General Motors
This is the GM site affectionately named "Chevy in the Hole." (click here)
This site was to be rehabilitated by planting trees to remove the contamination of the ground. This is Flint, Michigan.
Below is a black and white photo of the Chevy complex of 1920. Believe that? Chevy was actually this big in 1920. The arrow points to the original Buick factory on Kearsley street. (click here)
The Flint, Michigan plant opened it's doors in 1904 and was idled in 1999. It was a shock to the economy. This is an article from Forbes in 1998. The change in the USA consumption of goods and services was falling. The Middle Class was slowly drifting into poverty and Wall Street was worried. This was a foretelling of what was to come in 1999 and 2000. The country was on a slippery slope. It was slipping slowly, but, it was slipping just the same.
...O’Sullivan, (click here) one of the blue-chip bears, publishes an estimate of the
impact of stock market gains on consumer spending, which makes up about
70% of GDP (see chart, left). Telling point: The market doesn’t have to
go down to depress the economy. If it merely stabilizes, thus depriving
consumers of that warm capital-appreciation feeling, consumer spending
growth will ultimately tail off.
Just since this summer the Dow Jones industrials dropped nearly 2,000 points, regained most of the loss and then started slipping again....
This is a 1920 Buick Family Sedan. (click here)
NAFTA was introduced to the American legislature in 1990 by then President George H. W. Bush. It was signed on December 17, 1992 simultaneously by President George H. W. Bush of the USA, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas. Once signed it went to the legislatures to ratify it. Canada's Parliament fought the hardest, but, lost the fight when the electorate split their next vote between Liberal and Democrats which allowed the Pro-NAFTA Conservatives to win more seats and ratify the agreement.
In the US, George H. W. Bush fought to 'Fast Track" his signature to pass the agreement, but, it never happened under his presidency. Part of the election of President Bill Clinton was due to the fight by labor to defeat NAFTA. What Bill Clinton did was to pass two other agreements which was to help protect labor and the environment.
The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) (click here)
The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) was signed on September 14, 1993, by the Presidents of Mexico and the United States, and the Prime Minister of Canada, as one of the supplementary accords to the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It entered into force on January 1, 1994.
The NAALC was the first international agreement on labor to be linked to an international trade agreement. It provides a mechanism for member countries to ensure the effective enforcement of existing and future domestic labor standards and laws without interfering in the sovereign functioning of the different national labor systems, an approach that made it novel and unique....
That sounds fancy enough. What it did was to insure labor unions were wiped out by laws outside the USA in either Canada or Mexico. The USA would still maintain it's freedom of assembly which guaranteed the right to organize a labor union. What it didn't do was to insure the current labor statistics remained the same. There was no mechanism to do that. It could not control private industry and to that reality, the NAALC did little to protect the American Worker.
The North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) (click here).
It has a Preamble, seven parts and 51 articles. The preamble says it all really. The seven parts and articles simply put words to the understanding in the preamble. Here again it was an agreement to be sure one country's laws didn't effect the sovereign authority of another. In the USA the environmental laws would remain intact.
PREAMBLE
The Government of the United States of America, the Government of Canada and the Government of the United Mexican States:
CONVINCED of the importance of the conservation, protection and enhancement of the environment in their territories and the essential role of cooperation in these areas in achieving sustainable development for the well-being of present and future generations;
REAFFIRMING the sovereign right of States to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and development policies and their responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction;...
The two agreements added by Clinton pretended to be an iron clad agreement to labor and the conservation community. It passed the US House nearly divided at 234-200. The 234 would break down to 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. NAFTA with the two additional agreements passed the US Senate 61-38 with 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats facilitating the passage. There was never a "Fast Track" with NAFTA. Clinton never asked for one and signed it on December 8, 1993 putting it into effect on January 1, 1994.
In September of 1993 there was a big promotion that took place so the stupid agreement cold receive a bipartisan appeal.
...The presence of three former presidents, (click here) two Republicans and one Democrat, to join President Clinton here today on this stage, is evidence of our country's ability to support what is in our nation's best interest over the long term without respect to partisanship....
No different than with this mess today, Wall Street pressured the White House enough to pull out all the stops and pass the lousy agreement.
This is the GM facility in Silao, Guanajuato, Mexico. It is 275,000 Sq. Ft. of engineering, prototyping and manufacturing. It has 530 Employees. It opened it's doors in 1994.
