Right away, you will better understand why Florange is closing...
Have you ever watched a football game or a basketball game where one team dominates the other so much that to say it's a "kill" is an understatement? Well, that's what China is doing to the United States. China has completely pulverized America on the world economic stage.
Once upon a time there was a Chinese economy that was a joke and the United States economy that was the most powerful the world had ever seen. But over the past two decades the US economy has shrunk and withered, while the Chinese economy has boomed and soared. Today, China produces more steel, more automobiles, more beer, more cotton, more coal and more solar panels than we do. China has the fastest train in the world, the fastest computer in the world, and exports twice as many high-tech products as we do.
In 2011, the US trade deficit with China was the largest trade deficit any nation had with any nation in all of history; today China has now accumulated more than $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. Every day we are giving up more jobs, more businesses and more of our national wealth to China. In technical economic terms, China “led us behind the lumber shed” – into a corner of the international stage – and beat us to the hilt.
Unfortunately, most Americans are so addicted to fun that they don't even realize what's going on.
If you don't believe that China is soaping America's plank in front of the rest of the world, read on. To be continued, the 47 signs proving that China has completely pulverized America on the world economic stage…
N° 1 – In 1998, the United States accounted for 25% of the world market for high-tech exports, while China accounted for just 10%. Today, China's high-tech exports are more than twice larger than those of the United States.
N° 2 – America lost more than a quarter of all of its high-tech manufacturing jobs over the past ten years.
N° 3 – The Chinese economy has grown 7 times faster than that of the US economy over the past decade.
N° 4 – In 2010, China produced more than twice as much automobiles than the United States.
N° 5 – In 2010, China produced 627 million tonnes steel metrics. The United States only 80 million metric tons.
N° 6 – In 2010, China produced 7,3 million tonnes of cotton. The United States produced 3,4 million tons of cotton.
N° 7 – China produced 19,8% of all goods consumed in the world in 2010. The United States in produce 19,4%.
N° 8 – During 2010, we spent 365 billion in goods and services from China when they only spent $92 billion on ours.
N° 9 – In 1985, the American trade deficit with China was 6 million for the whole year. The final US trade deficit with China for 2011 will be very close to 300 billion. It will be the largest trade deficit a nation has had with another nation in all of history.
N° 10 – The US trade deficit with China is now 28 times more important than it was in 1990.
N° 11 – Since China joined the WTO in 2001, the US trade deficit with China has increased by an average of 18% per year.
No. 12 - According to New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27 in the US, it costs around $490 in China.
N° 13 – According to the Economic Institute of Politics, America is losing half a million jobs for the benefit of China every year.
N° 14 – The United States lost a (huge) 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since 2000.
No. 15 – The United States was the world's largest energy consumer for about 100 years, but in the summer of 2010 China took over number one spot.
N° 16 – 15 years ago, China, was 14e worldwide for the publication of scientific research articles. But now China should overtake the United States and become number one in a very short time.
N° 17 – China is also expected to soon become the world leader patent filings.
No. 18 – In 2009, the United States rank dead last of the 40 countries examined by the Foundation for Information Technology and Innovation when it comes to “change” in the area of “global competitiveness based on innovation” over the previous ten years.
No. 19 – Today, China delivers more doctoral degrees in engineering each year than the United States.
No. 20 – China now owns the supercomputer fastest on the planet.
No. 21 – China currently has trains the fastest in the world and the world's largest network of high-speed trains.
No. 22 – The construction of the new headquarters of the African Union was funded by China ($ 200 million).
No. 23 – Today, China produces almost twice as much beer than the United States.
N° 24 – 85% of all artificial Christmas trees are made in China.
No. 25 – Surprisingly, China now consumes 53% of global cement.
No. 26 – There are more pigs in China than in the 43 pork-producing nations united.
No. 27 – China is now the leading producer of wind and solar energy across the globe.
No. 28 – In China, the production of solar panels was approximately 50 times greater in 2010 than it was in 2005.
No. 29 – Currently, China produces more than three times more coal than the United States.
No. 30 – China controls more than 90 percent of the world's total supply of rare earths.
No. 31 – China is now the number one supplier essential components for the operation of American defense systems.
No. 32 – According to author Clyde Prestowitz, China's #1 export to the United States is computer equipment. According to an article by US News & World Report, during 2010 the number one export from the United States to China was “scrap metal and waste".
