Buyer's Remorse So Soon?

Wow. Barely a month after the election, and already the business world (along with the geniuses at the DLC) is rethinking Kerry's primary-season stand on shipping jobs out of the country - and whether he should have made more of it during the campaign. Too late, jerks. You demanded he didn't. Live with it.

The Two Faces of China

...China is already the largest user of steel and cement and is poised to overtake the United States in consumption of everything from copper to soybeans. These goods are needed in a fast-growing economy with many highways, factories and office towers to build - and with 1.3 billion mouths to feed.

China has become the world's largest market for cellphones, and it is catching up with Germany and Japan as a market for cars, although it considerably trails the United States in its appetite for new vehicles.

Businesses reaping the biggest rewards include companies that supply China's need for infrastructure, like the General Electric Company, which sells large turbines and aircraft engines. G.E. currently ships roughly $3.5 billion worth of goods each year to China from other countries, mainly the United States, while exporting $2 billion of merchandise from China, mainly to the United States.

But companies like G.E. are the exception. American imports from China exceed exports by more than five to one, as retailers like Wal-Mart Stores buy immense and growing quantities of goods from China. With as many people as the entire industrialized world combined, China has tens of millions of unskilled workers willing to work for less than $100 a month.

During the Democratic primaries this year, Senator John Kerry repeatedly denounced "Benedict Arnold C.E.O.'s" who moved jobs overseas. Those statements drew strong objections from the business community, including Democratic business leaders, and Mr. Kerry's comments about trade were relatively tame during the general election campaign.

Yet many corporate executives wonder how much longer a big American trade deficit and the moving of jobs overseas can persist without becoming the subject of strong protests by Americans who say that foreign workers are taking away their jobs.

Let's make this clear - foreign workers aren't taking away your jobs. Overseas outsourcing was given the green light from our neocon government via huge tax cuts for our all-American corporations. Bush took your jobs.