Who Fed The Tiger?

by Pat Buchanan - November 18th, 2010 - World Net Daily

For decades, corporate America [read Wall Street and our giant corporations] championed investing in China and trade with China, though the massive transfer of U.S. factories, technologies and jobs was clearly empowering China and weakening America.

Now, with U.S. political, military, industrial and strategic decline vis a vis China manifest to the world, we hear the wails of American businessmen that they are not being treated fairly by the Chinese. And the politicians responsible for building up China are now talking tough about confronting and containing China.

Sorry, but that cat cannot be walked back.

Review commission chair Dan Slane says his members have concluded that "China is adopting a highly discriminatory policy of favoring domestic producers over foreign manufacturers. Under the guise of fostering 'indigenous innovation' ... the government of China appears determined to exclude foreigners from bidding on government contracts at the central, provincial and local levels."

Imagine that! The Chinese are ignoring WTO rules and putting China first. Don't they understand how the Global Economy works? You're not supposed to tilt the field in favor of the home team.

One knows not whether to laugh or cry.

The policy the Chinese are pursuing, economic nationalism, was virtually invented by the Republican Party. Protectionism was the declared policy of the GOP from the day its first president took office in 1861 to the day Calvin Coolidge left in 1929.

Free trade was the policy of a Great Britain whose clocks those generations of Americans cleaned, even as the Chinese are cleaning ours.

Wall Street is the enemy of America. It has been for a couple of generations. It is not incorrect to say that Wall Street leaders are traitors to our nation and our way of life. Seeking short term profits they have gutted our industrial base to make profits in countries such as China. Now China is making it clear that they don't want Wall Street meddling in their countries and they are excluding the same idiots who empowered China in the first place.

I disagree with only one expression in Buchanan's article. There is no doubt whether we should laugh or cry. Crying is the only proper response to having watched our nation voluntarily gut our own economic might. I don't blame the socialists of the Democrat Party. They are intellectually committed to weakening America. Them I expect. When are Republicans going to wake up to what they are doing?