Got that?
NAFTA went into effect January 1, 1994 and GM wasted no time to welcome what many Americans would call "The Greedy Treaty."
The Flint, Michigan plants would remain open for five more years to facilitate a smooth shut down. It was shuttered completely in 1999.
General Motors had it's international interests from early on with an Opel plant in the UK in 1905 and a Astra plant in Brazil in 1930, but, for the most part it was an American company until then. There were some international interests that took place in the 1950s or so, but, until NAFTA General Motors was primarily a United States Company.
Once the gate was open, the company began to run into trouble, focused on large cars and trucks, lost a large part of it's market in the USA and began to tank. See what GM and most other Wall Street companies failed to grasp was the need for a well paid work force in the USA so they could sell their products. The foreign interests of these companies didn't provide the same size market place as the USA with consumers very different in their tastes and attitudes. Basically, poverty wages and employees didn't provide an income base to their products.
I have yet to hear of a success story from NAFTA. There might be one or two. The population in Canada in 1994 was slightly more than 29 million. The population in Mexico in 1994 was 93 million. The USA population in 1994 was 263 million. While Canada has a large geological footprint, it has dearly fewer people living there. The northern territories are not as interesting for settlement.
But, from Wall Street's point of view the new populations of people in Canada and Mexico were nothing more than a huge increase in their bottom line. In other words, "The Gold Rush" was on.
To say I am not impressed with the CEOs of GM from the past is to realize how completely stupid I know they were. GM took healthy markets for their products and discarded them because the employees were organized by unions. That was the only reason. Collective Bargaining has been hated by CEOs and Republicans alike. Yet, neither Republicans or CEOs will admit how completely ludicrous that hate is as it continues until today.
Should the Labor Agreement attached to NAFTA been eliminated? No. The markets in the USA to that point was very healthy. In order to make the "Booming Economy" of NAFTA happen Mexico would have to value a Middle Class and reform their laws to that outcome. That didn't occur, remember the word U-N-I-O-N was as good as a four letter word.
The rest is history. But, it isn't even pleasant history.
So, when people such as Mr. Furman attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of American Labor, they are making fools of themselves. For what outcome? Go figure.
May 1, 2005
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis
...The 52-page report by Mr. Furman (click here) makes just one mention of Nafta, citing a 2007 study asserting that in Mexico in the decade after it went into effect, people born in states with “high exposure to globalization” made higher wages.
Free-trade
agreements, the report asserts, “do not actually encourage outsourcing
abroad. Instead, what may increase the outsourcing of American jobs is
to remain in the status quo.”...
Do we trust the federal government to do the right thing? According to the NY Times article, President Obama promised to renegotiate NAFTA during his election. In the Trans-Pacific agreement he states he has included Mexico and Canada. In that inclusion is the election promise he made to American Labor.
Labor understands what it had in NAFTA, but, it has yet to understand what it has in the TPP or the TiPP.
Today, the USA has over 322 million people. That includes all age categories so that does not translate to 322 car buyers, but, there is a consumption of services to the GDP in all those age ranges.
So, what will happen to the economy of the USA with these international agreements? So far no one is venturing a guess and there has not been concrete estimates in any of the countries signing these agreements. All anyone knows is that Wall Street has designs on growth and want anything and everything that can be included in that growth. Supposedly, everyone can trust Wall Street to do the right thing.
The question is not actually "Do we trust government?" The question actually is "Do we trust Wall Street?" The only people that do are the majorities in the US House and Senate because their jobs and income are secure if they deliver the goods to Wall Street.
After Citigoup pulled the stunt in the budget by adding an amendment under a majority Republican House and Senate, there is no controlling the greed or the need for more bailouts in the way of annual deductions for monies lost to exotic financial instruments.
The amendment to the Budget by Citigroup simply makes the bailouts invisible as it moves from a legislative process every time it happens, to a place on the IRS form whenever it pleases the CEO to pull the plug for a bigger annual bonus.
Let's see the agreements and then we'll know exactly what we are looking at. There is every indication Labor will know better than anyone what is good for Wall Street and the government and it's tax base and what is not. There is no one that cares about the Middle Class except Labor Unions. They know more about the USA economy than anyone else in the picture.
The American people want guarantees. The Labor Unions are the only ones that can supply them without destroying the USA economy.
