SEPTEMBER 19, 2016
How Bill Clinton Sent Manufacturing Jobs to China
On May 28, 1993 Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12850.
https://www.archives.gov/files/federal-register/executive-orders/pdf/12850.pdf
This improper EO changed the way the U.S. made trade deals with China and led to the loss of tens of millions of American manufacturing jobs. The story of how this was done not only proves that the Clintons are behind the loss of American jobs, but shows how Bill Clinton established a Democratic strategy for manipulating foreign policy that was copied by both Hillary while she was Secretary of State and Obama while he was president.
At the time, U.S.-China trade relations were conditioned upon China’s humanitarian treatment of its own citizens. Americans had seen protesters in Tiananmen Square crushed by Chinese tanks. The brutality of the Chinese toward unarmed protesters had shocked Americans so much that China was required to treat its citizens in a humanitarian way in order to maintain its MFN (Most Favored Nation) status.
China desperately needed to keep its MFN status for one reason: only with MFN status could it get a huge discount on tariffs it had to pay to the U.S. With MFN Chinese manufacturers only had to pay a 6% tariff. Without it they would have had to pay an unprofitable 40%. So without its MFN status China couldn’t as easily compete with American manufacturers. China’s MFN status was suspended during the Korean War, but conditionally reinstated in 1980 under the Jackson-Vanir freedom of emigration amendment to the Trade Act of 1974.
This is where Bill Clinton stepped in. With his 1993 Executive Order, he unconstitutionally seized control of the MFN conditions, removing it from the involvement of Congress, just as Obama seized treaty control away from the Senate with his Iranian nuke deal.
https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2016-01-21/obamas-iran-nuclear-deal-is-a-bad-deal-off-to-a-worse-start
Clinton’s Executive Order was issued at a time when the U.S.-China trade deficit was only $18 billion a year. In 2015 the deficit was $367 billion.
It’s important to understand that at the time China’s MFN status was annually up for review by Congress. The effective law was passed in 1974. What Bill Clinton did, with an unconstitutional Executive Order, was to use “the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States” to rewrite a Congressionally approved treaty and change the terms. The way he changed it is eerily similar to the way Hillary practiced State Department decisions when she was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2012.
Bill Clinton intentionally, with great harm to jobs in the U.S., changed the terms of the law in this way: instead of requiring a vote of Congress to reaffirm China’s MFN status every year, Bill Clinton illegally shifted the decision-making role to the Secretary of State. This eliminated the power of Congress to approve the annual MFN status. President Clinton, in his 1993 statement, said this was necessary to avoid the “annual battles between Congress and the Executive” which was divisive. Of course it was divisive – the Framers of the Constitution intended it to be so. Without the input of the elected members of Congress the people had no say.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/09/how_bill_clinton_sent_manufacturing_jobs_to_china.html