1) So, here I am, first thinking Most Favored Nation trading status dates back to 2002, for China, upon accession to the WTO. But no, I discover yesterday, our Congress gave them that precise status in 1973. So, I'm rethinking Nixon and Kissinger, as I sadly expressed yesterday.
2) Are we there yet? No, we're not. This stuff goes deep. We leap frog all the way back to the 1840s, the Opium War that Britain lashed upon the Qing Dynasty of China, demanding the right to addict China's people to a product Britain took from India. Very ugly.
3) What does China do? It capitulates. But, managing all its encroaching enemies, the US, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, it gives them all Most Favored Nation trading status. The logic isn't easy. Most Favored does NOT equal most favored. It really just means equal.
4) Granted Most Favored Nation simply means you are made equal with all other nations, so that any advantage they get, you get too. It really would be Most Favored, if there was only one. The moment there are two or more, everybody's in.
5) What this really means is this. If a nation, say the USA, grants Most Favored Nation trading status to ANY other nation at all, it NO LONGER lives by the rule of...America First. Now, the new rule is...World First. We are for the world, not for ourselves.
6) Guess where this bouncing ball leads us. Directly to the creation of the World Trade Organization in, guess when! 1 January 1995. I had no idea it was that young. And, in truth, it isn't. That is, it had a predecessor called GATT. General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
7) Twists and turns, America in, America out, great difficulty, but the beating drum beat under the whole damned thing is...the United Nations. And before that, Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations. Are you seeing it? Evidently, all roads lead to Wilson.
8) Funny thing, he is often presented by historians as the great proponent of American Exceptionalism. How so? He believed, somehow, in self-determination and equal play among peoples and nations. So, we all agree to some World Order thingie, due to American Exceptionalism.
9) Don't try to make all the logic work. Honest. You won't succeed. Me? I have tons more study to do. But there's a single thing that remains still clear, and that is the American System where our government gets its revenue by...tariffs, and NOT by American income taxes.
10) Our story reaches all the way back to the 1790s with Hamilton and Washington founding the American System, based on tariffs and low-to-no taxes upon American citizens. It was built upon the idea that America can serve America. Its our damned market!
11) What we're not taught is this. From the moment of our founding, 1776, we were already the greatest consumer market in the entire world. We were NOT the greatest manufacturing market. That's what the American System was designed to change.
12) The Civil war can be shown to be the result, not of slavery itself, but rather, it can be argued that the South rejected manufacturing. It invested into land and slave labor - slaves were not free, in either way. They were not free men or women. They did NOT come free.
13) It is a little known fact that a huge component of Karl Marx's analysis was due to the differences between the North and the South in the United States. The South's investment into slave labor was viewed as necessary to the increase in land value. Do you see it?
14) Labor and land drove the South's economy, whereas manufacturing drove the North's. Funny thing. A factory does NOT benefit from slave labor. Slaves gunk up a factory's system. Factories kill slaves, and slaves are not cheap, believe it or not.
15) China's slave labor today dies too, and must be replaced. But, by having a communist government, for China, slave labor actually IS free. Kill the slave, snag another, no problem. What's this got to do with the World Trade Organization?
16) Precisely as the South opposed the North's tariff-based system, so also has Wilson's League of Nations, the legacy outfit United Nations, and of course, GATT and its child the WTO. What they all have in common is opposition to tariffs. Tariffs bad. Free trade good.
17) Washington and Hamilton's system was so powerful, though, that after 150 years of building up the greatest economy on earth, it took another 100 years to complete its destruction, and even then, it took Trump 3 years to build it back up. Imagine that.
18) Whew. Let me catch my breath. I still have a LONG way to go to even understand all that I've shared. I feel as if I'm floating above it, just catching glimpses of facts and factors and forces from afar. These studies are only about 3 years old for me, personally.
19) I had never heard of the American System before early 2018, when @KateScopelliti and I were researching our book, America First, The MAGA Manifesto.
amazon.com/America-First-…
amazon.com/America-First-…
20) I was, at the time, a big Thomas Jefferson fan, but NOT a Hamilton fan, and only lukewarm on Washington. I've been rethinking my judgment of both of them ever since. I still don't have a full answer there, either.
21) And that brings me back to Trump. This I know. He knows all this stuff, and vastly, vastly better than I do, that's for sure. He knows how to use a tariff. He understands the American System, dating back to Washington and Hamilton. He knows what America First actually means.
22) Every time you listen to a #Coronvirus press conference, and you hear Trump say the word "federalism," listen for his massive mastery over the concept. You can hear it in his voice. He knows American history and knows his role within it. I am not ashamed to confess my awe.
23) We've come full circle now. Granting China America's Most Favored Nation trading status in 1973, was the greatest error in all of American history. It was the true beginning of the end of our economic health as a nation. It's roots go deep.
24) We haven't discussed JFK. He played a role in all this. We know a good deal, but much more must be learned about FDR in all this. Myself, I know little about the presidents leading up to Wilson, but we know his administration was the veritable pivot point.
25) But again, what can be felt is Trump's complete, comfortable, competent mastery of our history and our moment. He's got all this. I'll see if, someday, maybe, he'll let me hold his Diet Coke while he takes a turn changing history for the better. Till then, I'll keep studying.
Thread ends at #25.