...Between 1993 and 1999, (click here) during the first seven years (peace time economy), President Bill
Clinton’s presidency, the U.S. economy continued to grow consistently.
However, by 2000, with the IT bubble bursting (and GM moving it's labor to foreign interests), the growth began to slow down
and the decline continued during the first year of President George W. Bush.
Of course, 9/11 did not help matters in that year....
End of discussion.
This site was to be rehabilitated by planting trees to remove the contamination of the ground. This is Flint, Michigan.
Below is a black and white photo of the Chevy complex of 1920. Believe that? Chevy was actually this big in 1920. The arrow points to the original Buick factory on Kearsley street. (click here)
The Flint, Michigan plant opened it's doors in 1904 and was idled in 1999. It was a shock to the economy. This is an article from Forbes in 1998. The change in the USA consumption of goods and services was falling. The Middle Class was slowly drifting into poverty and Wall Street was worried. This was a foretelling of what was to come in 1999 and 2000. The country was on a slippery slope. It was slipping slowly, but, it was slipping just the same.
...O’Sullivan, (click here) one of the blue-chip bears, publishes an estimate of the
impact of stock market gains on consumer spending, which makes up about
70% of GDP (see chart, left). Telling point: The market doesn’t have to
go down to depress the economy. If it merely stabilizes, thus depriving
consumers of that warm capital-appreciation feeling, consumer spending
growth will ultimately tail off.Just since this summer the Dow Jones industrials dropped nearly 2,000 points, regained most of the loss and then started slipping again....
This is a 1920 Buick Family Sedan. (click here) NAFTA was introduced to the American legislature in 1990 by then President George H. W. Bush. It was signed on December 17, 1992 simultaneously by President George H. W. Bush of the USA, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas. Once signed it went to the legislatures to ratify it. Canada's Parliament fought the hardest, but, lost the fight when the electorate split their next vote between Liberal and Democrats which allowed the Pro-NAFTA Conservatives to win more seats and ratify the agreement.
In the US, George H. W. Bush fought to 'Fast Track" his signature to pass the agreement, but, it never happened under his presidency. Part of the election of President Bill Clinton was due to the fight by labor to defeat NAFTA. What Bill Clinton did was to pass two other agreements which was to help protect labor and the environment.
The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) (click here)
The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) was signed on September 14, 1993, by the Presidents of Mexico and the United States, and the Prime Minister of Canada, as one of the supplementary accords to the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It entered into force on January 1, 1994.
The NAALC was the first international agreement on labor to be linked to an international trade agreement. It provides a mechanism for member countries to ensure the effective enforcement of existing and future domestic labor standards and laws without interfering in the sovereign functioning of the different national labor systems, an approach that made it novel and unique....
That sounds fancy enough. What it did was to insure labor unions were wiped out by laws outside the USA in either Canada or Mexico. The USA would still maintain it's freedom of assembly which guaranteed the right to organize a labor union. What it didn't do was to insure the current labor statistics remained the same. There was no mechanism to do that. It could not control private industry and to that reality, the NAALC did little to protect the American Worker.
The North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) (click here).
It has a Preamble, seven parts and 51 articles. The preamble says it all really. The seven parts and articles simply put words to the understanding in the preamble. Here again it was an agreement to be sure one country's laws didn't effect the sovereign authority of another. In the USA the environmental laws would remain intact.
PREAMBLE
The Government of the United States of America, the Government of Canada and the Government of the United Mexican States:
CONVINCED of the importance of the conservation, protection and enhancement of the environment in their territories and the essential role of cooperation in these areas in achieving sustainable development for the well-being of present and future generations;
REAFFIRMING the sovereign right of States to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and development policies and their responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction;...
The two agreements added by Clinton pretended to be an iron clad agreement to labor and the conservation community. It passed the US House nearly divided at 234-200. The 234 would break down to 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. NAFTA with the two additional agreements passed the US Senate 61-38 with 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats facilitating the passage. There was never a "Fast Track" with NAFTA. Clinton never asked for one and signed it on December 8, 1993 putting it into effect on January 1, 1994.
In September of 1993 there was a big promotion that took place so the stupid agreement cold receive a bipartisan appeal.
...The presence of three former presidents, (click here) two Republicans and one Democrat, to join President Clinton here today on this stage, is evidence of our country's ability to support what is in our nation's best interest over the long term without respect to partisanship....
