RED STORM RISING THREAT: Underhanded Business Cheating & Bush's Non-Response Have Led China To Threaten Destruction Of US Economy If We Take Action Against Them - RI10

RED STORM RISING

THREAT:

Underhanded

Business Cheating

& Bush’s

Non-Response

Have Led China To

Threaten

Destruction Of US

Economy If We Take

Action Against Them

– RI10

 

LOU DOBBS TONIGHT

Six Coal Miners Trapped; FBI and Navy Divers Search for Survivors in Bridge Collapse; Iraqi Leaders Need to Agree on Political Reform; New Crackdown on Illegal Workers; China's Predatory Trade Practices; Dems Court Labor Unions

Aired August 7, 2007 - 19:30   ET
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/07/ldt.01.html

DOBBS: Barbara, thank you very much. Barbara Starr from the Pentagon.

Coming up next here, gaping holes in the government system to stop the theft of sensitive U.S. technology and military secrets.

Also, communist China, well, they are putting a lot of cheap products on the shelves in this country. We will tell you how they are able to do that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DOBBS: Casey Wian.

Each year the United States exports billions of dollars in military technology overseas. As the demand for that technology rises, there are fewer safeguards to ensure the technology doesn't fall into the wrong hands.

Lisa Sylvester reports on this rising threat to American national security.

LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hostile governments and terrorist organizations are willing to shell out millions to acquire U.S. military technology. One exporter managed to use front companies to ship missile technology to North Korea and Libya.

The state department is in charge of issuing export licenses for military technology but the division that overseas export controls simply does not have enough personnel. Only 38 license inspectors responsible for $32 billion of arms exports.

REP. BRAD SHERMAN (D), CALIFORNIA: Each one of them is responsible for over 1,700 applications a year. And if they screw up just one of them, we could be sending really bad stuff to really bad people.

SYLVESTER: Lack of resources, turf battles between state and commerce, and mismanagement all contribute to the problem.

DONALD WEADON, INTERNATIONAL TRADE LAWYER: There's a definite need for some adult supervision and some serious management. They are filled with very fine and dedicated individuals. But these poor people are having a hard time doing their job when their job is not really well defined for them.

SYLVESTER: The General Accountability Office said the system has deteriorated to the point it now ranks as a new high-risk area for U.S. National Security.

ANN CALVARESI-BARR, GENERAL ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE: Many of these systems that were put in place, in the export control system, were put in place in the legacy of the cold war. We are at a different point in time as a nation. We have new security threats, we have changing allied relationships, and we have an economic globalization.

SYLVESTER: As trade increases, the number of applications for export licenses is piling up. It's expected to increase 23 percent over last year. The State Department responded by saying, "While we were faced with a large number of unprocessed applications earlier this year, we have taken steps to markedly reduce this back log".

But simply reducing the paper jam is not the only concern of lawmakers. They want to make sure it's done right.

And that's because mistakes have been made in the past. In one example, a company was allowed to shift night goggles without the required export license issued by state. The GAO has also highlight the separate problem that falls on the Pentagon.

DOD surplus sales division sold F-14 parts to the public. This is a plane that is only used by Iran. And that should have never happened but it did because an export control list was not updated.

Lou.

DOBBS: It is just -- I'm left incredulous as we review what this government is doing and not doing to the interest of the nation. It is absolutely inexcusable and yet the list goes on and on as if this administration, this Congress, the previous Congress, had no concept at all of what it means to be responsible for the direction and the operation of the federal government.

SYLVESTER: And the stakes, Lou, have never been higher when it comes to export controls.

Lou.

DOBBS: Lisa, thank you very much. Thank you for that report. As always, Lisa Sylvester reporting from Washington.

Coming up next here, the latest on that race to rescue those six trapped miners in Utah.

Later, why more state and local governments are fighting our illegal immigration crisis.

And up next -- why isn't the United States doing more to fight China's unfair trade practices? We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) DOBBS: Well, Communist China is utilizing a number of unfair trade practices to increasingly dominate what was once American industry. Chinese exporters commonly target a specific industry and then flood the market with cheap subsidized products. But as Kitty Pilgrim now reports, those predatory trade tactics are really challenged by, of course, the U.S. Government.

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Steel pipe is used in housing, plumbing, fencing and a variety of construction. But Chinese steel pipe imports have jumped 900 percent in the last four years, driving many U.S. producers out of business.

