THE TRADE WAR!        GP 2248

       1. THERE ARE SEVERAL SERIOUS ECONOMIC PROBLEMS THAT HAVE BEEN BUILDING UP FOR MONTHS & YEARS THAT MAKE A WORLDWIDE ECONOMIC CRASH CERTAIN! The United States, once the richest nation on Earth, is now 3 trillion dollars in debt! They have borrowed so heavily from U.S. banks & from foreign investors that they are now the greatest debtor nation in the World! All the Western industrialised nations, as well as most of the poor developing nations, are so deeply in debt to the IMF, & their economies so unbalanced & fragile with inflation, that it wouldn't take much to cause them to all come tumbling down into a full Depression! In fact, it's amazing that it hasn't happened already!
       2. BECAUSE OF DETERIORATING WORLD ECONOMIC CONDITIONS & A GROWING TRADE IMBALANCE, AN ALL-OUT TRADE WAR HAS NOW DEVELOPED BETWEEN THE INDUSTRIAL NATIONS! At this point, tempers are so hot that it is almost impossible that they will reach a trade agreement! The U.S. is so furious that they can't sell their products in competition with Japan & the developing nations, that they are threatening the most drastic trade tariffs in all of U.S. history! Why are they taking such extreme protectionist measures? The reason is this:
       3. DESPITE THE PRESENT RECESSION, U.S. WORKERS ARE STILL MUCH MORE RICHLY-PAID THAN THE LABOUR FORCE OF THE REST OF THE WORLD. This of course means that the goods that they manufacture also cost much more. So if given a choice between buying an expensive American product or the same product for a cheaper price--imported from Japan or a poor developing nation--the average American shopper will buy the cheaper imported item. U.S. industries are unwilling & unable to manufacture goods at a price that most people can afford, so they just cannot compete with the cheap imported goods. To survive & be competitive, Americans would have to settle for lower wages & a somewhat lower, more realistic standard of living.--But of course they won't!
       4. THESE RICH AMERICAN INDUSTRIES ARE UNWILLING TO TAKE A SLIGHT LOSS IN PROFIT & let other nations continue to compete for sales in the U.S. market, so they are now howling for higher tariffs! These tariffs are literally a sales tax that the American public must pay on imported goods, whether high-technology goods from Japan or products & raw materials from poor developing nations. At present the U.S. government charges tariffs that add 2O% & sometimes as much as 200% to the actual cost of the item itself!
       5. THIS HAS CREATED A TRADE BARRIER WHICH MAKES IT NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR MANY COUNTRIES TO SELL TO U.S. MARKETS. This is called "Protectionism" because it is designed to protect U.S. industries from the competition of cheap foreign goods. The Customs man standing at the U.S. Customs gate might as well have a gun in his hand pointed at the heads of both the foreign merchants & the American public robbing them, because that's exactly what he is doing, by the powers of the law of the U.S. government! Not only is the U.S. robbing the poor countries who can no longer sell their goods to the U.S., but they are robbing their own public who can no longer buy cheap foreign products! The U.S. refuses to help the poor countries by buying their cheap products, insisting on protecting their own rich wages & industries!--It's just plain greed & selfishness!
       6. THE U.S. STEEL INDUSTRY, FOR EXAMPLE, IS VIRTUALLY BANKRUPT & NO LONGER ABLE TO SUPPLY WHAT THE U.S. NEEDS. What they ought to do is to let their too-high-priced, inefficient & incompetent industries like that be phased out & let other nations supply their needs!--but they refuse to! They just refuse to share the profits! Instead of being thankful to Japan & Europe for supplying their steel needs cheaply, they're howling for higher tariffs against them to keep it out!
       7. THE U.S. IS FURIOUS & BLAMING THEIR TRADE DEFICITS ALL ON JAPAN & THE REST OF THE WORLD, & IS DETERMINED TO PASS STIFF TARIFFS SOON! GATT, the general international tariff body that is supposed to try to keep these Trade Wars from developing, has simply not been able to bring about an agreement, & there are right now over 300 different trade bills pending in the U.S. Congress to raise the tariffs drasti-cally!--meaning abnormally high tariffs on every single item imported from any country in the World! They think they're going to stab their trade competition with the tariff knife, but what they'll actually do is cut their own throats with it instead!
       8. IN VOTING FOR THE NEW HIGHER TARIFFS, THE AMERICANS WILL BE LITER-ALLY WRITING THEIR OWN DEATH WARRANTS! Although it will help protect a few U.S. manufacturing industries which are being undersold by Japanese products and cheap raw materials and food from developing countries, it's going to kill several other important industries! It will absolutely crush the farmers whose biggest customer was Japan! Because if Japan can no longer sell its goods to the U.S., neither will it be able to buy from the U.S. The farmers are already virtually all in debt & bankrupt, & if they are forced completely out of business, there are a lot of other businesses that are going to fail as well!
       9. IF NATIONS CAN NO LONGER SELL TO THE U.S., THEN THEY WON'T BE ABLE TO BUY FROM HER EITHER, AND THE U.S. TRADE WILL GO DOWN, and as a result, their industries will fail, factories will close, unemployment will rise, and the next Great Depression will have started! But Americans don't care! They're so angry at Japan & Europe & the developing nations that they're going to raise their tariffs anyway!--and the effect is going to be exactly what it was when they passed the same kind of bill under the same kind of conditions in 193O, precipitating the worst Depression this World ever knew!
