Why We Trade with the ChiComs

RUSH: Tom in Nieves, Minnesota, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Oh, thank you, Rush. I’m glad to be on your show.

RUSH: I appreciate that, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Yes. Uh, I’ve got a question about something that was brought up yesterday, okay? And on the news I was listening to this, how they’re having a toothpaste recall that was made — the toothpaste was made in China, and it has a little bit of radiator coolant in it, and this made me start thinking about the dog food and these toys that have been recalled as well, too, with lead paint on them.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Okay? Now, this all comes about, you know, with the dog food killing the dogs, the lead paint that’s bad for the kids, the toothpaste that’s bad for us…

RUSH: It’s only bad for the kids if they eat the paint — and you know, when I was a kid, my mom did not let us lick the window sills. You know, there’s a reason lead was in paint. There’s a reason that they used Freon on the space shuttle tanks so they didn’t damage the shuttle.

CALLER: (laughs)

RUSH: Anyway, I’m off the beaten path. What’s your complaint, that they’re sending all these inferior products here so why are we trading with them?

CALLER: Yeah. Why are we trading with them?

RUSH: Well, because in general, trade with foreign countries like this is good. It provides cheaper prices for consumers, makes the dollar go farther. It sponsors international cooperation. It’s a good thing. You know, free trade is an excellent thing. Now, you have incidents like this and they’re all being bundled together. But the ChiComs are taking care of this. They execute the companies’ CEOs who screw up. The other day, one CEO, the toy company guy, killed himself. They had a different sense of honor over there than CEOs around the world, but these are anomalies. I’m going to tell you a dirty little secret, too. I’ll tell you something.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: There are always political reasons for things as well as economic.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: One of the problems we face with the ChiComs is that they’re a giant communist country, and they have a military, and they present a formidable military foe, should such circumstances arrive. One of the purposes of the US government, any government — well, I would say this is not true if the wrong Democrat ended up in, but — one of the ways that you destroy a totalitarian regime is by trading with it, by introducing capitalism, by exporting capitalism, say, to a closed society. Do you know China now has a billionaire? They’ve got multimillionaires. The biggest challenge that the president of China has every day — Hu Jintao is his name.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: His biggest challenge when he wakes up is finding and creating 25 million new jobs a year, and the reason he has to do that is because he has to keep the majority of the Chinese population that lives in the countryside, in the countryside. If those people can’t find work and means to support themselves and live, they’re going to flood the cities, and that would cause the ChiComs to lose control of their population. They don’t want to lose control of their population any more than the Soviet Union did under glasnost and perestroika. But when you introduce capitalism and you start trading, and you give them this great big trade balance that they have a surplus with us and they’re invested in our treasury bills, it weakens us in some sense, but without but the United States, they’re nothing, in an economic sense. That’s true for much of the rest of the world, too. This is a slow but steady process of actually opening up that country to a less totalitarian regime, freedom for the people, economic freedom, and economic opportunity and advancement for the Chinese people. That’s a theory behind it. Now, these tainted products that come in, those are anomalies — unless the ChiComs are actually trying to kill our kids and our dogs and cats, and some people wouldn’t put it past ’em.

CALLER: Well, that’s kind of what popped in my head when I sit there and think, well, it happened with the dog food, then the toys, now the toothpaste. I mean, you know —

RUSH: Yeah, but nobody die from it. Some people got sick. Dogs did. Some of the dogs and cats did. I don’t mean to call them nobodies, but the recalls are happening, and we’ve got enough inspection systems here that Mattel knows when they’re getting lead-tainted toys in. I’m going to tell you, though: when the ChiComs start executing the CEOs that do this stuff, it means they don’t like this, either. This does not help them. They’re going to have people saying a different version of the question that you are asking, and they’re afraid that a lot of Americans are going to stop buying Chinese stuff because of this. So they will try to get a handle on it.