Romney Hammers Obama on China

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Oct. 14, 2012
All Rights Reserved.                                         

        Hammering President Barack Obama for failing to condemn China’s currency policy, GOP presidential nominee former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney tried to score more points in Ohio.  With polls showing Mitt gaining  ground,  he hopes to divert Ohioans away from the harsh economic reality that the economy is improving.  Since bailing out Detroit Feb. 17, 2009, the U.S. auto industry is once again running on all cylinders, giving Ohioans something to cheer about.  Ohio voters must focus on the Labor and Commerce Dept. numbers not Mitt’s propaganda machine that’s trying to convince voters that he and his VP pick Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have a real economic plan.  Romney and Ryan have a real plan to slash the federal workforce and toss thousands of federal workers into unemployment.  Mitt and Paul don’t want voters to look at last week’s 0.3% drop in unemployment to 7.8%, the lowest level in four years.

When Vice President Joe Biden debated Ryan Oct. 11 at Centre College in Kentucky, Biden got I right that Ryan was talking “malarkey” about the economy.  Neither Mitt nor Ryan admit to any improvements in the economy.  They want voters to ignore he government’s published data and believe their twisted stump speeches.  Ryan said he and Mitt will create 12 million new private sector jobs by cutting taxes for rich.  Ryan’s “sophisticated” plan harks back to the Reagan years when Dr. Arthur Laffer’s Supply-Side Economics ruled the nation’s economic policies.  Reagan promised to balance the federal budget by 1983 through tax cuts and reduced government spending.  By the end of his first term, Reagan had doubled the federal budget deficit.  By the end of his second term in 1988, he had quadrupled it.  Romney and Ryan want to go back to former President George W. Bush’s practice of slashing taxes, driving the economy into the worst shape since the Great Depression.

Just as General Motors,  Ford and Chrysler begin ramping up car sales in China, Romney and Ryan call for Obama to call China a “currency manipulator.”  Switzerland was forced to manipulate its currency to control inflation that threatened to price it out of world markets.  Mitt knows the ins-and-outs of Wall Street’s currency trading that would rapidly turn China’s yuan into parity with the U.S. dollar.  If that happens by floating he Chinese  currency U.S. manufacturing and sales would plummet.  Without Chinese “currency manipulation,” China would be quickly priced out of world manufacturing markets.  Mitt hopes he can dupe enough voters before now and Nov. 6, blaming Obama for all U.S. economic ills.  When the economic crash occurred under the past Republican administration, the GOP blamed it on Obama the day he took office Jan. 20, 2009.  Most undecided voters know that Barack didn’t cause the economic crash and Great Recession

Ignoring all positive economic news, Mitt wants voters to forget last week’s report by the National Assn. of Realtors that showed a 7.8% improvement from July to August in existing home sales, plus an overall 9.3% increase from 2011.  Mitt also wants voters to believe that autoworkers in Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin aren’t working again—but they, in fact, are.  Biden told the truth last Thursday when he told voters that Romney and Ryan would have let Detroit go broke.   What Biden didn’t say was the GOP would have let the U.S. banking industry go under too.  While supporting former President Bush’s $670 billion bailout in 2008, they opposed Barack’s 2009 bailout because they wanted Obama to fail.  Romney and Ryan’s only chance in November is convincing voters that Obama is hazardous to the U.S. economy.  Wall Street apparently disagreed with the Dow Jones Industrials, Nasdaq and S&P rising 70% since Barack took office.

Romney caters to the lowest common denominator in Ohio, telling voters he’ll label China a “currency manipulator” when he takes office.  Americans like blaming China for all U.S. economic ills but in reality U.S. mass merchandisers like Wall-Mart and Target depend on  China for cheap manufacturing.  While it costs some U.S. manufacturing jobs, it also keeps products affordable and grows U.S. mass merchandisers.  Stores like Wall-Mart and Target employ tens-of-thousands of American workers. Setting up a trade war with China doesn’t help U.S. foreign policy efforts to gain China’s backing on the U.N. Security Council to help pressure Iran into nuclear concessions.  Telling voters he’d label China a “currency manipulator” is so outrageous and absurd that it shows Mitt’s target audience:   Disgruntled unemployed Whites looking to lash out at Obama.  Mitt surely knows China, like Switzerland, must keep their currency economically viable.

When Obama and Romney face off next Tuesday at Hofstra University in Long Island, Barack needs to take off the gloves and trade punches with Romney. Baarack’s feckless performance Oct. 11 at the University of Denver left voters with impression that he didn’t want to fight for reelection.  Beyond all the issues, voters want to see a fair fight.  But they also want to see candidates’ drive and  motivation .  Romney’s nonsense on China shows he’s on course to buffalo thousands of voters into ignoring the Labor and Commerce Dept. data showing that the nation is making steady economic progress under Obama.  Mitt and Ryan want to put the entire recession on Obama and forget that their current economic plans would put the country right back into another Great Recession.  More tax cuts for Mitt and his rich friends won’t add  the 12 million jobs he promises.  More tax cuts for the rich will explode the deficit and drive the country back into the old hole.

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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