Free and Fair Trade; It isn’t Free and it isn’t Fair These Days:

Ever since the days of the campaign for the Presidency kicked off in 2015, one of the President’s primary goals of his “Make America Great Again” campaign was to reshape the way our nation traded with other countries. His simply stated approach was to insert himself, and his team, into the details of all the current trade deals we have embarked on, and see if they were beneficial to the nation in both fairness and relevance. While he spoke of it at every campaign stop, it wasn’t really paid any attention to because the intelligentsia had written him, and his campaign, off as a “fringe movement”, “nativists” and “protectionists”. These same folks believed, incorrectly, that there was no appetite for reanalyzing what was going on in the nation. They thought that the citizenry was simply content in allowing them to forge ahead with their misguided deals and their self-centered negotiations that struck up trade agreements that put our nation at a severe disadvantage. President Trump knew the way the game was rigged very well, because he had to navigate the various corruption as a real estate developer in New York City. If ever there was a front seat into sleaze and corrupt politicians, New York City (and state) was the place to learn and master the game. From mafia connected unions to the politicians that did their bidding, an insight can easily be gleaned into behavior of our representatives and how they operate to serve their own interests while pretending to serve ours. While this column is not about the topic of local political corruption, it is about how these same people are the ones who engineer, on a macro scale, how this nation operates and how deals are structured around trade and commerce that affect the micro economy here at home. If they cannot be trusted on small matters of the economy why would anyone truly believe that they can be trusted on a larger scale where the dollars we are entrusting to them are expanded exponentially? The President, being the keen businessman he is, knows this all too well and hence his commitment to try and right a ship that has gone so far of course it needed a new compass.

In order to understand the extent of the problem we must look at the heart of it all where the above mentioned corruption is fertilized. We have a government where 535 people make decisions for a nation of roughly 328.5 million citizens. Of those 535, they are split into a Senate with 100 members and a House of Representatives made up of 435 voting members. When it comes down to it all there is a select leadership in each chamber deciding it all with Majority and Minority leaders. The rest of the members usually fall in line for fear of reprisal if they push back. The question never addressed is where do these members of the elite leadership even obtain their marching orders from, into order to formulate laws, specifically for this discussion around the economy, in what we trade, what we tax, what we subsidize and what we allow into our country? The answer is there exists extensive lobbying groups that pump millions into the campaigns of our representatives. Washington DC has what are known as the “K Street Lobbyists”, where various interest groups set up shop and shower the political class with gifts, favors and most importantly, campaign contributions if they are willing to do their bidding in regards to passing legislation that is favorable to them. What makes matters even worse is quite often these lobbyists actually write the legislation and pass it along to be voted on. Remember Obama-care, where then speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said “We have to pass it to see what is in it”? She wasn’t kidding because her and most of Congress had no inkling what that bill was comprised of. All they knew was that it satisfied the core tenets of what President Obama wanted, and that was a government run health care system where the winners would be the large insurance companies handed billions in government subsidies for agreeing to play along. With this type of corrupt apparatus in place is it any wonder that our mechanics of trade and tariffs are also being subjected to this sellout of the American public?

