Except For U.S., Global Warming Compliance Is Cooling Down

President Obama, Al Gore, and many others such as billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, would have us believe that we need to do more to fight global warming.  They like to claim that 97% of scientists "agree" that climate change is man-caused and needs to be controlled.  However, that theory is based on only 79 scientists who responded to an online poll in 2009.  But, when it comes to priorities Americans wants our government to tackle, climate change finds itself just one-up from the bottom:

With none of the doomsday predictions coming true, it is becoming increasing difficult for Americans and others around the world to believe that fighting global warming is worthwhile.

Just last week, Australia became the first industrialized country to dump its emission tax; and, South Korea seems poised to delay its 2015 implementation of their carbon taxation system.  Both of these countries may just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to cooling attitudes on global warming.  For example, earlier this year, the European Union signaled that it may relax its compliance with its own carbon reducing mandates.

So this begs the question.  Why is President Obama so hell-bent on controlling carbon when the rest of the world seems to be going in the opposite direction?  Controlling carbon is not a go-it-alone option.  Even if we reduced all of our emissions, the rest of the world would easily make up for it with their increased activity.  This is especially true when you look at the massively increasing carbon output of countries such as India and China as they attempt to become more affluent.

The simple fact is that many are no longer buying into the climate change hysteria and wildly predicted disasters that just aren't happening.  Apparently, the alarmists have never heard about "Chicken Little".  And, in this country, we have a President who is now siding with a minority by still treating climate change as a national priority.

References:

The Myth of the Climate Change '97%' - Wall Street Journal: https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Myth+of+the+Climate+Change+%2797%25%27&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

Australia abolishes tax on carbon emissions: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d852822a-0d67-11e4-bcb2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz37vNhvKsL

S.Korean finmin says planned carbon market flawed, wants delay -paper: http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL6N0PT3CZ20140718

Europe, Facing Economic Pain, May Ease Climate Rules: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/business/international/european-union-lowers-ambitions-on-renewable-energy.html?_r=0

Obama Continues His "Free Trade Agreement" Lie

In his jobs speech of last night, Obama, once again, flat out lied about the free trade agreements with Columbia, South Korea and Panama. As he had, time and time, again, he "urged Congress to pass the free trade agreements"; as if it was Congress that was sitting on them.

The fact is that all those agreements were buttoned up and ready for a ratification vote at the end of the Bush Administration. But, it was Nancy Pelosi, speaking for the then-Democrat controlled Congress, who refused to even bring a ratification vote to the floor of the House (Click here to see a typical story regarding Pelosi's block tactics: Pelosi says House will change rules to stop Colombia trade vote). So, Bush was forced to hand over the trade agreements to the Obama Administration for ratification.

Since then, Obama has pursued a course of renegotiating each of the agreements so that the American labor unions are protected and compensated for any job losses that may result from the free trade activity. Further, Obama is demanding that, as part of the agreement, the foreign trading partner guarantee that its workers have U.S. style benefits and working conditions. Here's the actual text from the Office of U.S. Trade Representative website for the Columbia agreement (Click to link to U.S. government website) that explains the continuing process:

President Obama is committed to pursuing an ambitious trade agenda that will help grow our economy and support good jobs for U.S. workers by opening new markets. To achieve that objective, we seek to provide a level playing field that creates economic opportunities for U.S. workers, companies, farmers, and ranchers, and that ensures our trading partners have acceptable working conditions and respect fundamental labor rights. As part of this broader trade agenda, the Obama Administration has worked closely with the government of Colombia to address serious and immediate labor concerns. The result is an agreed “Action Plan Related to Labor Rights” that will lead to greatly enhanced labor rights in Colombia and clear the way for the U.S.-Colombia Trade Agreement to move forward to Congress.

More than anything, the last sentence that I have highlighted above in red, says it all. It clearly states that the agreement is in some kind of agreed upon "action plan" limbo and that, once resolved, it will "clear the way for the" agreement "to move forward to Congress." While the text above was extracted from the Columbia Trade Agreement website, the same text appears on the U.S. government trade agreement website for Panama. On, the South Korea agreement webpage, that agreement is on hold pending a resolution of "concerns that have been expressed regarding automotive trade."

