Bush Rejects Request for Chinese Quotas

[deadparrot]

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush on Friday rejected a request to place quotas on steel pipe imported from China, saying the cost to American consumers would outweigh the benefit to domestic producers.

U.S. pipemakers and a labor group, which strongly condemned the president's decision, asked the Bush administration to impose the quotas on certain kinds of steel pipe used primarily in construction. They argued that a surge in imports from China was disrupting markets.

The International Trade Commission sided with the companies, and recommended that the president provide them with relief. But Bush rejected that, saying it was not in the best interest of the U.S. economy.

Any relief, he said, would probably be ineffective because steel imports from other countries would probably replace those curtailed from China. If the other countries filled in the gap, import relief would not provide any meaningful benefit to the American businesses affected, he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051230/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_china_steel

[tularetom]

1. Bushco - a wholly owned subsidiary

of the Peoples Republic of China

[Deja Q]

2. The previous 3 presidents were just as owned too...

We just didn't hear about it.

Besides, why provoke China needlessly?

[applegrove]

3. How else to fight inflation with low cost civil goods so that the stock

market can roar while the wealthy get richer in number & in the civil goods that more money will buy?

[shenmue]

4. Yes, let's trade with the people responsible for Tiananmen Square...

meanwhile, refusing to do business with Cuba.

:sarcasm:

:puke:

:mad:

[CrazyAtheist]

19. Heheh, but China has so much more money

It would just be plain wrong, at least according to Repuke standards...

[Flabbergasted]

5. What's the problem with setting quotas on those countries too?

[Robeson]

7. Because China has Bush, and our economy by the gonads....

...their purchasing of our T-bills, is funding Bush's two wars. If they cashed those T-bills in, we would be in deep doo doo. Here's a nice little article from the Asian Times from 2004 that goes into it.... http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/FA23Dj01.html

Excerpt:

American companies may have forgotten what Henry Ford propounded when he first built his Model T: If you do not pay high enough wages to your workers, they can't afford to buy your product. One simple basis for that Bush boom is that China is recycling its US$100 billion-plus trade surplus with the US back into dollars, and especially into US Treasury bonds. Almost half of the US Treasury bonds are now owned in Asia. So China is financing Bush's bold economic experiment: running two or more wars simultaneously with a huge budget and trade deficit, and equally huge tax handouts for the richest Americans.

One has to question the long-term economic rationale for China of putting its long-term assets into very low-interest bonds in a currency that has already dropped recently by a third - and is going to drop even more. It certainly makes strategic sense: if push came to shove over, for example, the Taiwan Strait, all Beijing has to do is to mention the possibility of a sell order going down the wires. It would devastate the US economy more than any nuclear strike the Chinese could manage at the moment.

[Flabbergasted]

10. Ok Ok

I'm aware of this dilema as well. Ultimately its the corps and not Bush that is calling the shots in this regard. Profit at any cost....

Which brings me to another sad fact. Bush's glowing recall of the rise in production this year was the result of.....................a drop in labor costs. Which is not a good economic indicator jack ass.

This is why I would not vote for Hilary because they are ultimately playing the same game. Screw them.

[AngryAmish]

21. Exactly how would they "cash in" their T-bills?

[NWHarkness]

6. Getting some "buyer's remorse", Ohio?

If he'd made this decision before the election, Kerry would be celebrsting New Years at Camp David this year.

[Carolab]

8. Rate this up. Anyone who works in these or related industries should see.

Bush is a liar and a traitor to American workers and trade unions.

[Trillo]

9. That damn piece of paper....

Why is Bush, specifically the Executive Branch, rejecting this?
Isn't this a Legislative Branch responsibility?

From the U.S. Consitution:

Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises ...

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

I guess I can't read. Let's make a few corrections in line with Bush's PR blitz.

Bush Propaganda-Revised U.S. Consitution:

Section 8. moved to Article II. The Congress The President shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises ...

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

All hail

[annabanana]

11. Oh hahahahahah

He's doing this because "the cost to American consumers would outweigh the benefit to domestic producers"??

