Congressional Candidate Frank Pallotta
America has lost a great treasure from its decades-long dependence on China; and breaking free from her grip, will be like ripping a scab off an old wound. To envision how badly this has hurt us as both a state and a nation, consider a hypothetical where a fictitious town’s retail stores are all owned by a tyrannical “slave owner” who deals in worthless currency (the Yuan) in exchange for US dollars, and then breaks every law with impunity while gaining complete control over all the resources you ultimately rely on. Furthermore, any attempt to begin to break free from their grip, would be met with supply-chain chaos in the short-term. This metaphor does in fact exist in the form of Chinese trade relations with the US, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Now imagine our own state, New Jersey, as the economic driver and manufacturing powerhouse with the wherewithal to eliminate the second order effects of cutting the Chinese umbilical cord to the US.
So, let’s review some facts about China, who the United States Senate granted most favored nation trading status in 1979 as an economic and political hedge against the now defunct Soviet Union. China’s ability to function within the global economy exists largely because of its ability to offer a near endless supply of cheap labor. China accomplishes this by tapping into their compelled and sometimes forced labor through legislating that determines where their citizens are permitted to work. In addition, its rigid nationwide educational process funnels only a select chosen few to any kind of life beyond depressing conditions. China’s grotesque levels of economic inequality are enough to bewilder even the most hardcore liberals. Controlling approximately 60% of the global work force, the Chinese government uses their people as economic leverage to take advantage of the American consumer.
China is fast becoming a sinking global economic ship, for which America is chained and we must now set ourselves apart from this drowning giant before we become drowned with it. Fortunately, however, New Jersey is in the perfect position to rise, thrive and prosper amidst this foreseeable breakup as America severs its economic ties to this sinking ship.
China is in fact, drowning. The world’s largest population is crammed on a seaboard and has a simple math problem. Its population exceeds the land capacity’s ability to provide enough food for its people; and her natural resources are sparse. In the long term, China appears to subscribe to a strategy of colonizing Africa to move its excess population, and this unrealistic goal drives many of their current strategies. In the medium-term, China must depend on the world (mostly America) to keep infusing itself with real currency for which China can trade as the Yuan becomes more and more being rejected as a viable global currency.
Unlike the U.S. dollar, for which the entire globe is beholden; the Chinese Yuan’s value is based on how much America buys from China. America holds the Earth’s standard of living in her hands while China merely creates cheap product to sell and possesses only the threat of disrupting global markets for a period of time. Facing the Trump administration’s policy of “leveling the global playing field”, China will ultimately threaten to separate itself from American consumerism through poorly planned and hastily executed trade, tariff and and currency retaliation. Then, with its declining agricultural production compared to its rising urban population, China’s cheap labor force will eventually be idled and become dependent on government cash handouts in the form of a rapidly devalued currency.
We must assume that China will act destructively over the prospect of beginning to lose access to the American supply chain. It is therefore incumbent upon New Jersey leadership, to be prepared economically and politically to be beyond the reach of China’s teeth gnashing. New Jersey has within its borders, an enormous supply of labor, land and the framework of a former global manufacturing industry that can be resurrected and restructured to conform to this new economic paradigm. Let’s do exactly that.
Imagine small farms all across New Jersey bringing organic food to stores and restaurants instead of faux soy or corn syrup product originating from China which contaminates the foods and additives we currently use. The entire Northwestern portion of New Jersey – once teeming with great farms and ranches – have all but disappeared in the years following America’s turn toward outsourcing to save costs. Imagine a New Jersey, already one of the largest exporters in the nation, with an agricultural sector that can export at the pace of its other, more material exports. A renewed and rejuvenated manufacturing and agricultural industry in New Jersey can help bring back many of the jobs that were once written off by the Democrat party because those jobs were viewed as economically insignificant. We can again attract manufacturing jobs and stop the mass exodus of residents from our state because of high taxes and limited employment opportunities. New Jersey’s industrial potential is enormous. It’s time to return this state to the manufacturing powerhouse it once was.
New Jersey cannot become a slave to Chinese manufacturing lords when this state can create, manufacture and export on its own. New Jersey must shift to rebuilding more industry, agriculture and commerce platforms instead of allowing our residents to leave in droves.
Political corruption has invited the Chinese dragon into American politics. Our leaders and legislators have been aligning themselves with Chinese lobbyists for quite some time and have sold out to those who will grant them power. China’s interest is only American consumerism. For the US to blindly support these activities is counter to the long-term interest of the American people and selling out the unlimited potential of New Jersey’s great economic machine. The following actions must be undertaken, to jump-start New Jersey’s economy and begin extricating ourselves from the Chinese supply chain:
1. Vote out politicians who support any favored nation or economic concessions to China. Any politician running for office in New Jersey who has connections to China, PAC or donor money in their history, should be suspect.
2. Establish Economic vitalization councils in each county that coordinate research and development, grants and loans to businesses that use New Jersey labor, locations and infrastructure.
3. Travel and work abroad to begin to establish trade alliances on our own.
4. When not practical to buy or assemble in the US, we should look to other non-Chinese manufacturers and labor. Vietnam, Great Britain, Germany, South America and Mexico all offer product, materials and labor at very affordable rates.
Let’s remember that freedom isn’t just political, its economic. China’s very existence, and their strategy of embedding themselves into the “plumbing” of the US supply chain, stifles our freedom in every sense. Recently, New Jersey has been supplanted by China as the world’s foremost supplier of medicine. How can this be? Why would we trust the source of SARS, H1N1 and the COVID-19 virus over our own Johnson and Johnson and other pharma companies right here in New Jersey? How was this allowed to happen? New Jersey needs a complete overhaul of its Democrat leadership. These leaders have taxed and spent yet have not produced for this great state.
As we begin to bring jobs and manufacturing back to New Jersey, the last thing we need, is a political organization hellbent on using that opportunity to continue to tax and spend.