United States-Buying American.

UNITED STATES-BUYING AMERICAN.

Folks, recently, Congress passed and the president signed into law the stimulus bill. In this bill, there was a provision that requires U.S. governments, at all levels, to buy American when spending stimulus money on projects.

It was determined by our legislatures and the president that American-made steel and other materials be used in all economic recovery projects. Sounds good to me. I have been advocating "buy American" for years.."

However, when the big box retailers make it almost impossible to buy anything made in America, I sometimes get the feeling that I am that proverbial drop of water in the ocean.

The economic problem of the subprime pyramid lending scams is just one portion of our current recession. Even though it is a huge part it is something that can be fixed.

A much deeper problem, and one that only you and I can fix, is the loss of jobs to foreign countries. Subprime greed and our failed banking system can be cured.

But the loss of manufacturing jobs is like having a thief take your most prized possessions.

Guess who fought long and hard to have this buy-American provision removed from the recovery act? All 15 of our country’s top business organizations banded together to fight to have our tax dollars used to provide jobs around the world for people we don’t even know.

Thankfully, they lost this battle. However, what it shows us is that until the American middle class gets mad enough or hungry enough to lay aside philosophical differences, this infested hole in our economy will continue to grow.

"Fast track" legislation is what is destroying our lifestyle. Fast track is the nickname given to our current method of trade negotiations with other countries. Our constitution states that the Congress is "to regulate commerce with foreign nations..."

In other words, Congress was to develop trade agreements.

However, for the past two administrations Congress has surrendered their power and duties to the presidents, retaining for themselves only the right to approve or disapprove new trade agreements. Big business is generally given the positions that actually write trade agreements whereas workers, consumers and citizens, have very little if any voice.

This is how the World Trade Organization (WTO) came to have the power to override our laws, our courts and our individual rights. The WTO does a great job at protecting investors, but it not only does not protect workers, it uses them up and throws them away. It walks all over the consumer by writing rules that allow the companies to inspect their products themselves.

And we know that self-inspection doesn’t work, because tons of tainted meat are recalled every year; and let’s not forget the peanut factory or the poisoned stuff we keep receiving from communist China.

Our individual rights were discarded when, for example, the WTO ruled that foreign companies could put gambling games on the Internet even though we have laws against it.

These 15 business organizations are supposed to be representing all business in the U.S., but all they care about are the largest 200 corporations that dominate world trade. These are the same companies which are, in my mind, unpatriotic. They moved their manufacturing plants or forced their suppliers to move their manufacturing plants to places like China.

The organizations that represent mammoth corporations want our tax money to go to the four million jobs that they have moved out of our country in just the past few years. All other major economic countries protect their domestic companies.

Good grief, we don’t even purchase our police cruisers at home. More than 90 percent are foreign made and imported.

Our governments, state and federal, outsource jobs to foreign countries and the big box retail stores pull much-needed dollars from our local and national economies on a daily basis.

The big problem, besides subprime mortgages, is our trade imbalance. We have been buying on the world market, about $50 billion; most of this goes to communist China, more each month than we have been selling. To pay for this difference, we have been giving up assets and borrowing.

The assets that we give up are small to medium-sized highly technical firms, brain trusts if you will, and huge parts of our larger firms. The rest of the difference is money that we as a country borrow. So, not only did we as individuals max out our credit cards, but our country is maxing out its credit.

Recently, our government issued more bonds. Bonds are just another term for loans to cover our debt to other countries. These bonds did not sell well. So, the Federal Reserve stepped in and began purchasing.

When the "Fed" as it is called, buys U.S. government bonds, it produces brand-new money. We are told that the Fed just prints new money. It is actually a little more sophisticated than that, but it produces new money just the same. What actually happens is that new money is produced as zeros and ones on computers in financial institutions.

This new money will multiply as it moves through our society and eventually will cause inflation. My point is that every time we purchase a foreign product, we not only cost one of us a job, but we also give up U.S. assets. And we will also, through inflation, increase the prices of everything we need.

Folks, when possible, think American and buy American.

Bill Horne is a professor of economics at Southern State Community College and a columnist for The People’s Defender.