Su-u-u-ure he is.

And Bush bows to the East, and to our Chinese Overlords.

[Ian David]

12. Those Chinese lay some mean pipe. n/t

[ckramer]

13. Does USA still produce steel?

It's probably much much cheaper to import it from China. I bet that Bush looked at the cost of US produced steel and decided that it's not worth it.

This is a world economy, to admit it or not, that we don't make lots of things nowadays locally because of the cost, which is artificially marked up.

Time to reform the system.

[doc03]

14. Yes the US produces steel, but less and less every

year. The US has about 100 million TPY capacity and the Chinese have the worlds largest capacity of over 300 million TPY. I have worked in the steel industry for over 35 years and the difference is we make a living wage here and the Chinese make 25 cents an hour, they have no health care costs, pensions or environmental regulations. What you have witnessed recently with the auto industry losing market share and the possible bankruptcy of GM and Ford the steel industry has been going through for over 30 years. The Chinese steel industry is for the most part primitive compared to ours but the US is building them new mills through the World Bank and it's just a matter of time that they will destroy our whole industry unless the US government wakes up that goes for Republicans and Democrats. Clinton did more to destroy our industry than anyone and now that Bush has been re-elected he has stabbed us in the back.

[ckramer]

15. We can't make simple comparison between the money people

made here with the 25 cents the chinese made over there.

I tend to believe that the 25 cents/hr the chinese made is also a living wage, with which more foods can be brought by it than what we can afford here. In other words, life essential stuffs are much much cheaper in China and 25 cents/hr allow them to live a plentiful life that is comparable to that of ours.

[doc03]

20. Give me a break, "the Chinese live a plentiful life

that is comparable to ours". An Engineer that worked on installing our new eclectic arc furnace where I work just came from a similar project in China. He said the people live in tin shanties inside of the steel mill and young children work inside the mill. They have no environmental regulations there and the ground is red from iron dust. They have street vendors selling produce and chickens covered with iron dust inside the mill. Safety in the workplace is non existent, they haul badly injured or dead workers out of the mill every day. You sound like you should be on the Freeper site.

[ckramer]

22. What I am saying is 25 cents/hr wage can give chinese a life that

meets their basic needs in life. Basic needs. Food, shelter, clothing, grocery, etc....of course not everybody drives a SUV, subscribes to cable TV, has heated apartment and flushing toilet, that's for sure. But for the basic needs, 25 cents per hour is a pretty good income that is plentiful. If people live in China can be fed reasonable well by this 25 cents hour wage, it can only conclude that the cost of living is too high here.

[doc03]

23. So what are you saying, the steelworkers in this country

should stop being so greedy and be happy living in a tin shack behind the factory and riding bicycles? Should we be drinking water from a polluted river and working without any safe work standards so you can buy your cheap products from Walmart. Hey let's just outsource every job here and bring in people from all over the world to work for us for 25 cents an hour, if the American worker is that greedy they don't deserve to work, Americans should be happy to live under the same conditions they do in third world countries and quit whining. That's supply side economics lets all race to the bottom.

[ckramer]

24. No. Never said anything like that.

I understand what you are saying but to ask American people live the chinese 25 cents/hr way was never a thought in my posts. The trend of out-sourcing has been tough on the workers here who lost their job, that's for sure.

Today capitals go out of the border to where the labor is cheap. The question is, what's solution to that? Is there a way that you can think of to stop this outsourcing trend?

[Idioteque]

16. I hate to say it, but good for President Bush.

I know I'll probably get flamed for this but it's unfortunate to see many on the left taking up the trade policies of Herbert Hoover and Pat Buchanan.

[Selatius]

18. I hate how people turn it into a black or white issue

If you're not a free-trader, you're automatically a protectionist. There is no ground in the middle is the implication, and I reject that premise wholly. A pragmatic solution can be reached, I believe, without subscribing to that kind of dogma.

[Selatius]

17. What does the World Trade Organization have to say about this?

Let me guess: They say there should be no quotas or tariffs or anything that could restrict the "free market." Am I off the mark there?