By Andy Puzder
FoxNews

President Trump didn’t start a trade war with China – he’s trying to end and win the trade war that China launched against the U.S. As the president has frequently pointed out, the Chinese have been undermining the world trade system for years, and no country has been hurt more by China’s unfair actions than America.

America’s trade deficit with China  is so large it almost defies comprehension. Since 2012, our yearly deficit in the trade of goods with China has consistently topped $300 billion. Last year, it was over $375.5 billion. In the first five months of this year it topped $150 billion.

A primary reason for this imbalance is that the Chinese have been blocking American manufacturers and food producers for years through discriminatory trade rules and prohibitively expensive import tariffs designed to keep U.S. products out of its domestic markets.

It’s not that American firms are unable to compete with Chinese companies. Rather, it’s because China systematically takes measures to protect its industries and businesses from having to compete with American companies on a level playing field.

The Chinese government gives huge subsidies to its own firms and excludes foreign companies from doing business in China. It regulates foreign firms unfairly, blocks imports through dishonest health and safety rules, and creates China-specific standards to prevent market entry.

In addition, China forces foreign firms to transfer their technology to Chinese companies and comprehensively loots commercial secrets, especially from American firms.

No one (outside of Chinese officials) denies any of this. In March, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission – a bipartisan congressional advisory body – published a list of 10 ways China cheats on trade called “China’s Technonationalism Toolbox.”

This list includes China’s continued “pervasive industrial espionage against U.S. companies, universities, and the government” as well as China’s “direct efforts to circumvent U.S. export controls to gain access to cutting-edge technologies and intellectual property in strategic sectors.”

China’s subversion of world trading norms isn’t a bug in the nation’s economic system. It’s a feature.

Even Democrats recognize the importance of President Trump’s trade sanctions on China.

“We're now told that this is Trump's trade war,” Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., said during a Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing earlier this month. “No, China declared (a) trade war on the United States 18 years ago,” he continued, referring to the decision to normalize trade relations with China in 2000.

Both Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, two of President Trump’s most vocal Democratic critics, are broadly supportive of the president’s measures to combat Chinese cheating.

“I have to say, when President Trump says he's putting tariffs on the table, I think tariffs are one part of reworking our trade policy overall," Warren told CNN in March. 

“China takes total advantage of the United States. They steal our intellectual property using cyber theft,” Schumer noted in June. “Not only do they steal our intellectual property, they keep our good companies out, and say the only way you’re going to be able to sell your American products in China … is if you come to China.”

Because presidents before him avoided doing what was necessary to balance our trade relations with China, President Trump has to fight a trade war not of his own making. Fortunately for American workers, manufacturers and exporters, the president is fighting back against China and other nations that have been ripping off America for decades. 

This will be a difficult struggle, because other nations are unwilling to give up the benefits of unfair trade. They will test President Trump’s resolve, particularly as we approach the midterm elections in November. But thanks to President Trump’s leadership, we are beginning to see that this is a war we can win.

In May, China agreed to slash car tariffs and import more American-made products due to President Trump’s tough negotiating skills. 

Free trade requires fair trade, based on a common set of mutually beneficial rules. We finally have a president willing to take the actions necessary to put a stop to Chinese cheating and to protect America’s national interests.

President Trump isn’t just fighting to stop Chinese market manipulation. He’s fighting to secure a bright economic future for America and the American people.

White House National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro says President Trump’s tariff plan on steel and aluminum imports will revitalize an industry that’s been “on life support.”

 

John Pilger and David Munro examine the policy of First World banks agreeing loans with Third World countries, who are then unable to meet the cripling interest charges. Won Geneva International TV Award at the North-South Media Encounters event, Geneva, 1993;Gold Medal in the 'Best Documentary Production category' of the International Television Movie Festival, Mount Freedom, New Jersey 1993; Gold Award in the 'Political/International Issues category' at WorldFest-Houston (Houston International Film & Video Festival), 1993; Silver Hugo Award in the 'Documentary - Social/Political category' of the 29th Chicago International Film Festival, 1993.

 

This documentary takes you inside the world's most powerful retailer. It can be argued that no company exemplifies the wholesale off shoring of our economy than Walmart. This retail empire has forced a great many U.S. companies to go out of the country for cheap labor because they simply could not survive against a retailer like Walmart unless they did so. Walmart is a shining example of how the mindless corporate drive to expand and swallow up everything in its path regardless of any other consideration other than increased profits and increased growth is destroying everything we hold dear. Human beings need far more than higher stock prices, increased corporate profits and cheap Chinese goods.

 

This documentary reveals exactly what the low prices of Walmart is costing not only America, but the entire world?   To save a few bucks in the short term, we have allowed our economy and industry to be sold out to the lowest bidder, destroying practically our entire manufacturing base.

If you think what is going on is by some accidental chain of uncontrollable events, you're sadly mistaken.  Everything that is happening is being deliberately orchestrated by the international bankers.  If you want to see exactly what they have in store fur us, just watch what they did to Argentina.

This film documents the events that led to the economic collapse of Argentina in 2001 which wiped out the middle class and raised the level of poverty to 57.5%. Central to the collapse was the implementation of neo-liberal policies which enabled the swindle of billions of dollars by foreign banks and corporations. Many of Argentina's assets and resources were shamefully plundered. Its financial system was even used for money laundering by Citibank, Credit Suisse, and JP Morgan. The net result was massive wealth transfers and the impoverishment of society which culminated in many deaths due to oppression and malnutrition.

 

Here in the richest country on earth, 50 million of us — one in six Americans — go hungry. More than a third of them are children. Debates on how to address hunger – in both Congress and the media — are filled with tired clichés about freeloaders undeserving of government help, living large at the expense of honest, hardworking taxpayers. But the documentary A Place at the Table paints a truer picture of America’s poor.

Answering some of the arguments against the idea that small sustainable communities are impractical.

 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could cost us our internet freedom, labor rights, access to affordable medicine, the safety of our food, and protections that keep our water and air clean.

 

If we are forced to eat food unfit for consumption, and are to be only passive consumers following the trends, then we are slaves, and so are our brethren.