The Flow of Trade is a major consideration of civilizations and cultures
working together to insure that they can get what they need. Some areas have special
crops, which grow in their regions, which the other regions would like to have. In
days of the First colonies in this country, before it was a country trade with the
local Indians were vital to them staying alive. My ancestors traded with the Native
Indian tribes to insure the colony had the food and things needed to get through the
winter months.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~m...ily/pilgrim.htm

If it were not for the Native Indians in those first winters the Pilgrims would have
died, starved and frozen. Civilizations? trading has been written about throughout
history and every culture, race, nationality and religion have ancient writings to
show for it. It seems as if trade partners is a way to exchange the products and
services to improve quality of life and higher standard of living to both sides. It
brings with it, possibilities for peace and opens cultural exchange and best of all
it makes friends. We can learn a lot from fellow cultures, species and
nationalities.

Today trade partners are keeping peace in the world, because you are less likely to
attack or want to cause war against a group or country from which you derive
products, natural resources, technology, enlightenment, services, assistance or
other form of trade from. Today most of the peace has been nurtured through trade.
Many of our wars have in part been due to trade disputes. For instance the Japanese
in WWII part of the reason was due to rubber trade and other resources. Our breaking
with England in the revolutionary war was over tea, taxes and other serious issues.
Many of our allies in wars were those who were trading partners, for fear of loses a
trading partner. Today we have partial reason for wars over natural resources like
Oil.

Today in the news most of our hardships or disputes come from unequal trading
partners trying to get a little extra by manipulating currencies. Free trade is a
good thing provided the sides trading have what the others need, items they do not
wish to produce or cannot produce for the same costs due to regional temperature
variations, labor forces, raw materials or cultural norm. Sometimes as many found
triangle trading partners worked because one country needed something but the
trading partner did not need what the other had extra to sell, but a third partner
did and the first partner only had enough to supply her own country. But the first
partner needed what the third partner had. Eventually the trading ended up using a
unit of trade such as gold, silver, etc. Then eventually gold coins and silver coins
and currency came into play.

In Amsterdam a whole new trading hub created with interest, currency, banks, and
trade of every good known to man at that time. This was the combination of centuries
and millennium of trade and what was learned. Civilization and modern living with
amenities and time for recreation, thinking and personal items became possible and
thrust the world into a better place of working together. Wars of course did not
stop, but rather the shift in thinking began to take shape. Trading partners and
allies are generally all part of the strategic thinking of wars or of peace.

The Germans before WWII used the trade payments as a tool and established a
bureaucracy to slow out flow, while collecting the inflow of goods, thus insuring it
owed money and therefore existing trading partners would not want to go against them
for fear they might not be paid. Literally becoming a cancer or parasite on the out
flow of money or on the flow the float. Often still countries attempt to manipulate
flow. Trade organizations are set up to keep flows fair and products and goods
flowing so no one trading partner can hurt another. When the parasites of flow
attack and manipulate the flow of trade whether in or out they do so at the expense
of the people and business, jobs and families of their trading partners. This is why
in WWII, the Japanese literally felt as if the act of war was the US, not their
attack on us at Pearl Harbor. The world is still not perfect. Today we find China
and Japan manipulating currencies to get an edge. Meanwhile stealing technology or
we secretly give it. For instance their satellite programs and recent man in space.
Stealing of the P-3 and the problems at Los Alamos where secret scientific research
was collected and then the spy for sex FBI scandal. Our trade deficit with China
today is a hundred Billion annually. And we figure 2.7 million jobs have ended up
there. China also owns 88 Billion in US Treasury notes to hedge against their
undervalued and manipulated currency, all this very interesting. The Japanese come
to America with trade delegations and take pictures of every thing we make. Stealing
technology and taking information from niche manufacturers of components, then copy
the stuff and manufacturer it there. Problems of piracy are on a grand scale, but
the PTO in the US favors the foreign competitors who scan thousands of inventions
per day and take and make the stuff there in other countries. All US based
technology. There is so much disclosure in America forced onto American public and
even private companies that a corporate intelligence gatherer has little trouble in
finding anything they might want. For every dollar of products we sell in China,
they sell six dollars here. Industries like plastics, toys, electronics, heavy
equipment parts, shoes, junky trinkets, aerospace parts, semi-conductor components
for computers. It is a huge issue. And with 3.5 billion people to employ, before
that thirst is satisfied there is no end in sight or possibility of their labor
source balancing out with unions or supply and demand issues to drive the labor
costs up anywhere near that of the US. The average worker there could cost as much
as $1200.00 per year there, here try above $24,000.00 . Shipping the products half
way around the world also irrelevant considering the low labor costs. To compete our
companies are hiring them to make the stuff there, costing jobs here, but in the end
staying in business. Why are companies here doing this? Well unions, lawyers,
regulations all drive up costs of production and make efficiency rather irrelevant.
Read this article for more details on efficiencies in manufacturing.

