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The Time Has Come – BOYCOTT

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The American Jobs Alliance and TAP America have joined in calling for a BOYCOTT of China. Further announcements of support and events will be forthcoming. It’s time for American Consumers to alert American Firms to the market risk they face when they cooperate with and support the Communist Government of China and its mechanisms of repression!

Read about it at Business Week:

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/markets/news/article.asp?docKey=600-201205150753MRKTWIREUSPR_____887428-1&params=timestamp%7C%7C05/15/2012%207:53%20AM%20ET%7C%7Cheadline%7C%7CTAP%20America%2C%20American%20Job%20Alliance%20and%20Made%20In%20the%20USA%20Foundation%20Form%20National%20’Buy%20American’%20Coalition%7C%7CdocSource%7C%7CMarketwire%7C%7Cprovider%7C%7CACQUIREMEDIA

Complete Text of the Press Release:

TAP AMERICA, AMERICAN JOB ALLIANCE AND MADE IN THE USA FOUNDATION FORM NATIONAL ‘BUY AMERICAN’ COALITION

Organizations Partner to Promote Job Creation & Encourage Boycott of Products Made InChina

 

SEATTLE, WASH. – May 15, 2012 – TAP America, a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening America, Made In the USA Foundation and the American Job Alliance today announced the ‘Buy American Coalition’ to stimulate our national economy, protect our nation’s values and weaken authoritarian regimes abroad that violate human rights.

 

The formation of the ‘Buy American Coalition’ comes on the heels of the latest troubling news out of China. Customs officials have seized thousands of pills made from the flesh of dead babies, the product of the Chinese Communist Party’s forced abortion policy.  The Chinese dissident who fled to the U.S. Embassy, Chen Guangfeng, was imprisoned and persecuted by Communist officials for protesting this inhuman practice.

 

TAP America Founder Mark Bloome said, “The ‘Buy American Coalition’ is of great importance to our country now more than ever. We are seeing our jobs being hollowed out in America by unfair competition from China. Working with both the American Jobs Alliance and Made In the USA Foundation, we believe that this issue is large enough to require examination by multiple organizations. We at TAPamerica.org are leading thecharge.”

 

The China Threat

The Buy American Coalition calls on citizens to buy American and boycott China. This grassroots action sends a clear message that Americans believe that our people and our nation prosper when we adhere to traditional values of liberty and human dignity, not when we abandon them to appease foreign tyrants.

 

China’s authoritarian regime is critically dependent on American cash and investment to fund its machinery of repression.   “When consumers buy American-made products they put Americans to work and starve the Chinese Communist Party of resources.  This is a double victory – for American workers and American values,” said Greg Autry, Senior Economist with the American Jobs Alliance.  “It is not possible or even necessary to completely shun Chinese-made products to have a positive impact.   Even the threat of a substantial boycott would change the behavior of corporations that benefit from China’s exploited labor and mercantilist trade behavior,” Autry notes. “A 20% drop in imports from China would easily destabilize Beijing.  Buying American will make U.S. firms appreciate that.”

 

“For decades the US government has said that doing business with China would bring democracy and human rights to the Chinese people, but it is now clearer than ever that buying up their cheap prison-made goods has only strengthened the Chinese Communist Party,” said Harry Wu, Human Rights Activist and Founder of the Laogai Museum in Washington D.C. the first U.S. museum to directly address the human rights issues in China. “This imbalanced relationship is hurting the American people too, as they see their health threatened by unsafe Chinese products, their jobs lost, and their economy undermined. If governments do not insist that the repressive Chinese regime abide by fair trade practices, then it is up to American corporations and consumers to hold China accountable for its prison slave labor, lack of compassion for other workers, and countless human rights violations.”

 

The coalition will explore the foundations of America’s chronic joblessness and rising underemployment with the goal of finding actionable solutions.  Important issues under consideration include: international trade, geopolitics, currency devaluation, product safety and compliance, human rights, resource availability, and consumer interest in American products. The coalition is already experiencing broad, non-partisan support from many individuals and organizations. It does not endorse any political party, candidate, union, trade association or corporation.

 

The ‘Buy American Coalition” is comprised of:

·       Mark Bloome, Founder of TAP America

·       Richard Tso, Executive Director of TAP America

·       Greg Autry, Senior Economist for the American Jobs Alliance

·       Curtis Ellis, Communications Director of American Jobs Alliance

·       Joel Joseph, Founder of Made In the USA Foundation

 

“Our organization is all about creating jobs for Americans,” said Curtis Ellis, Communications Director with the American Job Alliance. “Forming this coalition aligns our organization with TAP America so that we can tackle the issues preventing job creation in the United States.  High on the list are the predatory trade practices of the Chinese Communist regime.  We can put our money where our values are by buying American at every opportunity.  Our ancestors built this great country by doing what was right, not what was easy.  We must follow their example to rebuild the country.”

