Quoting from the book “Choice Not Fate” by Pippa Green:
“Before he was even president, Nelson Mandela telephoned Bill Clinton, at the behest of the South African Textile and Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU), an important election ally for the ANC in the Western Cape, to ask him to support a more gradual phasing down of the tariffs for clothing and textiles……which would have meant a more gradual reduction of protective tariffs……… Mandela asked Clinton to agree to extend the down phasing of tariffs to a 12-year, rather than a 5- year period.”
(Mandela also forced De Klerk to sell Sasol, to comply with IMF requirements for loans.)
Manuel does suggest niche markets, like I did on an After 8 debate at least 3 years ago, but his idea of getting there by “training and worker organisation and competitiveness rather than narrow subsidies” was doomed from the start as unaffordable, as any liquidator could have told him.
Then there is the normal moan about “sweatshops”, long hours, and low pay in China being unfair. It amazes me how Americans go around the world with their “dollar a day” formula (now a dollar and a half) as if a dollar in Timbuktu buys the same as a dollar in New York. Whether one can live on X amount of “dollars” depends on how much transport, education, food, health and housing is subsidised.
Then South Africa cheated further in 2006 by managing to legally limit Chinese clothing imports “against the strong wishes of the retailers”. Well the retailers were right, and Manuel and Mbeki and Mandela were wrong. It is more important to clothe our nearly 50 million people cheaply, than save less than 200,000 jobs at a cost which could, properly invested, create work for double the number or re-skill the existing workers. Even if the USA does subsidise the cotton, and China and India the manufacture – so what? We get cheap clothes.
In the USA Bill Clinton did some more cheating of his own. To quote from the letter of R Groves as published in The Cape Times October 20, 2008:
“Allister Sparks blamed free markets for the world’s financial crisis, which he compared with catastrophes like the fall of the Weimar republic, Hitler and the Holocaust (October 15).
Here is another catastrophe he should have mentioned: the present financial crisis began with the sub prime mortgage fiasco in the United States, which was initiated by former president Bill Clinton.
Don’t take my word for that: refer to the New York Times of September 30, 1999: “In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low- income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans….”
And it continues: “Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate- income people, those borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans….”
I agree with R Groves. American labour could not compete with Asia AND live in the same style as their parents. The USA government was afraid to tell them so or they would lose votes, so they cheated, and provided houses to people whose wages were too low to be able to afford to repay them – and then sold these liabilities as assets all around the world. In Britain, and in the old Socialist White South Africa, this problem was solved by state housing at low rentals (which remained the asset of the state for at least 10 years, after which purchase or 99 year leases could be bought on mortgage in SA).
Why did Asia succeed and Africa fail? Asians have the advantage of not being black, and therefore not having racist black Americans or Jamaicans descend on them from the slave diaspora advising them how to be better capitalists than White Americans, and turning their laws into American laws, in order to score points against “whites”. Asia listened to the IMF and the World Bank, borrowed their money, but otherwise ignored them, and subsidised their workers and targeted certain markets.
If Africa is to compete it has to do the same, and it also has to learn birth control, before it has to become as drastic as China in control measures!
The most valuable thing Africa owns is land – what the world will always need is food. Much of Africa is dry, but Africa also has the best farmers for semi desert farming. If the Afrikaner can turn the Karroo into farmland, they can do it anywhere.
Competition in a global world will be between Nations, not within the individual Nation.
“Before he was even president, Nelson Mandela telephoned Bill Clinton, at the behest of the South African Textile and Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU), an important election ally for the ANC in the Western Cape, to ask him to support a more gradual phasing down of the tariffs for clothing and textiles……which would have meant a more gradual reduction of protective tariffs……… Mandela asked Clinton to agree to extend the down phasing of tariffs to a 12-year, rather than a 5- year period.”
(Mandela also forced De Klerk to sell Sasol, to comply with IMF requirements for loans.)
Manuel does suggest niche markets, like I did on an After 8 debate at least 3 years ago, but his idea of getting there by “training and worker organisation and competitiveness rather than narrow subsidies” was doomed from the start as unaffordable, as any liquidator could have told him.
Then there is the normal moan about “sweatshops”, long hours, and low pay in China being unfair. It amazes me how Americans go around the world with their “dollar a day” formula (now a dollar and a half) as if a dollar in Timbuktu buys the same as a dollar in New York. Whether one can live on X amount of “dollars” depends on how much transport, education, food, health and housing is subsidised.
Then South Africa cheated further in 2006 by managing to legally limit Chinese clothing imports “against the strong wishes of the retailers”. Well the retailers were right, and Manuel and Mbeki and Mandela were wrong. It is more important to clothe our nearly 50 million people cheaply, than save less than 200,000 jobs at a cost which could, properly invested, create work for double the number or re-skill the existing workers. Even if the USA does subsidise the cotton, and China and India the manufacture – so what? We get cheap clothes.
In the USA Bill Clinton did some more cheating of his own. To quote from the letter of R Groves as published in The Cape Times October 20, 2008:
“Allister Sparks blamed free markets for the world’s financial crisis, which he compared with catastrophes like the fall of the Weimar republic, Hitler and the Holocaust (October 15).
Here is another catastrophe he should have mentioned: the present financial crisis began with the sub prime mortgage fiasco in the United States, which was initiated by former president Bill Clinton.
Don’t take my word for that: refer to the New York Times of September 30, 1999: “In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low- income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans….”
And it continues: “Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate- income people, those borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans….”
I agree with R Groves. American labour could not compete with Asia AND live in the same style as their parents. The USA government was afraid to tell them so or they would lose votes, so they cheated, and provided houses to people whose wages were too low to be able to afford to repay them – and then sold these liabilities as assets all around the world. In Britain, and in the old Socialist White South Africa, this problem was solved by state housing at low rentals (which remained the asset of the state for at least 10 years, after which purchase or 99 year leases could be bought on mortgage in SA).
Why did Asia succeed and Africa fail? Asians have the advantage of not being black, and therefore not having racist black Americans or Jamaicans descend on them from the slave diaspora advising them how to be better capitalists than White Americans, and turning their laws into American laws, in order to score points against “whites”. Asia listened to the IMF and the World Bank, borrowed their money, but otherwise ignored them, and subsidised their workers and targeted certain markets.
If Africa is to compete it has to do the same, and it also has to learn birth control, before it has to become as drastic as China in control measures!
The most valuable thing Africa owns is land – what the world will always need is food. Much of Africa is dry, but Africa also has the best farmers for semi desert farming. If the Afrikaner can turn the Karroo into farmland, they can do it anywhere.
Competition in a global world will be between Nations, not within the individual Nation.
- News Times
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