http://www.carwashguys.com/finite.pdf .

When we saw these issues get so bad about 2 decades before we initiated NAFTA, so we
could open trade with Mexico. Today NAFTA, which covers all of North America and
Mexico and a few other partners has rules such as 51% of all vehicles are to be
built in a NAFTA country. Again the reason why BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Nissan
all have plants here. These plants thankfully must hire labor from here in the
states. Which is good for the workers and employment. But much today is built by
robots. And much is also built in Canada and Mexico. In Mexico is costs me 50% to
send over business equipment as an extra tariff. US companies have huge factories
over the borders in Juarez near El Paso and over the borders from Laredo and
Brownsville, TX. Besides NAFTA there are huge trade organizations and treaties. The
WTO has been a big devastator of jobs for textiles, shoes, etc. in Monterrey Mexico
all those jobs now have moved to China. Previously in the Southern States were
factories for carpets, shoes, clothes, linen, suitcases, furniture, etc. But most of
those jobs went to Mexico and now to China and even today China says they are losing
those jobs to other countries with lower wages. China losing manufacturing jobs too:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories...y64.html?f=et79 In hind sight the
workers in GA, AL, TN, SC, NC, etc. are asking well look what great job that did?
And to some extent they are correct. But that is not all that was affected. If you
look at all the old mills in New England those factories closed too, workers would
not take a pay cut or work the Fredrick Winslow Taylor (yes an ancestor of mine
through Ann Winslow of Philadelphia). Instead demanding greater benefits with less
production and productivity.

You may wish to read ?Collision Course? by Micheline Maynard. Not a pretty site.
Also ?NAFTA? and another book; ?Selling of Free Trade: NAFTA, Washington, and the
Subversion of American Democracy? by John Macarthur. You can debate both sides, well
I can. The idea of free trade is fine really if all things were equal. Well all
things are not equal; we have in this country all sorts of laws. OSHA, EPA and over
regulations in all industries many over lapping and then through in states like CA,
MA and it is a wonder you could produce any thing. Including a toothpick, which by
the way for such a simplistic item, you would not believe the regulations. Think
about it, the damn items come from wood and trees. You want to back track to the
timber industry in Aberdeen, Washington? First you need to cut down and harvest a
tree? Woooo, slow down horsy. In Aberdeen;

http://www.carwashguys.com/tour_aberdeen.shtml

there are the environmentalists. And forget the fact that all the trees were cut
down outside Bangladesh and the great floods a mud came later. We have environmental
laws here so the tooth pick manufacturer will have to get the wood from somewhere,
where it is okay to cut down the forest. Thus timber jobs are a loser, paper
manufacturing is a loser, building materials like trusses etc, must come from
somewhere else. Otherwise you find you self in the middle of a lawsuit-Sierra Club.
Well then the builders need to make sure they have supply so when Enron decided to
sell timber futures they found the best deal in Canada, who was checkerboard clear
cutting. But with housing growth in the US propping up the economy along with
financial institutions loaning on new housing starts the game continued. However the
timber industry in Canada was abusing its environment and upsetting the people
there. Since they were dumping, selling below the cost to reproduce the forest of
which they had no intention like that of the US, which is required by our laws to
replant the forests. Which you can see in ID, WA, OR, CA and it is extremely
prevalent in the Olympia Peninsula. What happens is and we even see this in our Car
Wash Industry;

http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/0000004b.htm

and even just this week in CA;

http://www.carwash.com/news.asp?mode=4&N_ID=43579 .

