O fim dos EUA e da Europa?

Poderia ter sido escrito por Álvaro Cunhal!

While Americans are sacrificing the future for the present, China is sacrificing the present for the future. — Patrick J. Buchanan.

Transcrevo abaixo parte de um lancinante artigo do conservador Patrick J. Buchanan, escrito em 2003, sobre as causas do colapso iminente dos Estados Unidos da América. A leviana Direita que temos devia estudar com muita atenção cada palavra desta confissão descarnada sobre o que correu muito mal na América, nomeadamente a partir da era Clinton e da sua alegre globalização. E a Esquerda lunática que temos deveria aplicar algum do seu tempo livre a pensar na realidade de chumbo que temos diante de nós — começando por fazer tábua rasa de muitas das convenções e preconceitos ideológicos e analíticos que há décadas entorpecem a sua capacidade de pensar de forma límpida e necessária.

O que está em causa e pode colocar em causa o futuro de Portugal, apesar de fazermos parte da União Europeia, é muito mais amplo e dramático do que se tem pretendido fazer crer. Trata-se de um processo de reversão e translação estrutural do Capitalismo —de facto em curso— em nome da sua sobrevivência desesperada num qualquer outro corpo capaz de o aceitar na sua incurável e descarnada bestialidade inumana, especulativa e gananciosa. A terceiro-mundialização do nosso pais, que não anda muito longe do que se passa noutros países outrora orgulhosos do seu desenvolvimento, a começar pelos Estados Unidos e a Inglaterra, é o cerne de uma súbita e possivelmente fatal doença da modernidade, que a simples administração de melhor justiça, melhor educação ou ética política será insuficiente para salvar.

Teremos, seja como for, de regressar ao trabalho. Isto é, à produção local e regional daquilo que comemos, usamos e amamos. Significa esta decisão rejeitar o Outro? O novo Outro? Não necessariamente, mesmo se tivermos que voltar a traçar uma linha divisória, uma linha de osmose, entre os competidores estratégicos do planeta. Um novo Tratado de Tordesilhas, desta vez entre a Ásia dum lado e a Euro-América do outro.

Death of Manufacturing
The rise of free trade has eroded America’s industrial base and with it our sovereignity.

By Patrick J. Buchanan (August 11, 2003) — in The American Conservative.

(...)

Thirty years have elapsed since our free-trade era began and 30 months since George W. Bush became president. It’s time to measure the promise of global free trade against the performance.

Undeniably, free trade has delivered for consumers. A trip to the mall, where the variety of suits, shoes, shirts, toys, gadgets, games, TVs, and appliances abounds, makes the case. But what has it cost our country?

Every month George Bush has been in office, America has lost manufacturing jobs. One in seven has vanished since his inauguration. In 1950, a third of our labor force was in manufacturing. Now, it is 12.5 percent. U.S. manufacturing is in a death spiral, and it is not a natural death. This is a homicide. Open-borders free trade is killing American manufacturing.

(...) In 1860, Britain abandoned its Britain First trade policy for the free-trade faith of David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, and Richard Cobden. By World War I, Britain, which produced twice what America did in 1860, produced less than half and had been surpassed by a Germany that did not even exist in 1860.

Free trade does to a nation what alcohol does to a man: saps him first of his vitality, then his energy, then his independence, then his life.

America today exhibits the symptoms of a nation passing into late middle age. We spend more than we earn. We consume more than we produce.

(...)

Manufacturing is the key to national power. Not only does it pay more than service industries, the rates of productivity growth are higher and the potential of new industries arising is far greater. From radio came television, VCRs, and flat-panel screens. From adding machines came calculators and computers. From the electric typewriter came the word processors. Research and development follow manufacturing.

Alexander Hamilton, the architect of the U.S. economy, knew this. He had served in the Revolution as aide to Washington and lived through the British blockades. He had led the bayonet charge at Yorktown. And he had resolved that never again would his country’s survival depend upon French muskets or French ships.

(...)

For 12 decades, America followed Hamilton’s vision. On the eve of World War I, the 13 agricultural colonies on the eastern seaboard had become the richest nation on earth with the highest standard of living, a republic that produced 96 percent of all it consumed while exporting 8 percent of its GNP, an industrial colossus that manufactured more than Britain, France, and Germany combined.

The self-sufficiency and industrial power Hamiltonian policies created enabled us to rearm in security, crush the Axis in four years, rebuild Europe and Japan, and outlast the Soviet empire in a Cold War, while meeting all the needs of our people.

But in the Clinton-Bush free-trade era, Alexander Hamilton is derided as a “protectionist.” Woodrow Wilson’s free-trade dogma is gospel. Result: our trade surpluses have vanished, our deficits have exploded, our self-sufficiency has been lost, our sovereignty has been diminished, and an industrial base that was the envy of mankind has been gutted.

And for what? All that junk down at the mall? What do we have now that we did not have before we submitted to this cult of free trade?

(...)

As a former Friedmanite free trader, let me say it: free trade is a bright shining lie. Free trade is the Trojan Horse of world government. Free trade is the murderer of manufacturing and the primrose path to the loss of national sovereignty and the end of our independence.

(...)

While Americans are sacrificing the future for the present, China is sacrificing the present for the future.

Beijing’s boom began after it devalued its currency in 1994. While a blow to Chinese consumers, devaluation gave Beijing a competitive edge over the other “Asian tigers.” Beijing then invited Western companies to locate new factories there to tap its pool of low-wage labor. As the price of access, Beijing demanded that Western companies transfer technology to Chinese partners. What the companies do not transfer, the Chinese extort or steal.

By offering excellent workers at $2 a day, guaranteeing no union trouble, allowing levels of pollution we would not tolerate, and ignoring health and safety standards, China has become the factory floor of the Global Economy and surpassed the United States as the world’s first choice for foreign investment.

(...)

In 2002, China ran up its largest trade surpluses with us in electrical machinery, computers, toys, games, footwear, furniture, clothing, plastics, articles of iron and steel, vehicles, optical and photographic equipment, and other manufactures. Among the 23 items where we had a surplus with China were soybeans, corn, wheat, animal feeds, meat, cotton, metal ores, scrap, hides and skins, pulp and waste paper, cigarettes, gold, coal, mineral fuels, rice, tobacco, fertilizers, glass. Beijing uses us as George III used his Jamestown colony.

in The American Conservative.

OAM 639 21-10-2009 02:10