 

“There are three main causes of our trade deficit:  trade with China, imports of automobiles and imported oil,” said Joel Joseph at Made In the USA Foundation. “The deficit with China is the most dangerous because many Chinese industries are owned by the People’s Liberation Army, and American consumers are thus funding a military force that poses a significant danger to the well-being of the United States.”

 

TAP America recently announced their TAP Certified Merchant program to encourage stores to stock at least 20% ofU.S. goods and to increase their American made inventories by just 1% per month. As incentive, businesses who sign up are featured in news articles, included in the TAP online business directory, and are featured in a Groupon-like service called AmeriCoupon that helps people find deals on products made in America. TAP Merchant Filson was recently awarded the TAP America Loyalty to America Award for its commitment to keeping over 70% of manufacturing in the United States.

 

Since launching in January of 2011, TAP has created national awareness campaigns aimed at promoting tolerance, encouraging people to stay physically active, and to purchase products made in America. For more information about TAP America, to volunteer or to make a donation, please visit www.tapamerica.org.

 

Please Don’t Feed the Dragon

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The Pentagon has released its annual report to Congress on the “People’s Republic” of China’s rapidly growing military menace and once again, we are presented with a frightening armory designed to rain death on America and her allies. This time around the PLA’s toy list includes a new stealth fighter and aircraft carrier as well as improved ICBMs and nuclear warheads. Of particular interest is the DF-21D missile specifically designed to destroy U.S. Navy carriers at sea.

Let’s just be honest, China is working overtime to assemble the force required to eject America from her role as peacekeeper of the Pacific so that it can have its way with its Asian neighbors. The Vietnamese know it, that’s why they are buying submarines from Russia as fast as they can get them. Taiwan knows it, which is why they are nearly in a panic for higher tech U.S. weapons. Even ancient enemies Korea and Japan are coming together over their mutal fear of Chinese hegemony.

Meanwhile, President Obama says, “I absolutely believe that China’s peaceful rise is good for the world and it’s good for America.” Well, Mr. President, this DOD report details the most expensive “peaceful rise” since Hitler’s, as everyone’s favorite communist dictatorship has once again increased military spending by double digits to a whopping $160 billion. In fact, China has been growing its military budgets even faster than its phenomenal GDP for the last decade.

While China invests, builds and trains, the U.S. military is wearing out its people and its equipment in fruitless desert conflicts and faces a future of painful budget cuts. You don’t need Excel to understand where those two trajectories lead. The question is what can we do about it? Rather than dwell on the obvious fact that we cannot afford another Cold War build up, let’s ask ourselves just how is China funding theirs? Any ideas Wal-Mart shoppers?

It turns out that America’s trade deficit with China – on track to easily break last year’s record $273 Billion– covers the whole thing with room to spare. Imagine if American businesses and consumers had been funding the Soviet Union’s military machine; Doctor Strangelove would have a seizure. Yet, here we are and so we must ask this question:

Why does America do business with a nation that is preparing to attack our allies and threatens our own families with nuclear death?

Further, if the fact they are preparing to kill your kids isn’t enough to send you screaming from the shelves at Target then consider that China also:

1. Delivers a hugely disproportionate percentage of defective and dangerous products, while effectively avoiding liability and burdening U.S. taxpayers with the regulatory costs.

2. Regularly hacks the computers of our businesses, government offices, military, and humanitarian groups.

3. Cheats on nearly every World Trade Organization rule.

4. Maintains a record on human rights, censorship, women’s rights, and religious tolerance that is on par with Syria and Iran – two countries China regularly provides weapons to.

5. Represses the rights of its own workers in order to gain economic advantage.

6. Terribly pollutes its own and the world’s environment for financial gain.

8. Steals our intellectual property and counterfeits our products.

9. Is taking nearly a million jobs per year out of our economy via the reduction in U.S. GDP caused by the trade deficit.

We could write an entire book detailing the personal tragedies and national costs behind each of these criminal acts (and we did). Suffice it to say most Americans accept that these charges are accurate, but have failed to grasp that together they detail a threat much larger than the sum of the parts. China’s dictators love America’s inability to think strategically about the costs of our fruitless China policy. While they are running a carefully integrated game of economic-military-geopolitical dominance America’s diplomats stick with a flailing, tactical plan of “divide and be conquered” from the last century.

Mr. Kissinger’s policy of “engagement” with China was necessary right up to the day the Soviet Union was driven bankrupt fighting a double-ended cold war. Since then it has been little more than a giant subsidy for the expansion of another communist threat and it is America that will soon face default or obliteration.

While U.S. shoppers may think they are saving money and large multinationals reap short-term profits on this trade, it is clearly not in the long-term interest of America to continue business as usual with the Boys from Beijing. If we must, there are a plethora of countries where we can find cheap labor for Wal-Mart without funding a repugnant regime that views us as its enemy.

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Greg Autry is the co-author of Death by China. He teaches Macro Economics at the Merage School of Business, UC Irvine. He writes and speaks on China, space, economics, investing, and business strategy. Please follow us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/DeathByChina

 

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