Mogamedogz

A-F

Please unpack your grades.

PatsFanInVa

Is this a clever ploy to be able to calculate the great secret of the Western world... his GPA?

I see right through you. Keeping that secret is my sworn and solemn charge, sir. I will not be undone by so transparent a gambit.

Good day to you!

PFnV

Mogamedogz

Wrong guy.

I think he's done an excellent job. Anything less then an "A-" for foreign policy is intellectually dishonest IMO.

IcyPatriot

I will give him a 'B' for now. I'm not sure I like all these expanded operations. He promised Gitmo would be closed - would like to see that wrapped up somehow. Overall - hard to complain he's done well in tough times.

DarrylS

Guantanamo was not his choice, Congress blocked the closing..

I give him a B-, based on the expansion into Afghanistan, the use of drones, the whole foray into Libya and the very questionable expansion into Africa..

These endless wars need to end.. the only thing that makes this grade this high is the withdrawal from Iraq...

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

PatsFanInVa

Can you imagine the lovefest we'd have had if W had gotten Bin Laden and Gh/Q/Kadhafi within a few months of each other, and had been the sitting president when our guys rescued hostages from pirates, taking all the pirates out in the process?

That said: to me the only reason for the war in the Af/Pak theatre was to "get" the guys who got us. The question is how you can ever get "all of them."

It may be that they know Pakistan will turn hard anti-American the moment we don't have guys running around their country ready to whack a bad guy... which will look um, bad?

However, I do think it's a withdrawl they'll suddenly start to "examine" the day after the elections next year (or before if public opinion is firmly enough against that war). After a decent period of time has elapsed I can see them pulling guys out. We'll see.

By and large, worldwide, I think he'd drawn back from the cowboy U.S. foreign policy ("Because I said so, and because of your behavior, the whole group will have to suffer.")

Oh yeah, Obama signed a treaty w/Russia to further reduce our arsenals by 1/3. Had it been W, it would have been a headline for 3 months. We barely noticed.

Truth is, he gets an A unless you're a pacifist or an isolationist. I trust Darryl's pacificsm -- I don't think he's ever billed himself as otherwise. He's very good, in the nasty reality of the real world.

But were I to examine things from a purist perspective I'd see problems. Looks to me like torture has been reduced/eliminated in our "toolkit," even though people are still in Gitmo. We've radically reduced messy occupation activities and emphasized a much more targeted campaign against "bad guys." Of course, the canon of "just war" beliefs includes a centuries-old "no-no" against assassination.

The question is whether you consider it assassination against a non-state actor like Bin Laden. If you want it to be "just," you need to work through other states when you are dealing in essence with an international criminal.

That decision -- treat him as a foreign war-fighting force - was made long before Obama took office. So you can either be ineffectual and mire yourself in theory, or you can get the job done. Obama chose to do the latter. I can't really ping him for "increased drone strikes" when we've already defined ourselves by whether or not we get the AQ hard core. You don't get much more hard core than Bin Laden.

PFnV

Patters

I'll give him a B. On the whole it's been a balanced foreign policy, and we certainly have far less sabre rattling than we had under Bush. While our relations with North Korea and Iran aren't good, at least it doesn't seem like war is imminent. Obama's done a good job bringing greater peace, embracing the right of self-determination, and winding things down in Iraq. That said, we should be out of Afghanistan, and our economic foreign policy shows very little change from Bush and Clinton, though it's clear that we need to do more to protect American jobs.

PatsFanInVa

Yeah Patters, and this is another face of how the Corporate world bounds the debate.

There is no discussion, anywhere, of international labor standards.

There are 2 ways to keep American jobs (and by the way this applies to the rest of the first world).

1) we can all get protectionist in the standard way, where we demand that people we tax ("our" job creators) get a bigger part of the pie, and we stop trading with people with lower labor rates etc.

2) We can band together with the rest of the consuming world, and act as a bloc to push through labor standards that approximate the West's.

If (2), then the standard of living for those hired overseas has to rise for them to sell here. There would be two results:

1) foreign goods that depend on poor labor conditions abroad would cost more. That's unavoidable.

2) There would be more demand to locate jobs here, where you have to meet the international standards anyway (by virtue of meeting the national standards, for example, our minimum wage.)

Let's take a "floor wage" as an example. Domestically, if you had to pay $1 an hour worldwide for labor, there is no change to labor rates, at least that you would see immediately. You make something in the U.S., you are still paying what, $7 an hour? Okay, well, that's still $6 more than abroad.

However, even without this standard, jobs leave for overseas. You make a calculation: What does it cost to send jobs elsewhere, all in -- including transportation, infrastructure, etc. etc. etc.? For some jobs here, that equilibrium has not been met. If the cost of labor at 25 c/hour doesn't do it, raising it to $1 an hour will make it that much further off.

More to the point, some jobs are on the border. The $1 an hour rate in say Malaysia makes the exportation too expensive. The job stays here.

It's the same equilibrium mechanism as functions in our continuing job-drain, with this difference:

The "natural" built-in mechanism is a race to the bottom: The ultimate perfect state for a manufacturer is a zero-per-hour labor rate, i.e., slavery. -- So long as somebody else makes enough money go to workers, that there is sufficient demands for your products.

We've lost the realization that somebody has to buy the output. That's why Ford insisted that one of his own workers be able to afford his own automobile (previously a luxury good.)

In an age of quarterly returns and, for the patient, annual financial statements, it is hard to argue to a Corporate board that you're ensuring demand. They want to see earnings right now, and take profits.

So you reinforce the system-wide need of capitalism, by allowing international standards to operate.

