The U.S. is Developing the Profile of a Colonized Nation

With the advent of globalization the U.S. began to slowly but surely lower nearly all barriers to trade, opening up new markets to American products and opening the U.S. markets to foreign products. However, the benefits have been far from equal.

Third World nations with virtually no labor or environmental laws attracted industrial jobs that were once in the U.S. and other western nations. We were deprived of good manufacturing jobs and given cheap, poorly-made goods in return.

In economist Pat Choate’s recently released book, Dangerous Business, The Risks of Globalization for America, the one-time vice presidential candidate posits that the U.S. is taking on the economic profile of a colonized nation.

Dr. Choate states that “The profile of the U.S. trade position today is that of a nation being economically colonized - one that is purchasing high-value-added commodities and manufactured goods from abroad and paying for them with the export of agricultural commodities, massive foreign borrowing, and the liquidation of its own national assets.”

Agricultural exports have become a key industry over the last decade because of the North American Free Trade Agreement. At the turn of the 20th century America took a step forward and shed its proud agrarian past by industrializing, which lifted millions of people out of poverty and created a thriving middle-class. Today, we are reverting back to our former status, relying on agriculture instead of wealth-producing manufacturing jobs.

Between 2000 and 2005, the U.S. lost an astounding three million high paying manufacturing jobs. Not for a lack of demand for the goods, however. America’s insatiable appetite for cheap goods is only growing.

Increasingly, we are paying for high-end goods and services by compounding our debt. As of Oct. 2008 the national debt was $10.3 trillion. Every cent that is added on to our debt comes from a foreign nation that could decide to stop refinancing our debt at anytime, thus causing the collapse of the country and perhaps American society. We are at the whims of nations like China that holds $518 billion in U.S. debt, Japan that owns $593 billion worth of American debt and Brazil that currently holds $148 billion in American debt.

Today, we import 79 percent of the computer equipment used in the U.S., some used by the Defense Department for national security purposes.

According to Dr. Choate this “gives a hostile foreign power or terrorist group the ability to shut down major parts of the U.S. economic and defense base almost at will, creating a fundamental threat to economic and military security.”

Other key industries to national and economic security have been outsourced abroad; 53 percent of communications equipment is imported; 90 percent of audio and video equipment is imported, along with 32 percent or pharmaceuticals and medicine. The U.S. merchandise trade deficit reached $847 billion in 2007.

To continue to survive under these dire conditions, America has been liquidating its best companies. Since 1978, America has sold 16,613 of its best wealth producing companies to foreign interests. The acquisition of companies by foreign entities diverts U.S. technology, jobs and ownership abroad. The average amount of money spent on acquisitions in the 2007 fiscal year was $4,087.85 per second. In the past some of these acquisitions included American icons like Lucent Technologies Inc. (2006), GE Plastics (2007), Shell Oil Co. (1985) and Columbia Pictures Entertainment (1989).

Our modern day economic situation is reminiscent of our situation pre-1776 when we were nothing more than a colonized territory with little control over our own destiny in terms of economics. In that time, much the same as it is today, we relied on imports of foreign goods to sustain ourselves, exported mainly agricultural products and, most detrimentally, were not governed by ourselves, but rather by outside influences that ultimately did not have America’s best interest at heart. The only difference is that then it was the British empire, today it is the World Trade Organization and other “free-trade” pacts that ultimately decide this nation’s fate.

Unfortunately, according to Dr. Choate, this trend is likely to continue, even hasten, if something is not done.

“The outsourcing of jobs and work that has drawn so much attention for the past decade is probably only a foretaste of what lies ahead if present policies on globalization are continued,” he said.

Additional Sources:

Choate, P. (2008). Dangerous Business, The Risks of Globalization for America. © Manufacturing Policy Project. Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Ramdon House, publisher.

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