It's just amazing to me that the main stream media of this country allows Obama to keep retelling this lie without ever contesting it. What's really sad is that Obama has placed the concerns of the U.S. labor unions ahead of all those non-union jobs that would have been created by these agreements. Subsequently, Americans have lost 2-1/2 years of jobs opportunities; just so Obama can get labor union support in his 2012 reelection bid. This from a President who hypocritically keeps demanding that Congress act "now" on his jobs plan!

And So, The Trade Wars Begin!

We already know that the Democrats and the Obama Administration have refused to sign free trade agreements with both Columbia and South Korea (See Full Story). As a result, we, as a minority manufacturer in the world, are limited in the amount of products that we can sell to those specific countries. It puts us at a cost disadvantage in trying to compete with other countries that already have free trade agreements in place with South Korea and with Columbia.

During last year's campaigning, Obama had mentioned that he might renege on and renegotiate the NAFTA trade agreement between us and Canada and Mexico. That resulted in both Canada and Mexico getting into a tizzy. Obama had to soften that stance by sending out a representative to say, in effect: "Not to worry...it's just politicking!" (See Full Story) Then, when the Stimulus Package was being rammed through Congress, it included a "buy American provision" that got the European Union in a lather. In both situations, the intent was to appease the labor unions. However, in both cases and only after seeing the backlash, Obama appeared to reluctantly back off.

I hardly think that all these stuttered attempts to block free trade are just "politicking". The Obama Administration is aiming to stifle free trade and create the kind of protectionist atmosphere that would provide a short-sighted and short-termed benefit to our labor unions. But, many economist think this would ultimately result in the same kind of trade wars that caused and sustained the Great Depression (See Full Story).

Since Obama has been in office, he and his gang of Democrats have consistently made every attempt to satisfy the wishes of the labor unions when it comes to international trade. One such attempt that has already seen blowback was done to satisfy the Teamsters Union by blocking Mexican trucks from entering our borders to bring products in from Mexico. Under the Bush Administration, this had been allowed on a limited basis. But, as a result of Obama's short-sightedness in rescinding that practice, we have now been slapped with trade-limiting and trade-preventing tariffs on 90 products that are being shipped into Mexico (See Full Story). At a time when this country is already in deep recession and when many of our companies have seen their international sales plummet, we are now unable to competitively sell many of our products to Mexico and we could easily see a loss of $2.4 billion in export sales.

Mark my words, this kind of thing is only going to set up a lot of distrust between ourselves and all of our other worldwide trading partners. Those countries that we trade with can't help but ask themselves: "Are we next?"

We are not in a position to start dictating trade. Americans buy more imported products than we sell overseas. That's why, for years, we have had billions of dollars a month in trade deficits. If protectionist trade barriers go up, the American consumer will be the only loser because we will have to pay more for all those imported things that we love to buy. That's inflationary and it will hurt the poor the hardest. On top of that, our products will be less attractive to foreign customers because they will be more expensive than products from other countries. That could result in lost American jobs.

Maybe that's the plan. Maybe Obama wants to force Americans to buy only American by causing the prices of imported goods to rise. But, if that is the plan it is definitely a dumb one and, believe me, one that will hurt us more than help us.

In my opinion, we have lost manufacturing jobs in this country because of a variety of reasons; and, high labor rates is just one of those reasons. But, more than anything, it is our system of taxation that is the most crippling. I still believe that, if we went to some form of consumption tax and not an income tax structure, we could be more competitive in the world because our American products wouldn't carry all the burden of employee and company income taxes that are being applied throughout the manufacturing, distribution, and sales processes. Additionally, a consumption tax would have a fairer and more equal effect because taxes will be applied to both domestic and imported goods, equally. Today, imported goods go untaxed by this country until they actually reach our shores and are finally sold.

Protectionism isn't the way to increase domestic manufacturing and regain manufacturing jobs that have been lost to other counties. But, a new tax structure might. I only wish that our politicians would come to that conclusion before all of our manufacturing jobs go overseas.