But look where we are in such a debate:

The unions have thought in pure money terms at all times without an eye on a broader adjustment like this for many decades. So the unions, the natural voice of an international standards move, don't pursue it.

The government doesn't bother with international labor standards... besides it being far afield, it also results in inflation in the cost of foreign goods (which is exactly what you have to accept if you want U.S. jobs back.)

Business? We've already come to the conclusion that the best state of affairs for a business is slavery within the confines of any given employer's workforce (although with the caveat that "other people" should pay better, so we can sell the goods.)

This is the flip side of the other problem, over in the financial sector. There, each investment bank was encouraged to take any type of risk, and any financial instrument or mortgage was considered a good thing (and a good thing to commoditize) based on the idea that they can't take a risk they can't cover -- why, they'll go out of business!

But nobody cares about anything beyond their own risk and their own wellbeing. Even if their company commits financial suicide in the case of a downturn, they half-knew they'd be bailed out. Even if they didn't know that, they knew the worst thing that could happen is they'd have to take the golden parachute drop (not go to jail.)

So the entirety of the system -- which is the public interest -- is never considered.

By anybody.

If we don't get to that point, we don't win.

But that's out of bounds for our present conversation. That's what's frustrating to me. It's the 10 ton elephant in the room, and you can't talk about it.

But hell, who wants to pay $50 for a shirt, right?

PFnV

Drewski

PFvN - While I am not going after particular points in your post, the overall theme on manufacturing jobs going abroad because of cheap labor is an interesting topic of conversation (and a topic close to my "heart").

First of all, I cant speak to labor situations and pay rates around the world. I can speak to what the situation was in Indonesia (spent 8 years there because of my father who, surprise surprise, worked there because of manufacturing; shoes) and China (parents lived there for 5 years).

Of the top, we as Americans need to realize one important thing, that wage rates, and more importantly how much a person needs to make in Indonesia vs. here to "survive" are vastly different things.

The government mandated minimum wage in Indonesia when I left (May 2001)was 110,000 Rp. a Month = 11 $US a month. Police, Government workers, teachers etc etc, that was the rate they would start at. Factory workers at the factories the company my father worked for did business at (there were 5 at the time) had a starting rate for workers at 660,000 Rp./Month = $66/Month. So off the top, a factory worker making shoes in Tangerang Indonesia in 2001 was making 6 times the minimum wage rate of the country. To put that in perspective, our minimum wage rate here is what, basically 7/hour?? 6 times that is 42/hour.

It was never the situation Kathy Lee and Jessie Jackson *****ed about on 20/20, when they went to Indonesia and threw out the "they make a dollar a day" BS. Beyond that, no one here gets that a dollar there buys a hell of a lot more than a dollar here. When I left I could get a large portion of Nasi Goreng (fried rice with Chicken) for 2400 Rp = 24 cents. My point being, all things need to be taken into account.

Now on to your point about the cost of goods at sale. Speaking for shoes, there is an interesting dynamic that may be the same for other goods, but I don't know that. The shoes are produced by the factory (an independent contracted worker for the shoe company). The shoe company doesn't own the factory, but instead sets regulations (treatment of workers, benefits, wages etc) on the factory as part of their contract to produce said companies goods. So, the shoes when produced are owned by the factory, not the shoe company.

So if a shoe cost the factory 10 dollars to make (which would be considered "a cheaper shoe"), the factory sells the shoe to the the shoe company for 15 dollars. The company then has to pay all taxes and transportation to get the shoe from Indonesia to the US (the tax rate under Suharto for exporting goods was 90%). Flash forward 3 months, when the big boat makes it to SF/Seattle/LA. The shoe has now cost the company say 20 bucks in production, tax and transportation costs (Freight On Board). They turn and sell said shoe to footlocker for 40 bucks, who then turns around and sells it to you and me for 70-80 bucks. At each change of hands, there is basically a doubling in price.

All that being said, if you change the wage rate at the beginning of this exercise to a rate more in line with US standards, that 70-80 dollar shoe is now 2,3,4 times as much, because after all these businesses are in it to make money.

Now given all that has happened recently in China regarding wages (they are increasing at an "astronomical rate") my dad in his duties, is responsible for finding new countries to produce what China used to, because China is becoming too expensive. India, Bangladesh, are the two new big ones, and my dad goes there every couple of months. In having a similar talk with him, I have brought up the point that given the current costs associated with raising wage rates etc, seems like moving manufacturing back to the states could be relatively close (not the same) cost wise. He agrees, with one caveat. The raw good for shoes is leather. Leather requires tanneries. Tanneries in the US are regulated by what they can and cant do with the chemicals used in the tanning process (which we all agree should be the case). In China and the like, there are no regulations. Tanneries (again Independent companies from a say a shoe company) are free to do with the byproducts of the tanning process; which in their cases are some nasty nasty things.

Long story short, and I my apologies to the OP for hijacking the thread, is there is a real difference between wages here and most other places. There will not, and most definitely should not be , a "global wage". Why should there be? Why should the wage rate in the US have any impact on what it is in Indonesia? When I was looking at moving to Atlanta, the rates there were 15K less than Boston, and that is the same country. I do think however as countries become more and more developed, and thus rates increase naturally, that there will be a flood of companies coming back to the US to make goods.

To the original point of the thread. I give Obama a solid B for what he has done foreign policy wise. I like that Iraq is drawing down and hope Afghanistan does soon also. I do not agree with Libya or Africa, but those are smaller beans by contrast. Also he did get Bin Laden and a couple of other of his cohorts.

khayos

Does this include trade agreements?