I know some folks might read the above and believe I am indicting the framework of the government (When I referenced 535 members are making decisions for 328.5 million citizens). I am actually not, rather I am making the case that the beautiful framework of our government has been breached by career criminals that shape the laws for their own self interests. My remedy would be term limits and ending lobbying once and for all. Make it the citizens they are accountable to. Years ago I worked for a Private Equity firm in Manhattan called Apollo Global Management that was headed by multibillionaires with underlings that were multimillionaires who specialized in “Deals”. Taking over failing companies, or companies with poor management, with the hopes of changing the management to make the companies more profitable. So far so good; I have no issue as that is capitalism. What I had, and still have, a huge issue with is this firm, and many like it, buying off politicians to join their companies. Apollo Management hired former Senator Evan Bayh to be part of their “Advisory team”. Now if anyone ever met Bayh they know he is a politically connected hack who has used the government to enrich himself and his family. Ask yourself why would Apollo hire him? The reason is he has access to the power brokers in Washington D.C. and is able to work with the corrupt politicians to steer various sorts of transactions their way in return for a multimillion dollar salary as well as part of the deals he helps arrange.(Public record and I am not revealing anything that’s is confidential. (Google Even Bayh and Apollo salary)). It is not just Apollo. It is investment behemoths like Goldman Sachs who help rig markets and have special access to the levers of power. How does anyone think they are able to be part of trillions in Government Bond offerings, access to the premium public offerings that yield them hundreds of millions of dollars as well as their ability to manipulate the commodities markets? Want proof of the commodities manipulation? In 2005 when oil was relatively quiet, a senior analyst for Goldman Sachs announced he saw the price of oil heading north of 100 dollars a barrel. Gasoline and home heating oil soared to over 4 dollars a gallon. What wasn’t mentioned, or even investigated, was the fact that Goldman Sachs was in the commodities business bidding up the price of oil to serve their own interests and those of their select clients. There were no world conditions to justify this prediction of an oil shortage. If this isn’t corruption I don’t know what is. Countless Americans were hurt by this trying to make ends meet. A $35 fill-up at the pump went to $70 or $80. A home heating oil delivery went from $300 to around $700. I am certain everyone remembers the government manufactured housing crisis of 2008 when the banking system was forced to make loans to individuals and companies that had no ability to pay the loans back. It was sold to the American public as a remedy for past discrimination. What wasn’t told to the American public was that it was yet another way to allow these same connected banks and institutions to start pumping out loans for huge commissions and fees. Loans with no credit checks or suitability to pay were issued. Speculation reached dizzying levels. No regard was paid to the tax payers that eventually had to swoop in to rescue these institutions that took part in this financial game of musical chairs. When the music stopped there weren’t any chairs to grab and the nation was plunged into an economic black hole. The answer to this black hole? That’s right, Goldman Sachs and their former executives arrived on the scene and starting deciding who gets to survive and who would go out of business. Lehman Brothers was the first to be driven out of existence (Could it be because they were a direct competitor to Goldman?) as were Bear Stearns who was conveniently taken over by JP Morgan Chase. Merrill Lynch was given to Bank of America while others were deemed “Too Big to Fail” and provided billions in bailout money from us the taxpayers. Wells Fargo who didn’t engage in the scam of these loans were told to accept bailout money or face crippling audits in order to make this corruption seem unanimous. If you want to see the corruption of our government in action then simply look up the videos of the auditors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac testifying in front of the House Banking Committee (Specifically Democrat Barney Frank) being ridiculed for suggesting these trillions in loans being made were a systemic threat to the country. In hindsight it is appalling the way they were treated. Bernie Madoff sits in a prison cell for the rest of his life for a Ponzi scheme while these characters who almost brought down the nation are vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard and treated as celebrities by the press.

