Bring jobs back home

To the editor,

Free trade, what a wonderful catch phrase. There is a whole chapter on free trade in the book, voodoo economics 101.

What has free trade given us? Let’s see, it created millions of jobs. Just not in America, a trip to your local mart store will prove this.

Let’s see, trade has created billions of tax dollars for our states and federal government. Nope, you see when the millions of jobs left our country (for slave labor wages) the states and the federal government, along with Joe the refrigerator maker, took a pay cut. Hence no more income tax from millions of workers who used to pay our government. End result, government budget cuts and high unemployment.

Let’s see, our trading partners buy lots from us. False, last time we had a trade surplus with China, was in the eighties. The last trade surplus with Mexico was in the nineties.

Let’s face it folks, our manufacturing industries were our perverbial golden goose, in which our government depended on along with millions of our citizens for their very financial existence.

One would have to admit, as long as we had these jobs our deficits were tame and unemployment was low. Bring our jobs back home.

Fair trade, not free trade. With hindsight now being in clearer focus, Ross was right. Bill, George, Paul and Glenn were all reading from the wrong book.

Sincerely, Darryl Harvell, JonesboroKen