Buzzetti: ‘Near-Shoring’ Is Globalism by a New Name

(Tudor Antonel Adrian/Dreamstime.com)

OPINION

For too long the American people have been sold a lie by corporate and government elites that globalization and free trade would bring untold prosperity to our country.

We’ve seen millions of jobs in industrial communities outsourced and only to be replaced with despair, crime, and drug use.

The elites know that Americans are awake to this reality, which is why they are desperate to retool their messaging and offer globalism by a new name: near-shoring.

Let’s reject globalism 2.0 and finally put American interests first.

But America First economic policy won’t happen anytime soon if some Republicans in Congress get their way.

That’s because two so-called Republicans, Senator Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla., have allied with Democrats to pass a bill that would encourage industrialization and jobs for our neighboring counties, but not actually in America.

Their bill, the “Americas Trade and Investment Act” or “Americas Act” boosts grant funding to foreign countries, forces taxpayers to guarantee loans, and even reduces import tariffs for goods produced in the Western Hemisphere.

The stated goal of the bill is to encourage jobs, investment, and manufacturing closer to home, but not actually at home. It’s their backward view that we need to encourage American capital into neighboring economies. There’s a reason it’s called the “Americas” Act and not the “America” Act: it puts our country last.

The Americas Act includes a hodgepodge of provisions that will make any globalist and neocon smile.

With the goal of “near-shoring,” or moving businesses from China to America’s backyard, it includes $60 billion worth of taxpayer-funded grants and loans for businesses to move to the Western Hemisphere, $10 billion in tax credits for businesses to cover “near-shoring expenses,” and over $1 billion to support manufacturing and textile workers in a partner country.

With this downpayment, business will swoon into the Caribbean.

Instead of supporting near-shoring, can’t American tax dollars be used to insource American jobs from Shanghai to places like Youngstown, Ohio or San Juan, Puerto Rico.

These are places that have been hollowed out due to policies like the ones that Sen. Cassidy and Rep. Salazar are proposing.

Even the Dominican-born Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., is saying the quiet part out loud that the purpose is to support foreign countries.

In his press release he states, “this bill directly bolsters the two of the largest and most important export industries for the U.S.’s current Western Hemisphere trade partners, including the Dominican Republic.

“All in all, the Americas Act represents the most transformative piece of legislation to benefit the Western Hemisphere in two decades.”

Transformative change is welcomed, but we should be encouraging that for American citizens in Puerto Rico, not Santo Domingo.

After all, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and the territory still has an unemployment rate above any state in the continental U.S. Latinos, and Puerto Ricans in particular, continue to trend towards Republicans given our strong America First ideology.

Why would these Congressional Republicans essentially tell Puerto Rico to go to the back of the line?

If enacted, the Americas Act would also reward countries that are rife with a mix of human rights abuses, autocratic governments, or illegal drug trafficking.

In the case of the Dominican Republic, it has all three.

In fact, the situation in the Dominican Republic has degraded so much over the last year that even the Biden administration’s State Department had to issue a special report outlining how their government is committing human rights abuses, particularly for pre-trial detention.

Pay no mind to the damning conclusions of that report, according to Democratic Rep. Espaillat, once of the authors of the Americas Act.

He denounces the government report as “excessive and aggressive,” but he may have an ulterior motive as to keep the Dominican Republic in his near-shoring bill.

By dismissing the country’s human rights concerns, he can get ahead of any potential push from other members to pull favored provisions related to the Dominican Republic.

If Sen. Cassidy or Rep. Salazar possessed true values, they would demand the removal of the Dominican Republic from the underlying bill.

That should be the bare minimum.

Either way, the Americas Act belongs in the wastebasket, not anywhere near the president’s desk. The people of our country are tired of putting foreign interests over our own, especially when it comes to trade.

Reshoring, not near-shoring, should be the only trade position of the Republican Party, otherwise we’re just embracing failed globalist economic policies.

Aiden Buzzetti is president of the Bull Moose Project.