When over regulation makes it impossible to compete and manufacturers cannot make up
the difference and the labor unions will not help to streamline, work more efficient
and demand the same high pay while taking the productivity needed to sustain the
company for granted the company has no choice but to close the facility and
manufacture somewhere else or close the company all together for instance the
PillowTex Company a long time hold out which crumbled under pressure recently from
the Kmart downsizing. If you look at some of the cities we have been to and studied
we see the problems of over regulation and hard core union short-term thinking. Of
course the unions are angry at the high salary of the executives which have gotten a
little out of line especially as the companies are laying off workers and the
company is not making a profit.

However, a man should put in an honest day for that which he was hired and that does
not mean just showing up and punching the clock but actually providing some real
work and productivity. When we travel the country we see closed factories, boarded
up small businesses which made money selling goods and services to those workers,
now downtown is a ghost town, the mills are closed and many people have left, the
ones remaining have gone on the public dole and get a small government check each
month. Who has won? This is what people are saying who are against free trade. But
in free trade all things being equal everyone should do just fine. Another issue is
the imbalance of money flow and trade deficit issues where our money flows out and
does not circulate here, meaning people have less of it. Think of it this way. A
Wal-Mart goes into a small town which is a hub for five other towns, the towns try
to keep it out, so it goes to the outside of town and no city gets the sales tax
revenue share. Then the small businesses which compete for things that Wal-Mart
sells cannot stay in business, so the employees are forced to go to work at
Wal-Mart. Then people buy from Wal-mart at lower costs due to economies of scale.
And use a number of other strategies such as slow pay to Wal-mart vendors exercising
their control on the float of payments out ward. Do not blame Wal-Mart, Sears, Dell
and many other large corporations have been doing this for decades and are getting
better at it every day. On a micro scale if you can call those businesses micro.
After all Wal-Mart is exactly 10% of our countries GDP and is China's seventh
largest trading partner. It employs the most people of any company on the Planet and
even more than the US Government (which could use a little Atkins Diet). But what is
being done is the same as the strategies of those trading partners, which hold up
transactional flow of payments. Also Wal-Mart is able to get the labor and pay less
by adding benefits again due to economies of scale that small companies cannot. It
would not matter anyway because small companies cannot compete on price without
massive co-ops or a franchise system, which passes on the savings of those economies
of scale to their franchisees. Usually in a franchise which runs more like that of a
governmental structure adds on costs for the economies of scale buying and passes it
onto the franchisees by taking out the money in the flow. Some might be critical of
this because the franchisees best interests are not in mind and therefore their
actual success against big box stores like Wal-Mart is hampered. After all Wal-mart
changes oil, sells fuel, has a bank inside, restaurant, QSR-Quick Service
Restaurant, develops film, has a garden center, etc. Now then you understand why
Wal-Mart keeps growing and why Sam Walton was a brilliant man, basically he studied
what worked, the competition, the flows, cycles, frequencies, etc.

http://www.parthe.net/_cwg1202/00000029.htm

and of course there in Bentonville he collected all the data and duplicated it over
and over again. Who wins? Every consumer that shops there. Sam Walton also said that
he would always purchase American products first provided that they had equal
quality and price. Good for him? So then this will employ America while feeding
America right? Well sure enough, how could it not? It works, a complete closed loop.
Employing and supplying like Henry ford use to say, we want to pay our workers
enough so they will buy our cars, we do not need a union. A noble effort and idea
shared by the wise. Fortunately Sam Walton kept his promise to the American People
and unfortunately the government, legal system and unions did not keep their
promises. The government attacked businesses and over regulated them. The attorneys
used this to get a double whammy suing class action on top of governmental
regulatory fines which were under the impression that the should fine the same
amount as the costs of their budgets to the businesses they regulated. Meaning even
if the business broke no rules, they would have to find something to justify the
existence of the created bureaucracy. Go read the book; ?The Business End of
Government? By Smoot. ?Fountain Head? and ?Atlas Shrugged? by Ayn Rand. Read this
while you are at it.

http://www.carwashguys.com/073102_1.shtml

http://www.carwashguys.com/0122802_3.shtml

Another recent book is: ?The Case Against Lawyers? By Catherine Crier. By the way
Catherine; excellent book if you ever happen across this page on a search engine, I
want you to know I mean that. Also to illustrate my point I recommend and this one
will make you as angry as Smoot?s book, but it is correct and it is a shame for
America: ?Death of Common Sense: How Laws are Suffocating America? By Philip K.
Howard. What is shown in this book clearly is not what was intended by our founding
fathers.

