Patrick Buchanan on Free Trade

What has a third of a century of free trade wrought?

• The deindustrialization of America. Factories and plants everywhere are closing as America becomes a service economy.
  
• An end of national self-sufficiency and growing dependence upon foreign sources for the necessities of our national life and the weapons of our national defense.
  
• A loss of national sovereignty as WTO bureaucrats force U.S. laws to be rewritten to conform to global trade rules.
  
• A falling dollar that robs Americans of their wealth. (see below)
  
• Shattered lives as company towns become ghost towns in the "creative destruction" that deracinated economists celebrate from the security of tenured chairs.
  
• A crisis in Social Security and Medicare as Americans move out of high-paying manufacturing jobs into lower-paying service jobs, and thus contribute less in payroll taxes.
  
• Growing public pressure for federalized health insurance as manufacturing jobs are replaced by service ones that carry no health insurance.
  
• A deepening farm crisis as traditional U.S. markets here and abroad are captured by countries like Brazil and Argentina, whose lower labor costs have attracted Western capital. The scores of billions of dollars in subsidies taxpayers will give farmers in future years is to make up for what the farmers lost from globalization.
  (pp. 169-170)

Regarding the devaluation of the U.S. dollar:

A falling currency is the mark of a failing country, and our fading dollar mirrors fading confidence in the Bush administration's ability to manage America's affairs. And there are solid grounds for alarm. In 2005, the trade deficit in goods and the budget deficit may together reach 10 percent of GDP. We are borrowing over $1 trillion a year to refinance our new empire, our welfare-warfare state, and our binge-buying at the malls.

A sinking currency represents the silent theft of a people's wealth by their rulers. And when the currency of an imperial power sinks, there are strategic consequences. Citizens lose faith in government. Adi dollars do not go as far as they once did. U.S. troops abroad and their families find their lives harsher. It becomes more difficult to maintain forces overseas. You begin to rely on mercenaries. You cannot run a world empire on a collapsing currency. Just ask the Brits. (p. 202)

Buchanan, Patrick J. Where the Right Went Wrong, St. Martin's Press, New York, 2004.