexico, while back in October, long before the recession panic of today, Michigan's unemployment rate was the highest in the nation at 7.4 percent.
Why is Michigan in such dire straits? Simple - decades of free trade policies have placed American workers in a Darwinian battle with foreign competitors, a battle where the rules are uneven and the outcome rigged.
How can employees of GM or Ford compete with Mexicans or Chinese willing to work for a fraction of the cost and without benefits or pensions? How can they compete with workers living in nations were OSHA is non-existent and the only thing green are the dollars pouring out of America? They can't.
The core of this problem has nothing to do with the ability of the American worker to complete the job, for the American worker has demonstrated his resolve. Rather, it is the free trade ideology that has sacrificed the well-being of the nation for a policy believed to be the key to, in the words of Richard Cobden, "drawing men together, thrusting aside antagonism of race, creed and language and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace."
It is this cosmic Kool-aid that has crippled the American economy, led to inflation, devalued the dollar and ended the era of American economic independence. It is this policy that has permitted foreign companies, such as Toyota, free access to a $13 trillion market and placed their goods, duty free, against American goods.
But what free traders failed to consider, or willingly forgot, is that every American car manufactured in this country has legacy costs - the costs of pensions and benefits. Also factored into the price of every Cadillac, Lincoln or Chevy are Social Security, Medicare, state and federal income taxes. As Ronald Reagan opined, companies don't pay taxes; they collect them.
Thus, when an American buys an American car, part of that purchase benefits the many social services millions of Americans depend on. In other words, buying American helps America. The same can't be said of the Kia.
But under the free trade model, the only goal is providing the cheapest good. So, if an automaker can manufacture a car overseas, thus avoiding the additional costs, and then import back into the country at a cheaper rate, the instant benefit of cheap goods outweighs the long-term detriment of a deteriorating economic infrastructure.
This mentality is the very reason the United States exports 600,000 automobiles to the world but imports 900,000 cars just from Mexico. And where did Mexico get the factories to manufacture such cars? Michigan. Thus bringing us to the question raised by the Romney-McCain tussle.
Are those manufacturing jobs gone forever? And is that a good thing for the nation?
Alan Tonelson, a economist with the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, explained, "In the U.S. manufacturing is the economy's most productive sector, the engine of most technological progress, the employer of most of its scientists and technicians and the creator of its best paying jobs." Put simply, a strong manufacturing sector is the sign of a healthy economy, and economic nationalism can bring it back from the brink.
Friedrich List, a German economist in the mold of Hamilton, Washington, Jefferson and Jackson, concluded that the "power of producing wealth is ... infinitely more important than wealth itself." So, if Mr. McCain is right, and the sun has set on U.S. manufacturing, happy days will not be here for quite some time.
Joe Murray can be reached at jmurray@thebulletin.us.