In a stunning statement revealing twisted priorities or epic naivete, Obama encouraged CEOs of some of the biggest outsourcing companies to invest in China, telling them "We should be rooting for China to grow." Shouldn't we be rooting for America to grow?
Obama told the executives "we should be rooting for China to grow" because the millions of Chinese who are now doing jobs Americans used to do "are potential customers for us in the future," according to the New York Times.
This echoes a discredited talking point used by both Bill Clinton and George Bush to justify Western investment in China. Instead of millions of new customers for American-made goods, the record shows millions of U.S. jobs gone and countless Chinese barriers to US imports.
It's hard to find newly-wealthy Chinese customers for goods Made in the USA because Beijing requires companies that sell in China to build factories in China. It's also hard to imagine the White House doesn't know about this because it's not a secret.
President Obama made his remarks in a meeting in Honolulu with a group of multinational CEOs while in Hawaii for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and a round of meetings with leaders of China, Japan and Russia. The president is pushing a new global outsourcing deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that he hopes will one day include China.
The CEOs, including Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Johnson & Johnson Chairman and CEO William Weldon, Eli Lily and Co. Chairman, President and CEO John Lechleiter, and Dow Chemical Asia Pacific President Pat Dawson, later met with China's president Hu Jintao.
The Chinese actually may be "customers for us," depending on what the meaning of the word "us" is. If it means the CEOs, Obama's right -- the executives who have no loyalty to America see a billion Chinese consumers replacing an American middle class the same executives are destroying by shipping U.S. jobs overseas.
If President Obama actually believes China will be buying stuff from America, he didn't hear what Hu Jintao himself told the CEOs. Hu said China's goal is to move up the economic food chain "from 'Made in China' to 'Created by China,'" the Times reports. To achieve this goal, Beijing uses cyber-espionage to steal trade secrets and forces Western companies to transfer technology and research as well as production to China.
Beijing has a clear strategy for economic development, and it includes having the Chinese people make what they buy -- a lesson we should learn here if we want to put Americans back to work.
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This comment has not yet been postedThat says it all about the trade policies this country is following under Obama and in fact have been following for the last 30 years. The politician (from both parties) have sold out the citizens of our country.
As a company, maximizing shareholde
Why a company should pay $50,000 to hire an autoworker
Keep drinking the coolaid, and the race to the bottom will continue. Our industrial and manufactur
The role of government should be to provide for the common good and well being of it's citizens. Corporatio
What I have noticed is the cost of most products hasn't drasticall
I keep worrying that Route 66 might be a harbinger of what's to come. Sure, some companies are doing well while everything is transition
To our "innovatio
In yet another way we are like Al Bartlett's amoeba, sitting pretty, oblivious to what the next few minutes will bring.
Offshore the manufactur
Don't believe what the know-nothi
Based on an ever growing base of experience with this President, I'm going to have to go with "twisted priorities
http://www
European Technocrat
"The World Trade Organizati
The intent of the proposal is to reduce public pressure on politician
The WTO has been working on Made in the World since late 2007, "but in the past two or three years there has been huge momentum to get the necessary informatio
playing field.
They are rooting for China, and investing in China, where many of our jobs went. Who benefits from it? only the top 1% is who!
Benedict Arnold could not have done a better job of selling us out.
And now here's the kicker that domestic business advocates would love: Set the lowest tax rate of this graduated schedule at 0% while boosting the top rate to 50%, and you would likely see dramatic shifts away from outsourcin
The Case Against Shifting Production To China; Hidden Costs And Growing Risks Make U.S. Attractive For Manufactur
"Rising costs in China along with dozens of hidden costs are making it more economical to either keep manufactur
Companies are not adequately accounting for dozens of hidden costs and growing risks associated with outsourcin
"If you look at all the costs and total them up and you do a really good job of doing design, the chances are you can manufactur
Companies are mesmerized by low labor costs and by low-ball quotes from Chinese suppliers for parts and components as well as turnkey manufactur
For WHAT?