       10. THE SMOOT-HAWLEY TARIFF BILL OF 193O WAS THE VERY SAME KIND OF BILL FOR THE VERY SAME REASON! The same kind of trade war was going on between the U.S.A. & Europe & Japan as is going on right now!--And the U.S.A. resorted to the same kind of high tariffs to try to protect its own economy! The Congress under President Hoover decided to put out a tough tariff bill as a protectionist measure against all these cheap products that were coming into the U.S.A. They passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, & it immediately crushed their trade with both Europe--at that time predominantly Germany--& Japan, and nation after nation began to collapse because they could no longer sell to the U.S.
       11. THOUGH THE DEPRESSION BEGAN IN OCTOBER, 1929, THIS TARIFF BILL IN 193O WAS WHAT ABSOLUTELY SENT THE WORLD TO THE BOTTOM, when the Americans decided that the way to improve their economy was at the expense of other nations! The American public still has not learned that what hurts others is going to hurt them also!--and they're doing the same thing over again! They're doing it knowingly in the face of all the facts & the previous example of the Great Depression! There are a few honest economists who are advising them against it, and even some newspapers are warning them that they mustn't do it, but they're going ahead anyway! You just can't understand how they could be so blind & so dumb as to not see it & what it is leading to!
       12. MOST 3RD WORLD DEVELOPING NATIONS ARE ALREADY RIGHT ON THE BRINK IN SERIOUS ECONOMIC TROUBLE, billions & billions of dollars in debt to the IMF! Their only hope of getting out of debt has been to try to earn a little money by exporting to the industrial nations, but these nations have already had high tariffs that made it almost impossible for them to market their goods there!--And now the U.S.A. is just about to slap another big heavy tariff bill on them! Can you imagine?
       13. IT WON'T JUST COST THE POOR NATIONS 25% MORE, IT WILL STOP THEIR TRADE COMPLETELY, BANKRUPT THEM & they won't be able to pay their national debts at all! They're all going to default!
       14. THE INCREASED TARIFFS ARE NOT GOING TO CRUSH JAPAN'S ECONOMY, HOWEVER! The Japanese have survived worse things than this! Besides, the main thing that Japan has been buying from America was food, which it bought merely to pacify the U.S. since the U.S. was buying so many of Japan's products. But if the U.S. slams the door on Japan--& all the other high-tech Oriental nations--they will then turn to other countries to market their goods. There are plenty of other countries that are willing to buy their manufactured products.
       15. JAPAN COULD BUY HER FOOD NEEDS ENTIRELY FROM THE POOR NATIONS IN THE EAST, INCLUDING CHINA! It would be good for the economies of the developing nations of the East for Japan to start a more substantial, more helpful inter-East-Asian trade. In the coming economic Depression, these developing countries won't have the money to pay, so they can simply trade! Japan could accept food which it needs in payment for its electronics & other high-technology goods. When its U.S. market is gone, Japan could begin trading much more with the developing nations of the East, and much of the East could survive even after the entire Western World collapses in the coming Great Depression!
       16. FOR JAPAN TO SURVIVE, SHE MUST ESTABLISH MUCH GREATER ECONOMIC COOPERATION WITH THE POORER DEVELOPING NATIONS OF THE EAST & OF THE WHOLE WORLD! If she is willing to sell to these nations at lower, more reasonable prices, Japan could continue to survive the Crash! If she is willing to do it!--But that remains to be seen! If she's not willing, then the whole World economy will come down & every nation will crash!--including Japan! If the rich are not willing to make some sacrifices & take a cut in their own high standard of living to help the poor, then it's just God's law of economics that they're going to suffer for it along with the poor & everyone is going to crash!
       17. THE CRASH IS GOING TO HAPPEN! THAT IS CERTAIN! THE CHAIN REACTION HAS BEGUN, & though it may take a few months for the World economy to completely hit the bottom, it will surely happen! Even if by some miracle the U.S. & other rich nations do not go ahead with their new, high tariffs, the World economic situation is so critical & the debt crisis so severe that it is doomed to collapse anyway! You can see the signs of it in the media & the newspaper all the time! Of course, most of the time only educated economists can interpret that financial mumbo-jumbo, but everybody can understand that the real causes of the present World economic crisis, including the Trade War and the protectionist tariffs, are greed & selfishness!--And it's about to bring the World to absolute Depression & chaos!
       18. TO SURVIVE THE COMING CRASH, IT IS URGENT THAT YOU MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE SOME KIND OF PLACE IN THE COUNTRY FOR YOURSELF & YOUR LOVED ONES--preferably a farm where you can raise enough food to feed yourselves--because when the Crash happens most modern big cities will be in chaos with riots & starvation! A bank is the worst place to have your money when the Crash hits, so invest in land & things of actual value today! Stock your place well with dried & canned goods such as grains, rice, beans, flour & other basic necessities, seeds, tools & equipment!--and make sure you have your own independent water supply, not dependent on electricity to pump it up.
       19. PREPARE ALL YOU CAN, BUT MOST OF ALL TRUST THE LORD & DON'T WORRY! After all, the Lord & prayer are your best protection & your greatest security! With Jesus you're ready for anything!--Are you trusting Him? Do you personally know Him? You can! He loves you & will come into your life right now if you'll sincerely pray this simple prayer: "Lord Jesus, please forgive me for all my sins. I believe that You are the Son of God & that You died for me. I now open the door of my heart & I ask You, Jesus, to please come in & give me Your free Gift of Eternal Life! Help me to love You & to love others by telling them about You & Your Love. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen."--For more, write us!
       (c) 1985, World Services, PF 241, 8021 Zurich, Switzerland.

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