Why Free Trade Is Not Good for America

One Radio Network

Patrick Timpone interviews Andrew Gause

Patrick: Here’s Rob Kirby, a quick little clip. We like Rob Kirby, he’s up in Canada.

Rob Kirby: Donald Trump, whatever else he might be, Donald Trump is anti-globalist. Donald Trump has said that he would not allow America to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, he has said that he might have a good hard look at ripping up the North American Free Trade Agreement, and Donald Trump is an American nationalist, whether you love him or hate him. And that is seen as a severe threat to this globalist movement, and that is why the mainstream or status quo hates him with the passion they do. They hate him as much as they hate the decision that was made in Britain last Friday.

Patrick: So why are you gold and silver guys kind of pro-Trump? What’s the connection?

Andrew Gause: Freedom. Free market, free money. The idea of give me the power to coin money and I don’t care who makes the laws. The money kind of trumps the laws. The guys that think like me are generally pro-freedom. And when you look at a guy like Donald Trump, who is speaking in terms of nationalism, I can see people cringing. Those globalists were cringing on the 4th of July.

Patrick: Because?

Andrew Gause: What? America first. God bless America. I was walking around saying that all day. All day. All day. Not happy 4th, God bless America. America first. So that idea of nationalism and national pride is abhorrent to the globalists. We’re one big happy world. Look at their money over there in Europe, in the EU. They try to foist globalism upon the country in the name of a free market, and secretly were really trying to build an identity-less country. No national pride, no nothing. And you know what, it bled over into the soccer teams. You could sure see it on the soccer field. The pride in your country, your nation, it’s accomplishments and its greatness, and its unique culture. And you don’t want it blended into a big pile so that it always loses its identity. We, as Americans, are the last remaining free nation, really. Even the Brits, they’re subjects, right. At the end of the day, they give their opinion to the government, and their government can do with that opinion what they want. Whether they want to stay in the Euro or not, it’s still up to Parliament. We here still have that freedom and right to decide our national leaders, even though they want to shame us for thinking this way. How dare you be a nationalist! We’re a big happy world; you should be a free trader. Well I am a free trader, and that idea that I could be free in trading with anyone, like I’m going to sell you my goods, you’re going to sell me my goods, and never anything impedes us, no regulation impedes us. If that were true, that’s that utopian “let’s all put down our gun and nobody will get shot anymore”. It cannot happen because somebody always picks up a gun. Look at what China has done to us in terms of trying to sell our goods there. I’ve illustrated it over the years with my chicken feet story. I just think it’s the best one ever. There’s countries in South America, same thing. They’re taken our entire shoe industry from the United States, and we can’t send a single thing down there without an import tariff. So we need to protect our markets, because they’ve been overrun, and as a result, how many unemployed Americans are there? I’ve lost track.

Patrick: It’s just a kabillion.

Andrew Gause: 97 million. 97 million unemployed Americans. 5 million jobs, manufacturing jobs, lost since this crazy idea to, cough, “the giant sucking sound”, yes Ross, a giant sucking sound. All of our jobs, our high-paying, mid-level, middle class jobs, have been sucked out of this country, and they’ve been placed everywhere else. And if you’re a union member, or an environmentalist, you should be absolutely livid. You think of all the hard won gains from the 1970s. We want scrubbers on all those smokestacks. We want no more water pollution. We want no more air pollution. You cannot affect the environment with your manufacturing process. And so all of those expensive fixes are put on America’s manufacturers. And then greed kicked in. Gosh, why do we have to spend all this money protecting the air? And then it was the worker safety with OSHA. You got to put guards on all this machinery. You have to make sure they have eye protection. You got to protect their ears. You can’t just use people up and throw them away. And then it was the union movement. 40 hour work week. Benefits, paid vacation, all of the wonderful things that became part of American life, subverted, taken away, and sent to China, where they dump their waste into the water, spew their filth into the environment, break their workers until they commit suicide, absolutely do not pay a living wage, and then export [he said import] the result, the product, right back into the US marketplace, totally bypassing every regulation that’s been put in place since 1971. And who led that pack? Mitt Romney, that’s who. And so now we’re going to stand and listen to him, as he criticizes Mr. Trump for perhaps his bombastic nature? No, I don’t think so. I think we’re going to recognize the parallels between this election and Andrew Jackson’s election [that] are just clear as day to me. And then yesterday, with the exoneration of Mrs. Clinton, that just pushed them over the edge. I think that folks now are going to go in that booth, at least I hope they will, and put Mr. Trump in office, where he will do exactly what I expect him to do, America first. No more trading away our sovereignty and our jobs in the name of one big happy world. No more turning the other cheek. Harsh, yeah. We need harsh right now, because we’re being walked on by the rest of the world. At least large parts of it. And to our detriment, if you can’t see what’s happened to the United States since we’ve adopted this free trade mantra, then I don’t know what could be more clear to you. What is it going to take before you’ll recognize that the America we knew from the 60s and the 70s and even the early 80s has lost its flavor and has been diluted in the world bucket. We need to climb back out, like the Brits did, and isolate ourselves just a little bit, until we can get our books back in order.

Patrick: And the hits just keep on coming. May’s trade stuff is out. Exports all decreasing.

Andrew Gause: 41 billion dollar trade deficit.

Patrick: Yeah, 41 billion. That’s tracking a month. So that’s about a half a trillion dollars a year.

Andrew Gause: Every year. So how are we going to start a trade war? Because I got in another argument yesterday with another alleged free trader. It was a panel discussion, there were four of us, and it boiled down to two, me and the other guy. That argument that oh well then, the rest of the world is going to slap trade taxes on our exports. That is the argument.

Patrick: That’s the only argument they got.

Andrew Gause: There is no other. So since we subsidize our exports, and I want to make this clear, everyone should look up the Export-Import Bank, the EXIM Bank. Because the EXIM Bank subsidizes our exports. So if we’re going to sell planes to another country, it’s the EXIM Bank that finances the planes. And so we the people, the taxpayers, are cosigners on the loan for the buyers. If you strip out these sorts of subsidizes for our exports, which don’t make any sense to me, once again, we the taxpayer cover the whole bill. If you strip those out and add in the half a trillion dollar trade deficit, how is it going to hurt us? I don’t understand. We impose a tax on them. We’re importing 500 billions dollars more than we export. So that would be our net gain. Okay, well, the president wants a $10 tax on oil. So you create oil in the United States, suddenly there’s a $10 tax. If you crate it in Saudi Arabia, there’s no tax. The idea of further crippling and disadvantaging the United States oil industry, when, yesterday, the Oil Institute announced, our reserves are greater than Saudi Arabia. We are the greatest oil nation. And yet, we do everything we can to discourage our production. How about a $20 tax on imported oil, Mr. President? It would really do a lot more for our bottom line. It would put Americans back to work.

Andrew Gause may just be the top man anywhere for the highest quality analysis into the world of money we all live in. Andrew is a currency historian, an internationally recognized expert on the United States monetary system. He’s written two books, “The Secret World of Money” and “Uncle Sam Cooks the Books”. Andrew’s radio show, The Real World of Money, airs LIVE every Wednesday morning from 9-11 AM central on www.oneradionetwork.com .