Tag: Clinton and china

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Corporate Treason

Both Conservatives and Liberals have expressed unease about corporations that, despite being based within the United States, have little or no loyalty to their home country.  Those fears are justified.

American companies have been forced to give trade secrets to the Chinese government in order to do business in that nation. At times, of course, this has been done at the behest of some politicians.

Roger Vadum, writing for the Capital Research Center  explains: “As president, Bill Clinton essentially wiped out any strategic advantage the U.S. had by selling advanced U.S. missile technology to our enemy, the People’s Republic of China…the Clinton administration accepted millions of dollars from the military and intelligence services of at least one hostile foreign power. All of this was done in exchange for illegal campaign contributions from a massive totalitarian country determined to eclipse the U.S. as a world superpower…President Clinton also lifted security controls, allowing thieves to access other vital military technologies, while disarming his own side and opposing needed defenses…Back in the 1990s… longtime Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe, now governor of Virginia, set records raising money for the Clintons. In that era congressional investigators unearthed an elaborate Communist Chinese money-laundering scheme.”

While President Clinton’s tenure is now history, the acquiescence of some corporations to transfer data, or kowtow to practices that violate human rights, in order to gain market share within nations ruled by authoritarian governments, China being the prime example, continues.  Fighting this demand by Beijing has been a central issue in President Trump’s fight against unfair practices by America’s trading partners, friendly and otherwise.

Current corporate inappropriate interaction with hostile powers differs from the Clinton-era scandal. A key player in this issue is Facebook. David Shepardson, in a Reuters report notes:

“Facebook Inc (FB.O) said Tuesday it has data sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese companies including Huawei, the world’s third largest smartphone maker, which has come under scrutiny from U.S. intelligence agencies on security concerns. …Chinese telecommunications companies have come under scrutiny from U.S. intelligence officials who argue they provide an opportunity for foreign espionage and threaten critical U.S. infrastructure…”

Within continue reading address tadalafil buy the pages of this ancient testimonial is a reasonable vent for sexual power. These rates fluctuate based upon the technique applied and level of experience by order viagra levitra the doctor, and how results are evaluated. It is the quickest way of buying any levitra cost of medication online is quite simple. A well-known buy sildenafil canada Chinese natural herb, ginseng, has been used for centuries in Asia to treat stress-related health conditions. Google, another major internet-based giant, has proven to be a disloyal corporate citizen for other reasons. The most important military technology battlefield today is in the field of artificial intelligence. However, as reported by Douglas MacMillan in the Wall Street Journal  notes: “Google won’t allow its artificial-intelligence products to be used in military weapons…Google…has recently come under criticism from its own employees for supplying image-recognition technology to the U.S. Department of Defense, in a partnership called Project Maven. Google told employees earlier this month it wouldn’t seek to renew its contract for Project Maven, … that decision in turn was blasted by some who said the company shouldn’t be conflicted about supporting national security…Google’s YouTube, along with Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc., were criticized over the past year for failing to prevent a Russian campaign to use their services to sway the results of the U.S. election…Google was questioned by U.S. lawmakers … who are looking into the company’s relationship with Chinese tech giants. Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.) on Thursday asked Alphabet Inc. and Twitter Inc. about data-sharing with Chinese vendors, including Xiaomi and Tencent Holdings Google’s relationship with China’s Huawei Technologies Co., part of Washington’s escalating digital Cold War with Beijing.”

According to former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg (and a major information and technology corporate figure himself)  , writing for his eponymous publication, Google has “Walked away from America’s security…Google’s decision not to renew a contract to develop artificial intelligence for the Defense Department was a victory for the employees who had protested it. It was also a defeat for U.S. national security, patriotism, and the cause of limiting civilian casualties in war…Google’s leaders also seem to have forgotten the vital role the government, and especially the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, played in creating the internet and making their company possible in the first place. Yet, from Apple’s refusal to unlock the iPhone of a mass-murdering terrorist to Project Maven, tech firms have repeatedly snubbed law-enforcement, intelligence and defense agencies.”

It’s vitally important to read between the lines.  Are companies like Google, as well as Facebook, reluctant to assist the U.S. government, or give fair access and provide objective search results to pro-defense conservatives in the hopes of appeasing China and gaining access to its vast market?

