In a headline that comes as no surprise to constitutionalists, the venerable New York Times reports that: “Republicans and Obama Can Agree on Criticizing China’s Trade Practices.”
As China’s economic muscle expands, that of the United States contracts. The promissory notes that represent the American debt that is propelling our Republic into the Gomorrah of empire are held by the Asian superpower. The scope of the economic servitude is jaw-dropping. Witness this data published by prisonplanet.com:
Everyone is painfully aware of the fact that China now owns the United States economically, with the Chinese central bank being the largest debt holder at approaching $1 trillion dollars. The average American family with two children collectively owes around $12,000 dollars to China. The Communist state’s ownership of long term U.S. Treasury Securities means the United States pays upwards of $100 million dollars a day to China in terms of interest alone.
Undaunted by the debt owed to China, President Obama recently returned from his junket to Asian nations where he apparently did everything in (and beyond) his power to convince his hosts from being drawn into the centripetal maelstrom that is Chinese trade and economic policy. While traveling in the region, the President worked to sell the United States as an alternative to Chinese suzerainty.
Apparently the United States is prepared to do anything to woo Asian allies away from China’s almost irresistible influence. White House spokesman Jay Carney made it perfectly clear that his boss is ready to gamble everything on the area. Using a poker metaphor that seems rather unworthy of the issue, Carney says that America is “all in when it comes to Asia."
Part of the “new focus” that Obama intends to make on the Asian-Pacific region is a commitment to deploy American troops to long-time ally Australia.
Last week, the administration announced that the United States would soon create a permanent military presence in Australia as part of an overall plan to “boost ties with allies like Japan and South Korea while counterbalancing potential threats from North Korea and China.”
This new tack on the part of the Democratic President surely drew criticism from the field of Republican presidential hopefuls? No. With one nearly ignored exception.
Calling the plan to station troops Down Under “a mischief,” GOP candidate Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) explained to a crowd in Iowa the folly of such a proposal:
We are so broke and there’s no hesitation with this administration or with previous administrations to continue to go in more and more countries. My position has been very clear: We spend way too much money overseas. It’s a good place to start bringing the troops home from around the world.
He [President Obama] thinks we need more troops spread around the world. So he’s over in Australia, promising to send thousands of our troops to Australia. Why do we have to occupy Australia? I mean what’s going on? He said well maybe the Chinese will attack us. The Chinese are our banker, they’re not going to attack us — you know it’s not going to happen.
Paul’s position is constitutionally and economically sound, but it is remarkably antipodean to the policies espoused by his colleagues in the Republican race for the White House. Romney, Perry, Gingrich, et al are each trying to out “tough guy” the others in their anti-China campaign declarations. This from the New York Times:
But the president’s criticism has been far more measured than that of Mr. Romney and other Republicans, who excoriated China at a debate in South Carolina that occurred as Mr. Obama was greeting the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, in Hawaii.
“We can’t just sit back and let China run all over us,” Mr. Romney said, calling for tariffs on Chinese goods. “People say, well, you’ll start a trade war. There’s one going on right now, folks.”
For Mr. Romney, a wealthy business executive with free-market credentials, criticizing China is a rare chance to play the populist and appeal to working-class voters, many of whom do blame China and other Asian nations for sucking away jobs with cheaper labor and production costs.
Not wanting to be outdone, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas likened China to the Soviet Union. “I happen to think that the Communist Chinese government will end up on the ash heap of history,” he said.
And this regarding the approach taken by former ambassador to China and current Republican presidential also-ran, Jon Huntsman:
As a young aide to President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Huntsman said he traveled to Beijing to help repair the damage done to relations by Mr. Reagan’s threat, during the 1980 campaign, to restore Taiwan’s diplomatic status, in defiance of China.
“He got into office and found that the world functioned a little differently,” Mr. Huntsman said in an interview. “You needed to sit down with the Chinese to figure out how to manage these issues.”
Like his fellow Republicans, Mr. Huntsman said the United States needed to be more aggressive in defending its interests with China. But he added, “It can’t be a Romney approach, where you go to the W.T.O., slap a tariff on and end up in a trade war.”
Maybe there’s more than campaign posturing behind President Obama’s mission to the Asian-Pacific region. With the eurozone reeling, the United States is sure to be called upon to bail out our ersatz allies that as a result of their own redistributive addiction are now desperately clinging to their piece of the global government puzzle — the European Union.
Unfortunately for the other, more stable economies of the EU, the United States is suffering through a financial disaster of our own. The solution? Share the poverty.
Proxies for the President floated that idea in advance of what is sure to be a legislative program to be announced should President Obama’s address not change in 2012.
As reported in an article published by the Huffington Post:
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned that the European crisis is still "the central challenge to global growth" and urged Asia-Pacific leaders to do more to help keep the European contagion from spreading, including boosting demand in their own countries.
Still, economists generally say that so long as any new recession in Europe is relatively mild, it seems unlikely that it would drag down other economies.
"Asia is in ascendency while Europe is fading in the power lineup of the world," said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics. He said the new U.S. focus on the region "is long overdue."
Are the Republicans who are being proffered by the media as “frontrunners” and “viable options to Obama” committed to abandoning America’s own regressive tax scheme, the constant filling of the foreign aid trough, and the turning a blind eye to the near fatal monetary manipulation carried out by the central bank (a.k.a. the Federal Reserve)? Or, as is more likely the case, are the oft-touted alternatives to the current administration mere Hobson’s choices designed to protect the projected trajectory of the status quo?
With the approach of the primaries, voters will be called upon to nominate a candidate who will demonstrate unfailing fidelity to the oath of office and to the Constitution of the United States. The decision may seem to be between Republicans and Democrats, but the true distinction seems to be between constitutionalists and globalists — republicans (with a small ‘r’) and those committed to the expansion of the American empire and the corresponding collapse of our constitutional liberties.