TOM CONWAY, UNITED STEELWORKERS: The magnitude of the pipe that they had shipped in here just literally gutted our piping industry. No one here seems to be willing to try to make a real effort to put a stop to this. We file the trade cases continually. People need to pay attention to what's going on in the growth of China and its ability to grow these exports.

PILGRIM: The United Steelworkers have joined one of the largest anti-dumping cases ever against the Chinese saying Chinese are undercutting prices by as much as 80 percent. The Chinese have also used such tactics to target the U.S. garlic industry, which has lost 50 percent of the market to Chinese producers. It's priced about 30 percent below what it costs U.S. producers to grow.

Nearly half of the canned mushroom industry is now Chinese products. There are fewer than five producers left in the United States.

Chinese have dominated about a quarter of the honey market since 2001, often avoiding duties on its shipments of honey to the United States, sometimes by falsifying the paper work, to read products of Mongolia, which have no domestic honey production.

MICHAEL COURSEY, KELLEY DRYE COLLIER SHANNON: It is a fraud that is on the scale that's breathtaking. It's taking the government an extremely long time to figure out what to do about it. 93 percent of dumping duties are not being collected.

PILGRIM: Chinese exporters use a variety of tactics, mislabeling cases on what is inside or faking paperwork to read the crates had been sent from another country such at Vietnam or Thailand.

Now, the United Steelworkers Union says hundreds of jobs have been lost in the last three years because of Chinese imports. Those job losses, despite the fact that demand for steel pipe is booming, and they charge the Bush Administration has not used its trade authority to demand accountability from the Chinese government.

Lou.

DOBBS: Demand accountability. My god, the Bush Administration is not accountable to anyone for its own negligence, its malfeasance, and this is a ridiculous way for a government to operate. And the United Steelworkers, I mean I can imagine of the Bush Administration Labor Department. It does say labor department but it really should say department of employers rather than department of labor. This is the sorriest excuse for an administration for a government concerned about the interest of American citizens and the national interest imaginable.

PILGRIM: Yes. When you talk to these small producers, they just don't have the time to wait out this action. They are just folding as this trade flows in.

DOBBS: You know the fact this may be Darwinian in historical terms. If we are dumb enough to tolerate this kind of government, you know perhaps it could be argued that we deserve this. It's infuriating to watch this happen to this great country of ours and to the American people. Does anybody care?

PILGRIM: These are American jobs.

DOBBS: Unbelievable. Kitty, thank you very much. Kitty Pilgrim.



LOU DOBBS TONIGHT

Iran Killing Our Troops; Rescuers Drilling a Hole to Get to Trapped Miners; Investigators Identify Possible Design Flaw in Collapsed Bridge; Endeavour Blastoff This Hour; China Threatens Dollar Crash; Proposal to Split Electoral Votes in California; Critics Cautious of Drug-Fighting Deal with Mexico; Space Shuttle Endeavor Blasts Off; Congressman Warns of Terrorists Crossing Mexican Border

Aired August 8, 2007 - 18:00   ET
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/08/ldt.01.html


LOUD DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: The space shuttle "Endeavour" scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral within about 36 minutes. It's "Endeavour's" first mission in almost five years.
We'll have complete live coverage for you of the launch.

Also, the United States could soon give Mexico hundreds of millions of dollars to fight Mexican drug cartels. But some members of Congress are criticizing the deal saying some of that money can be passed onto Mexican drug cartels. We'll have the report.

And an astonishing threat by communist China against the United States. Beijing says it would consider crippling our economy if we were to demand China give up its unfair trade policies. We'll have that report.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DOBBS: And also ahead, communist China threatening to cripple our economy. We will have a special report. New concerns that China is exporting dangerous tires to this country. Well, why not? It's just another import from China. And why not? Our government doesn't much care about American consumers, their safety or well-being. We will bring you up to date nonetheless.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The president with his top economic advisors at the treasury department, playing up the U.S. economy, even as his treasury secretary played down a monetary threat from communist China, that threat, to dump U.S. treasuries. Keep up the pressure on China to reform and a party official in the China daily writes, "The Chinese central bank will be forced to sell U.S. dollars which might lead to a mass depreciation of the U.S. dollar". The U.K. telegraph notes another leader recently called U.S. reserves, "Bargaining chip", dollar sales their "nuclear option".