So now that we have some insight into the corruption we should take a look at the actual trade deals we are engaged in (That is the point of this article) and with the corruption in perspective we can see why the President has made this a mission of his and why the American public is squarely in his corner to address it. The opening salvo against America came in the 1990s with NAFTA. (North American Free Trade Agreement). It was an agreement struck with the usual suspects slapping a capitalistic acronym on the deal (who would ever oppose free trade) and then selling it as a great deal for our products to hit the market. The problem with the deal is it wasn’t free and it wasn’t fair to our country. It was the culmination of years of lobbying of our politicians to open up the trading lanes of the Americas forcing a borderless economic wild west. A lane that allowed cherished American companies to say “Adios” to American workers and set up shop just south of the Border in Mexico where they could pay pennies on the dollar to Juan and Jose while laying off John and Joseph back home. Ford Motor Corp was quick to jump on board. They systematically shut down plants in Michigan and Kentucky and relocated to places such as Juarez and Mexico City. NAFTA encouraged this behavior because not only were there no penalties for this, there also were none for bringing the products back into the US to be sold here. Americans were being undercut by cheap foreign labor. Manufacturing started to quickly disappear. Cars, clothing and equipment plants were being sent out of the country. These companies doing this quickly realized that once they were allowed to settle south of America, they could set up subsidiaries in even cheaper locations such a Vietnam, China, Bangladesh, South Korea etc. The exploitation of cheap labor was boundless. How could Americans ever compete with people making 10 dollars a week? They couldn’t, and subsequently their jobs vanished forcing them into menial jobs such as waiters and waitresses or backbreaking labor jobs such as road construction. The citizens in “flyover country” were basically told to go to hell and shut up. (Even high tech jobs these days in technology were being outsourced to India or to make matters worse, companies set up guest housing and flew over cheap labor, providing housing and the basics to foreign workers to replace Americans via HB1 Visas). The examples are all around us but the cabal of corporate multinational interests couldn’t care less. Their allies in the government were being paid to allow them to do this under the phony banner of capitalism. The problem is it wasn’t, and isn’t capitalism, rather crony capitalism which is on par with socialism. Government chosen winners and losers coupled with high taxation on the personal and corporate levels. Taxation that allows the government to force people to become dependent on them for their survival as they take in massive contributions and fringe benefits enriching themselves and their friends. This is not what the founders of the country envisioned. They never sought to form a powerful political class that could upend an entire economic system for personal enrichment. A class of elites who could thwart the will of the people and not be held accountable.

With the election of President Trump we saw our country finally take a stand for what is best for the nation. The public decided they wanted to stop the pillaging of our national wealth and start to repatriate dollars, jobs and opportunities back to America. No longer would they stand by as these corrupt bastards sell the nation out to foreign interests and multinational companies. The President is responding and started by lowering both the individual as well as the corporate tax rates to incentivize companies to repatriate. He also ended the Trans Pacific Partnership deal (Another American sellout along the lines of NAFTA (supported by the career Clinton criminal enterprise) as well as the “Paris Accord” (Designed to make America pay billions for nothing other than being a “World Citizen”). He also demanded that NAFTA be renegotiated or it would be terminated. In no uncertain terms he told the European Union and China that we will not tolerate them keeping our products out of their markets by their imposition of huge tariffs on our goods, while they can freely saturate our markets with their goods. Again the trade practices are neither free nor are they fair. We are penalizing ourselves by perpetuating this myth that our country has some obligation to the world to take in their products while they freeze ours out. We also cannot allow this unfettered flow of illegal immigrants into this country to undercut actual Americans with cheap labor rates artificially lowering the value of labor. Is it any wonder these same political elites are slow walking the construction of the wall? They have heard from their donors that they need to keep the status quo or risk the loss of campaign funding and the perks of future lobbying jobs. The entire process is incestuous and the President and the American public need to keep the battle going if we ever want to reclaim our national sovereignty. Even on the conservative side we have our own bow tied eggheads who continually try and claim this is all a byproduct of capitalism and to oppose it is somehow Un-American. From the lackeys such as Rich Lowry and Jonah Goldberg of National Review to the ever clueless Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard we are being fed the usual BS by guys that never did a days’ worth of real work or had their jobs threatened by cheap labor. People that can’t seem to fathom that to destroy the heart of the national workforce is to actually destroy the nation itself, should be rejected outright. It is quite a shame when people like Ben Shapiro, with all his intelligence, can’t grasp that the President is fighting to restore the country back to what we all grew up in and that he is fighting against the political opportunists and their allies in the corporate and media conglomerates. Perhaps they are upset he didn’t consult with them and decided he could function without their superior intellects? Recently former President Obama mocked then candidate Trump on his proposal to bring jobs back to the United States. Obama sarcastically asked “What Magic wand is he going to use to bring them back” Well the magic wand was Trump’s backbone and it seems that backbone is exactly what was needed to bring America back from the point of no return.