The Price Of Empire by Pat Choate (NAPSA)—In his new book, The Sorrows of Empire, Chalmers Johnson argues that the United States now dominates the world through its military power. He describes how the U.S. garrisons the globe with a vast network of more than 700 military bases, located on every continent ex- Choate cept Antarctica. All this, he says, consti- tutes a new form of empire. The price paid to build and maintain this empireis great. One cost is the loss of major portions of the U.S. industrial base. The deal is simple: If other nations will support U.S. military and foreign proposals, the United States will concede all or parts of its major industries in exchange. In the 1970s, for instance, the United States quietly agreed to ignore its anti-trust laws while a Japanese cartel ravaged the U.S. consumer electronics industry. Japan was considered too important an ally in the Cold War to risk offending. Today, the United States has no consumerelectronics industry. In the 1980s, a similar deal was made with Japan on machine tools. Today, the U.S. machinetool industry is a remnant of what it was 20 years ago. In the 1990s, the United States gave away much of its apparel and textile industries in exchange for other nations’ agreement to the global trade agreement that created the World Trade Organization. When the deal was signed in 1995, the U.S. had almost 1.6 million apparel and textile jobs. Now, it has fewer than 700,000. These examples are neither unique nor isolated. One consequence is the U.S. must import what it no longer can make, thereby creating massive trade deficits. In 2008, the U.S. trade deficit exceeded $500 billion. Another consequenceis the loss of U.S. jobs. Over the past three years, the United States has lost almost 2.8 million good-paying manufacturingjobs. Paradoxically, foreign policy deals that swap away the U.S. industrial base actually weaken U.S. security. Many of the electronics and other high-tech components used in U.S. weapons systems, for example, are designed and manufactured in other countries, such as China. They may be unreliable suppliers in any future wars, even adversaries. A secure America requires a strong, domestically based industrial sector. We think manufacturing in America matters. What do you think? You can learn more at and express your opinions to: The Price of Empire, Crafted With Pride in the USA,It Matters!, P.O. Box 65326, Washington, DC 20035 and at www.craftedwithpride.org. Mr. Choate is director of the Washington, D.C.-based Manufacturing Policy Project.