ALAN TONELSON, U.S. BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY COUNCIL: The Chinese do hold very significant leverage over the U.S. economy because they hold so much U.S. debt. And by holding that U.S. debt, they subsidize American consumption and help keep our living standards artificially high. At the same time, China desperately needs the United States to serve as the market for its manufactured goods.

The treasury secretary, just back from meetings with Chinese officials, called reports of the threat "absurd". But what is worrying is there's no way to know how far China would go.

ANDREW BUSCH, BMO CAPITAL MARKETS: We are not talking with a rational capitalist society per se. I mean this is a unique hybrid. So we are not quite sure how decisions are being made. Could they go in and do something like this? It's possible.

ROMANS: Making good on its threat, trade experts say, would hurt both countries.

The Chinese here clearly trying to counter a rising sense in Congress that something has to be done to pressure the Chinese to reform in the wake of product recalls, imported food scares. It's a reminder that the Chinese have enormous leverage over the U.S. economy, Lou.

DOBBS: Well you know this also, and we should explain what is happening, the reason the markets today were -- particularly the credit markets were trembling and why you have a treasury secretary who knows better saying it's nonsense and absurd.

The idea that -- the simple fact is this is the way the Chinese -- communist Chinese government communicates, through its think tanks, putting out these messages, which is precisely what they did. It's more vulnerability. It's more evidence and concerning and troubling evidence of the vulnerability of this economy. And the absolutely horrible leadership of this administration economically to have this economy be dependent. Because that's where we are, not only on the Chinese for their support of our markets, particularly our credit markets, but to provide the clothes we wear.

96 percent of the clothes in the country are foreign made. Almost all of the computers and consumer electronics made. And we have the treasury secretary's response, absurd.

ROMANS: Well, the response to all of those purchases of course, is that huge, huge, foreign reserve that they have, more than $1.3 trillion. Most of it in U.S. dollars. A big chunk of that in treasury. That's how it all works.

DOBBS: Well, when we see a bellicose sentiment like this coming out of China, it should be a wake up call to this administration to reform our trading practices, our policies and our strategy. There is really no strategy, but approach.

This administration is creating tremendous vulnerabilities, not only for the economy, but the nation itself, through permitting these kinds of relationships.

Now you said, at the same time, they have considerable leverage. I think it's important we all remember, and this administration, please listen up, the Chinese government is also codependent in this relationship and have great need for all of the capital, approaching $300 billion a year, through our deficit that they are using to build up their military and everything else.

Also those 300 million people are unemployed in China might have some negative reaction if we were to curtail significantly our purchase of the Chinese manufactured goods.

ROMANS: The administration is downplaying all of this today, Lou.

DOBBS: This administration downplays reality as a matter of routine course day in and day out. Why should this subject be any different? I can say that. You can't.

ROMANS: That's right.

DOBBS: I did it and you didn't. And we thank you very much for that report, Christine Romans.

Tabacco: While the George W. Bush administration has focused on the selling off of America and making corporate and personal profits at the expense of American military lives and our Tax $$$, the Chinese have quietly been buying up our debt, incurred to finance the Republican “GRAB FOR GREED”. Now it is the Chinese, not George W. Bush, who holds the Trump Cards. Bush sold them for immediate profit as against future gains.

Neither the Japanese nor the Chinese have been so foolhardy as to “GIVE AWAY THEIR OWN COUNTRIES”!

Now all the Chinese have to do is dump that debt they own, and your “Great Economy”, as Bush is so quick to point out, will fall like a ton of bricks into the nearest toilet.

Great going, Mr. Bush! You have placed the USA in jeopardy, which could end our “Grand Experiment” of 1776 in just 6 short years. And all because of your own Personal Greed! And the irony is that the USA will fail, not because of Nuclear Attack, but because of the GOP RUSH TO PRIVATIZE EVERYTHING REGARDLESS OF COUNTRY OF OWNERSHIP! HOW IRONIC INDEED!

It is now too late to IMPEACH BUSH-CHENEY. But it isn’t too late to send Nancy Pelosi in front of a FIRING SQUAD!

Electing a “WOMAN” to high office is NOT THE PROBLEM; the problem is electing “Just Any Woman”! Pelosi and Hillary are BAD CHOICES! HORRENDOUS CHOICES! Barbara Boxer would be a marvelous choice for President, and she’s a woman. You can now see what happens when you elect just "ANY MAN"!

tags: knowledge is power  takebackamerica  business  politics  religion  quasicon  bush  richvspoor  disaster capitalism  warpeace  halftruths  china  economics  privatization