How dangerous is the impulse by Facebook and Google to appease China? Consider Robert Schlesinger’s comment’s in US News: “the Pew Research Center reported this week that 62 percent of U.S. adults get news on social media.  Fully two-thirds of U.S. Facebook users get news from the site…The role of big social media in news distribution has been top of mind with the recent controversy surrounding Facebook reportedly suppressing conservative content…Robert Epstein and Ronald Robertson of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology have conducted more extensive research measuring what they call “Search Engine Manipulation Effect” – looking at whether Google, say, could shift votes by tweaking its search engine to favor one candidate. His conclusion is that doing so could “easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more – up to 80 percent in some demographic groups,” as Epstein wrote in Politico last summer – with virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated. Around the world, Epstein and Robertson calculate, Google could flip upwards of 25 percent of national elections if it wanted to wield that power.”

If that power were used on behalf of an American enemy in return for access to that nation’s markets, it could be devastating.

Illustration: Pixabay

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Reviving U.S. Manufacturing

An 18 year decline in American manufacturing may be drawing to a close, a result of tougher trade stances by the Trump Administration and its domestic tax policy.

Echoing a campaign theme, The President recently told reporters that “China has taken hundreds of billions of dollars a year from the United States…I explained to President Xi we can’t do that anymore…” The administration has consistently stated that Beijing reduce its $375 billion merchandise trade surplus by least $200 billion within the next two years, and has threatened to impose $150 billion in tariffs if an agreement is not reached.

 Within two months of President Trump’s inauguration, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka noted: “America’s working families welcome the Department of Commerce’s examination of China’s economy. A thorough assessment is necessary to ensure American workers are competing on a level playing field. Any fair analysis of the facts will reaffirm that China’s extensive government involvement merits “nonmarket economy” treatment so that the U.S. can properly address dumped, underpriced goods and services that hurt U.S. workers and producers.”

In response to Trump’s demands, China has agreed to purchase more American products and services, although total amounts and other details have not been agreed upon, and many difficulties remain.

The history of American concessions to China that substantially harmed American businesses and workers has substantial tie-ins to the Clinton Administration, which was enmeshed in serious related scandals, largely underreported by the press.  The (Bill) Clinton campaign was illegally the recipient of funds from China, and the Clinton Administration provided highly questionable technological and economic benefits to Beijing, (including the sale of Cray supercomputers despite significant protests from U.S. security personnel) and legislation normalizing trade relations, prompting significant protests from labor unions.

Those objecting to the Clinton concessions have been proven correct. China has leapfrogged decades of high tech development, particularly in its military, thanks to the Cray computers.

Rense.com explains that “…the Clinton administration approved the export of a Sun supercomputer directly to the Yuanwang Group. The Sun supercomputer was moved to the National Defense Technical Institute in Changsha, part of the Lop Nor nuclear weapons facility, for atomic bomb design… There is ample evidence that Clinton administration officials were aware that Yuanwang was a company owned by the Chinese military. According to the Commerce Department’s own documents, official meetings with Chinese army owned companies took place before documented computer transfer to Yuanwang Corp.” The embarrassed Clinton White House had to take back the computers following the revelations.
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Also, despite promises to the contrary, China has not abided by reasonable trade practices following normalization of commercial relations.  Its resulting domination of several industries have resulted in decimating American industrial production and the loss of vast numbers of manufacturing jobs. U.S. News reports that within the first 13 years since normalization, 3.2 million American factory jobs were lost.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Slate’s Jordan Weissman,  noted:  “Things have not worked out quite as the 42nd president hoped. Normalizing trade with China set our rival on a path to becoming the industrial powerhouse the world knows today, decimating American factory towns in the process and upending old assumptions about how trade effects the economy. Thanks to a growing body of academic research, we’re only just now beginning to understand the extent of the economic fallout…”

The Huffington Post’s  Jane White explains that the major beneficiary of Clinton’s policy “were Wall Street, Chinese factory owners and U.S. banks and the biggest losers were blue collar workers. Mitt Romney may have run a company that outsourced jobs but Clinton ran a country that did…. As Richard McCormack pointed out in the American Prospect, in the beginning of this century American companies stopped making the products Americans continued to buy, from clothing to computers. Manufacturers never emerged from the 2001 recession, which coincided with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Between 2001 and 2009 the U.S. lost 42,400 factories and manufacturing employment dropped to 11.7 million, a loss of 32 percent of all manufacturing jobs. The last time fewer than 12 million people worked in the manufacturing sector was in 1941.”

The tide may be turning. According to the Federal Reserve, “Industrial production rose 0.7 percent in April for its third consecutive monthly increase…The indexes for mining and utilities moved up 1.1 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively. At 107.3 percent of its 2012 average, total industrial production in April was 3.5 percent higher than it was a year earlier.”

A CNBC report  found that the manufacturing industry has added roughly 293,000 jobs since President Trump’s election, according to the Department of Labor data.

Illustration: Pixabay