Recently on C-SPAN, there were two gentlemen debating free trade one from the CATO
Institute for free trade. Yet he failed to mention the real problem, the lawyers,
over regulation and government bureaucracy. I had to call in and enlighten them on
the issues and what is really going on, they seem to be under the impression that
Americans did not want to work in manufacturing jobs? What on Earth was he thinking?
If the CATO Institute is going to go on National Television and debate free trade,
why not get someone like me who understands these issues to do it for them. For a
conservative free enterprise think tank, surely they have more depth to understand
the plight of the manufacturers in this country. Not everyone can run a service
company like me? We need all kinds jobs and if we are going to import, then we need
to export too. If we export we must maintain proper relations and import from those
reciprocating countries. When we lower tariffs and those countries we trade with
raise them, we lose. When we raise tariffs they lose. When some loses the are
disrespected and modern human psychology indicates that when people are disrespected
they want revenge. So there is a second reciprocal response. And a third and a forth
and this is a lot like a war isn?t it? Yes it is and this is why we ought to get
along. VonClauswitz would have been good a trade negotiation and trade war
escalation. We often cause issues that do not serve the best of mankind. For
instance the fruit in Brazil grows better tastes better than the fruit in Florida.
The fruit in Africa is bad so they might be happy with the fruit from Florida. If we
restrict and tariff the fruit from Brazil then they are mad at us, but we say we
will buy your oil? But really it is a drop in the bucket for us. The fruit farmers
in Florida have years of drought like problems and drain the Everglades. This causes
pollution issues since the solution to pollution is dilution and less water means
greater parts per million of pesticides, fertilizers, etc. Florida needs to have
larger reservoirs to collect the storm season water for their populations and use
desalination as they are doing now in Tampa Bay. Otherwise we ought to buy the
better fruit from Brazil and maybe use the land in Florida for something else. Once
they have the water supply grow the fruit here and let the consumer decide which
fruit they like best provided that Brazil does not steal water from their natural
settings either, same with grapes, wine, strawberries in CA and Specialty berries in
North Eastern UT. Might want to take this opportunity to catch up on the flow of
water in the United States and the weather and rivers and agriculture:

http://www.parthe.net/_cwg1003/00000014.htm

Another issues is Ethanol Plants, they need corn, but corn takes water and states
like Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri are
in drought. So if you take the water to make corn, to process (which also takes
water) to make fuel and in the process release CO2 then where are you really in
terms of trade? If other countries want the ethanol and it is an export crop then,
we leave the CO2 for us to breath and the water bill here to? This is the cause and
affect of linear thinking in theories of trade. North Korea has trading partners;
Japan for fishing lures and supplies. It?s exports are minerals, metallurgical
products, manufactures (including armaments); agricultural and fishery products. And
it imports petroleum, coking coal, machinery and equipment; consumer goods, grain.
In times of non-drought it ought to be exporting Ethanol processed there made from
corn with the Bt. Gene (super-corn GM), not plutonium for nuclear weapons. All
countries have specific things that are abundant in the region. Middle East it is
oil and sand. We do not need the sand but can use it to make cement. So perhaps we
should import sand and oil from there and they can buy cars, computers, and other
things from us. By developing trading partners, we can keep peace if of course the
Westerner Hatred thing can be educated out of the population? What we in the United
States need to be careful of is buying products from other countries and they take
that money and rather than buy what we produce the end up buying us. For instance
our companies; Telephone companies, media outlets, Car Manufacturers, refuse
companies, bus companies, water companies, food distribution companies, trucking
companies, truck manufacturing companies, large commercial real estate companies,
golf courses, Aerospace companies, let?s see give me a few minutes and I can think
of some more. You see the issues here? If we buy some of their companies and they
buy some of ours, that is even Steven. But if we buy consumables and they buy our
infrastructure and companies then the problem is compounded because they end up
scraping the cr?me off the float and the flow. In other words the money they make
selling to us domestically, while they own our companies allows them to buy more
companies and retain more profits that they send over seas. Once they have all this
money they have to spend it on projects else where or here, but really capital
expenditures here is a dead issue with all the regulations after all we are having a
difficult time getting our own companies here to do that. After all why should they
want to re-invest in America when they can get a higher return manufacturing over
seas, leaving no jobs here for Americans, so they can continue to buy. Thus the
average consumer is upside down in their cars, over extended on credit card debt and
living in a house, which they the consumer may have 10-15% equity and probably less
with all these new home sales on 2-3% down and all the re-financing to pay off short
term debt. Now lets look at Wal-Mart again. You buy a product there, 6% goes to the
employee, 10% is profit to the company, 80% goes to re-stock or the cost of goods
sold. Of the 80% about 20-25% goes to China. Now then how long will it take at 433
Billion dollars a year for China to have all of our money, leaving no money flow for
us to circulate? Well if we keep putting money into our economy, it would take
forever. But if we do not then eventually all the money flow will go. Now some of
that money comes back since expanding emerging markets need things. But only $1 is
coming back to us. But how is it coming back? Is it coming back in consumables? Are
they buying automobiles? No, we cannot produce the automobiles as inexpensive as
South Korea, Japan or India, our labor unions, regulations and factored in costs of
lawsuits or even threats of potential lawsuits will not allow us to. So they will be
buying the automobiles from them not us. Well then will those countries be buying
from us as they expand? Yes, but it takes a while and still we have an upside down
flow to those countries as well. The trade flows is a serious issue. It seems tough
to do business in a country, where your own government is constantly attacking your
hard work efforts to supply jobs and capital. The lawmakers make regulations and
then the lawyers find people to complain to bring about regulatory fines or actions
and then the lawyers use these for basis of a class action against the company. Thus
we allow this to cut off the name that feeds us while the regulators make a name for
themselves so they can join their lawyer friends defending the regulation insanity
they helped create while they were there. Or these regulators run for office with
all their notoriety to make more laws pandering to the voters who have not worked an
honest day in their lives. Those that have would not vote that way. Unless the media
tells them too. With everyone ganging up on the entrepreneurs and companies the
companies no longer feel beholden to the American Ideals that they once had and
except for a few hold outs have decided to take their money and vote with their
dollars to manufacture elsewhere. Thus a transfer of technology, innovation, capital
compounds the problems of the trade deficit. So what is the answer? Well, it is
simple really. All laws must be reality based. Must be non-linear. Must disappear if
they restrict flow on all sides, on the US side and our trading partners. Free trade
means free trade. There is nothing free about the parasites of flow, tariffs, quotas
or obstruction. The bigger problem is that the US has the best policies for those we
trade with, yet our trading partners have not considered the benefits of the Western
World?s WIN-WIN situation, instead laughing at us and when we try counter their
attacks they scream and yell and want more free stuff and they want sanctions
against us. It is a lot like the person on welfare, give them everything and they
want more and if you let them vote they will keep voting for more free stuff.
Interesting what the liberal views are doing to the country, equally interesting
what happens when we succumb to the belief that we need to regulate morality, make
laws to protect the stupidest person in a society and then place the total burden on
the few producers, which are left. While simultaneously vilifying the doers,
creators, movers and shakers; then we attack the innovators and entrepreneurs,
bankers and market makers who have built on blood sweat and tears all we are and all
that exists. Maybe is it time to read my reading list?

http://www.carwashguys.com/0021803_2.shtml

I hope this makes some sense to those who watch the flows. Apparently some of the
most simplistic things in life are being ignored and no one has the balls to fix the
real issues in this country when it comes to the essentials of what works, how it
works and why it has worked up until now. The system is broken. It needs to be
fixed. The Flow of Trade is important, we cannot be taken advantage of or we will
trade the middle class of America for it. If we lose the middle class we lose what
it means to live free and then our rights to pursue happiness and all those who died
to protect such rights have died in vain and to no avail. I cannot accept that.
Let?s stand tall and proud together, get on the same page, admit that the regulatory
quagmire, overzealous litigation and attack on American Businesses from the;
politicians on both sides, grandstanding Elliot Spitzer?s of the world, liberal
media and those that do not understand the complete picture; has gone on long
enough. Won?t you join me now and demand a reality check. The time has come to make
things right. The flow is going the wrong way at the wrong speed. Without Trucking
there is no trade, no flow and now here is the only place to go.

The Flow of Trade is an integral part of they over all system to keep peace in the
world, food on the table and move mankind forward together, all of us - throughout
the world.

About the Author

Lance Winslow: http://www.carwashguys.com/history/founder.html