No. 33 – The United States lost an average of 50 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
N° 34 - Back in the year 2000, over 20% of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs. Today only 5% about.
No. 35 - Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38% of manufacturing jobs were lost in Ohio, 42% in North Carolina and 48% in Michigan.
No. 36 – The average household debt burden in the United States is 136% of average income. In China, it is of 17%.
No. 37 - The new World Trade Center is going to be built with glass imported from China.
N° 38 – The new Martin Luther King Memorial on the National Mall was made in china.
N° 39 – A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted some time ago showed that 61 percent of Americans see China as a threat to their jobs and economic security.
No. 40 – According to U.S. Representative Sutton Betty, an average of 23 production sites were closed every day in the United States in 2010.
No. 41 - Generally, more than 56.000 sites production sites in the United States have been closed since 2001.
No. 42 – According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million jobs in the United States could be relocated out of the country over the next two decades.
No. 43 – Over the past few decades, China has been able to accumulate approximately 3 000 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves, and the United States government now owes China nearly 1 500 billion dollars.
No. 44 – According to the IMF, China will overtake the United States and become the world's largest economy by 2016.
No. 45 – According to a leading economist, the Chinese economy is already creating about as much buying power than the US economy.
No. 46 – According to Stanford University, and economics professor Lazear Ed, if the US economy and the Chinese economy continue to grow at the current rate, the average Chinese citizen will be wealthier than the average US citizen in just 30 years.
No. 47 – Nobel Laureate in Economics Robert Fogel W. of the University of Chicago predicts that the Chinese economy will be three times stronger than the US economy by the year 2040 if current trends continue.
If the global economy were a game, America would lose miserably while China would be the big winner.
Unfortunately, the global economy is not a game. Real businesses and real jobs are being affected every day.
Barack Obama continues to talk about how “the economy is improving”, but the reality is that we never got back to where we were before the 2008 financial crisis.
The following chart (which was pulled today from a Fed website) shows the average duration of unemployment in the United States.
Is this what an economic recovery looks like to you? ….
The Obama administration tells us that the official unemployment rate is only 8,5%, but that's a joke. Even the Congressional Budget Office admits that the official unemployment rate should indeed be around 10 percent.
But the real problem is the number of long-term unemployed we have in America today.
According to Hamilton, approximately 53 percent of unemployed workers in the state of Florida during 2011 have been unemployed for more than six months.
However Barack Obama seems absolutely amazed that there are still so many unemployed there despite his “economic recovery”. Just check out the following conversation that took place between Mr. Obama and a woman whose husband is affected by this issue, during a recent appearance by B. Obama on Google + ....
“Can I ask you what kind of engineer your husband is?” Mr. Obama told the unemployed engineer's wife.
"He's a semiconductor engineer," she replied.
"I'm interested - and I mean what I said - and if your husband could send me his CV I'd try to find out exactly what's going on there because the feedback we're getting is that someone in this type of field – high technology – this type of engineer, should be able to find something right away. “
Obama doesn't realize that it's not that simple to “find something right now” in this economy.
We've been shipping high-tech jobs overseas at a blistering pace. The jobs just aren't there anymore.
In Europe, unemployment is even worse. Just consult this painting which shows what has happened to the level of youth unemployment in Europe recently.
In the United States and Europe, a great disconnect has taken place. Just because big corporations in the US and Europe are doing well, that doesn't mean they're going to provide good jobs for workers in the US and Europe.
These days, it's all too easy for big corporations to outsource jobs to places like China, where it's perfectly legal to pay workers slave wages.
So unless something changes, that means that from now on there will be chronic problems with structural unemployment in the United States.
It also means that the number of Americans which depend on the government will continue to increase.
And sadly, there are signs that the economy is on the verge of another downturn. Consumer confidence in the United States is down again. The Baltic Dry Index, which is often used as a measure of the health of the global economy, fell more than 60 percent since October.
Perhaps most important of all, Europe is heading into a recession and several European countries are already experiencing conditions similar to depression.
Considering that half of all global trade involves Europe in some way, that's not good for us.
So, if you have a job right now, keep it safe. Jobs are a scarce commodity right now, and they will become even rarer in the years to come.
Published on January 31, 2012 - The Economic Collapse Blog
This text is the translation of an article from the site The Economic Collapse – Thanks to Valérie for her exclusive translation for www.les-crises.fr
Source (s): The-crises.fr, The blog at Lupus
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