Question by gws35: Why did the president contradict himself on free trade? Is he intentionally destroying the economy?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/11/world/main7044047.shtml
In a letter to the Group of 20 rich and major developing nations, Obama warned that the U.S. cannot remain a profligate consumer using borrowed money, and needs other countries to pull their weight to fix the world economy.
“The most important thing that the United State can do for the world economy is to grow, because we continue to be the world’s largest market and a huge engine for all other countries to grow,” Obama said at a news conference.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101111/ap_on_bi_ge/as_economic_summits
Specter of trade war looms as G-20 nations gather
Thu Nov 11, 6:10 pm ET
…the G-20 countries are …finding no common ground on the most vexing problem: how to address a global economy that’s long been nourished by huge U.S. trade deficits with China, Germany and Japan.
Exports to the United States powered those countries’ economies for years. But they’ve also produced enormous trade gaps for the U.S. because Americans consume far more in foreign goods and services than they sell abroad.
President Barack Obama told fellow leaders that the U.S. cannot just keep borrowing lavishly and sending its money overseas. It needs other countries to buy more exports from the United States and elsewhere so Americans can afford to buy other countries’ goods, he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101113/ap_on_bi_ge/as_apec
After G-20 rancor, Pac Rim leaders push free trade
“Leaders of the world’s three biggest economies — the U.S., China and Japan — all pledged Saturday to push for free trade, apparently putting aside acrimony over currencies that threatens to revive pressure to raise trade barriers.”
In the first two items, President Obama seems to recognize that it is not sustainable for the USA to continue forever being the teat the the foreign exporters suckle for their prosperity.
But then in the third item, the president contradicts himself by pledging to continue free trade, which is causing this problem in the first place.
Why can’t the president see how he’s contradicting himself? Or is he intentionally dooming our economy to destruction, and he’s using free trade as a wrecking ball?
Has the president telegraphed weakness by backing down from a trade war when the foreign exporters faced him down?
MatterOfFact, so what you’re saying is we have to let the rest of the world bully us into taking our jobs and reducing us to third world nation status, by the threat of nuclear war?
Are you Neville Chamberlain? APPEASMENT DOES NOT WORK.
lowes48, ya I had that pretty much figured out after his first six months. I’m just checking to see if anything has really changed since then.
Best answer:
Answer by Shovel Ready
This is the $ 64 question. Is obama as inept as he appears, or does he deliberately intend to be as destructive as he is.
What do you think? Answer below!
Tags: contradict, destroying, Economy, Free, himself, intentionally, President, Trade
He has been intentionally destroying the economy since DAY ONE! Thats what Marxists want!
His far left marxist team was working under Bush even start the destruction! Fannie and Freddie mac- housing crisis was caused by the far lefties! ON purpose! They are using the poor to gain control over the properties!
If Bush did better, you could whine, but he didn’t, shut up.
Because if he said anything other than “free trade”, Republicans would take him out of context and then shout it like a megaphone that “Obama is against free trade”! making T-party people’s heads explode. Obama can’t even be FOR America without being AGAINST America – thanks to nonstop partisan propaganda.
could you believe some still support this evil looser.boy you talk about people that are out of touch with reality.
Obama seems to think the US Economy isn’t affected by his Communist Ideas, he thinks it will be business as usually once all his communist policies are adopted
ONLY A FOOL TRY-ES THE SAME FAILED POLICES HOPING FOR A DIFFERENT RESULT EACH TIME.
“heads you win, tails president obama loses”!
I don’t even know what the crap you’re asking. Are you suggesting that the United States SHOULD keep spending on credit (which is how middle-class consumers are upholding the world economy now)? We’re not going to be able to forever, but the one thing that’s for sure is that the people who will pay when the economies shrink are the lower and middle classes. The wealthy who make the economic policy will still be sitting on their billions.
Try reading some Chomsky (maybe _Profit Over People_) and Naomi Klein’s _The Shock Doctrine_. Good authors writing on the bullcrap that is neoliberal economic policy (well, unless you’re already rich – then it’s great).
AND you think that this is wrong:
(cut & paste from your details)
President Barack Obama told fellow leaders that the U.S. cannot just keep borrowing lavishly and sending its money overseas. It needs other countries to buy more exports from the United States and elsewhere so Americans can afford to buy other countries’ goods, he said.
What do you think HELPED get us in this that we are in.
I mean really.
The Republican Congress was borrowing 2 BILLION dollars a DAY after they cut the TAXES!
Seriously, do you hate that much.
He can’t piss off China because we need them if North Korea goes wacko. He can’t piss off India because we need them to counterbalance China. (If our relationship with China goes bad, having India, with its similar population, is necessary. China just has too many people that it can conscript.)
He can push, but there’s a certain line that he cannot cross without alienating anyone.
North Korea, for example, can’t use their nuclear weapons on anyone because China, at the moment, will not defend them from the consequences. China needs it’s trade relationship with the US more than it needs North Korea. But if that trade relationship disappears, there is little to prevent China from supporting North Korea in a conflict. And that might push North Korea into bombing Seoul.
Does it make us appear weak? Probably. But there’s really not much else he can do. Reliance on imported Chinese goods may hurt our job market, but it may also be preventing a nuclear war.
Your just now finding out Obama is intentionally destroying our economy?
Obama’s point is that economies like China, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh (mostly clothing), etc who rely on exports to the US for growth cannot always follow the same approach at the moment.
This is done is create more jobs in the US. The whole point is to stimulate the local US companies so that they don’t lose out to cheap imports from Asian countries.
At the same time, one of his goals is to boost US exports to those countries. India for instance just bought a bunch of military hardware from the US.
He is trying to address the unemployment problem so that the Democrats can win in the next elections.