No different than with this mess today, Wall Street pressured the White House enough to pull out all the stops and pass the lousy agreement.
Got that?
NAFTA went into effect January 1, 1994 and GM wasted no time to welcome what many Americans would call "The Greedy Treaty."
The Flint, Michigan plants would remain open for five more years to facilitate a smooth shut down. It was shuttered completely in 1999.
General Motors had it's international interests from early on with an Opel plant in the UK in 1905 and a Astra plant in Brazil in 1930, but, for the most part it was an American company until then. There were some international interests that took place in the 1950s or so, but, until NAFTA General Motors was primarily a United States Company.
Once the gate was open, the company began to run into trouble, focused on large cars and trucks, lost a large part of it's market in the USA and began to tank. See what GM and most other Wall Street companies failed to grasp was the need for a well paid work force in the USA so they could sell their products. The foreign interests of these companies didn't provide the same size market place as the USA with consumers very different in their tastes and attitudes. Basically, poverty wages and employees didn't provide an income base to their products.
I have yet to hear of a success story from NAFTA. There might be one or two. The population in Canada in 1994 was slightly more than 29 million. The population in Mexico in 1994 was 93 million. The USA population in 1994 was 263 million. While Canada has a large geological footprint, it has dearly fewer people living there. The northern territories are not as interesting for settlement.
But, from Wall Street's point of view the new populations of people in Canada and Mexico were nothing more than a huge increase in their bottom line. In other words, "The Gold Rush" was on.
To say I am not impressed with the CEOs of GM from the past is to realize how completely stupid I know they were. GM took healthy markets for their products and discarded them because the employees were organized by unions. That was the only reason. Collective Bargaining has been hated by CEOs and Republicans alike. Yet, neither Republicans or CEOs will admit how completely ludicrous that hate is as it continues until today.
Should the Labor Agreement attached to NAFTA been eliminated? No. The markets in the USA to that point was very healthy. In order to make the "Booming Economy" of NAFTA happen Mexico would have to value a Middle Class and reform their laws to that outcome. That didn't occur, remember the word U-N-I-O-N was as good as a four letter word.
The rest is history. But, it isn't even pleasant history.
So, when people such as Mr. Furman attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of American Labor, they are making fools of themselves. For what outcome? Go figure.
May 1, 2005
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis
...The 52-page report by Mr. Furman (click here) makes just one mention of Nafta, citing a 2007 study asserting that in Mexico in the decade after it went into effect, people born in states with “high exposure to globalization” made higher wages.
The
report also seeks to debunk a common refrain by critics of Nafta and
free-trade agreements in general: that they lead to job losses in the
United States.
Do we trust the federal government to do the right thing? According to the NY Times article, President Obama promised to renegotiate NAFTA during his election. In the Trans-Pacific agreement he states he has included Mexico and Canada. In that inclusion is the election promise he made to American Labor.
Labor understands what it had in NAFTA, but, it has yet to understand what it has in the TPP or the TiPP.
Today, the USA has over 322 million people. That includes all age categories so that does not translate to 322 car buyers, but, there is a consumption of services to the GDP in all those age ranges.
So, what will happen to the economy of the USA with these international agreements? So far no one is venturing a guess and there has not been concrete estimates in any of the countries signing these agreements. All anyone knows is that Wall Street has designs on growth and want anything and everything that can be included in that growth. Supposedly, everyone can trust Wall Street to do the right thing.
The question is not actually "Do we trust government?" The question actually is "Do we trust Wall Street?" The only people that do are the majorities in the US House and Senate because their jobs and income are secure if they deliver the goods to Wall Street.
After Citigoup pulled the stunt in the budget by adding an amendment under a majority Republican House and Senate, there is no controlling the greed or the need for more bailouts in the way of annual deductions for monies lost to exotic financial instruments.
The amendment to the Budget by Citigroup simply makes the bailouts invisible as it moves from a legislative process every time it happens, to a place on the IRS form whenever it pleases the CEO to pull the plug for a bigger annual bonus.
Let's see the agreements and then we'll know exactly what we are looking at. There is every indication Labor will know better than anyone what is good for Wall Street and the government and it's tax base and what is not. There is no one that cares about the Middle Class except Labor Unions. They know more about the USA economy than anyone else in the picture.
The American people want guarantees. The Labor Unions are the only ones that can supply them without destroying the USA economy.
End of discussion.
