If we CAN'T buy ALL our own production, in any given cycle of production, with the total wages, salaries and dividends paid out in the course of making it, how then are we going to buy the EXCHANGE of that production when we trade it to China or any other country?

Is not international trade supposed to be an exchange of relative surpluses? Or do we just ship goods halfway around the world and bring alternate goods back just to "make work" for someone?

One of the IPG guys once tried to convince me of the argument that PG's future was not in manufacturing ourselves, but rather as a service centre of knowledge and technology for export to China and Russia.

I argued back that that is a policy to benefit the few at the expense of the many; but apparently the belief that PG will soon be the Silicon Valley of forestry as the exporter of our competitive advantages rules the day in the cities economic development elites....

I see China and Russia as our competitors who will have no qualms about taking our technology and management practices to combine with their own resources and undermine our future industry through their competitive access to slave labour, and little in the way of environmental responsibility.

IMO if we wanted to help those countries then it should be limited to environmental protection, as well as human and labour rights. And if we want to trade with them, then we should require environmental standards. If they don't have the stamp then they don't sell in our markets... we just have to make sure we are better then them, and we have the stamp... and our technology, management practices, and competitive advantage. Time will tell.

Never mind goings on in PG. I eagerly await Ben's next anti-police rant in regards to the incident in the Victoria Police Department's lock up.

"Is not international trade supposed to be an exchange of relative surpluses?"

I do not know if that is the idea, but it sure looks as if international trade is all about survival of the fittest, i.e. the survival of those who produce products which are most affordably prized, best quality and reliability and so forth.

All producers want to take business away from their competitors and make a profit. It's a global phenomenon.

Consumers make choices based on the above criteria. I don't see how surpluses of corn produced in the USA and exported to Mexico are a benefit to the Mexican corn grower if the American corn producers are so heavily subsidized that the local Mexican growers are forced out of business.

China can produce a small family car for less than 3 grand, export it to anywhere in the world and still make a profit while employing workers in better paying jobs.

We are expected to purchase these so-called surplus cars, aren't we! That's how Hyundai got into the market here with the Pony.

Will the Canadian consumer pay 20 grand for a new car when one of equal size and quality can be had for 10 grand if it comes from China or India?

Everything looks good on a paper, but the real world has a mind of its own.

I herby plead guilty to being one of those 'glass is half full' types. So sorry. On the other hand, what good does it do to constantly complain, while not giving any ideas of how the galss could be filled? I am no geius but i do know that public perception has a lot to do with the way things work out. I am not saying that a positive attitude will rescue the forest industry from its troubles. I am saying that those people out there bemoaning the state of the north , or of alberta or of the whole country ought to temper their remarks a little. Are things really so bad in PG right now? Are our prospects so grim? Would anyone reading bens column want to move here? invest here? I doubt it. Prosperity in this area is cyclical. Always has been, always will be. We are more diversified than we were when i moved here. I am not saying that there is any future in exporting manufactured wood products. I dont think there is. But at least someone is trying to think of ways to even out our local economy and not just (joyfully?) bemoaning our fate.

I admit freely that I don't know much about international trade, but, it seems to me that if we send raw materials to China, they process it with low wage jobs then send it back so we pay ridiculous prices for the end product, we cut our own throat. Why isn't there a duty or tariff or something that takes into account the differences in wages. If due to labour it costs them 10% of what it costs a Canadian producer than, there should be a 90% tariff on the goods to ensure our own companies have a level playing ground.

If we made our own products from our own raw materials we wouldn't have to worry about exports. But then I guess we couldn't have three TV's in every home (cause that is good for family bonding).

Look out for bamboo...china's got it and everyone likes it and wants it. (for flooring anyway) Plus it grows like crazy and is a good renewable resource unlike wood. Too bad canada and PG.

If I ever get bamboo flooring, I hope no one tells any pandas.

I did Harbinger, and its good stuff!

"Why isn't there a duty or tariff or something that takes into account the differences in wages. If due to labour it costs them 10% of what it costs a Canadian producer than, there should be a 90% tariff on the goods to ensure our own companies have a level playing ground."

That was, and stil is in some cases, the notion of "protectionism". You might as well close the borders to everything other than those things you simply cannot produce yourself - bananas, etc.

There is the other philosophy which comes from the notion of biodiversity and natural selection, or the notion of computer programmes which use open architecture such as AutoCAD. the more people have access, the more likely it is that improvements will be developed. Monopolies are generally considered to have a disadvantage to society at large other than to the monopolist.

Going back to an example of trade then. Remember that the level of out forest production is based on exports. So is our mining industry and our oil and gas industry. Some of our manufacturing industry as well. Bomabardier would not be where it is today if it had to rely on Canada as the sole marketplace.

So, the USA is basically crying foul with respect to subsidies to our forest industry.

If we were going to switch to a protectionist approach, this part of the province, which is almost totally dependent on extraction, some primary manufacturing, and exports virtually all of that, would take a dive even worse than it is now.

Canada would look completely different, and it likely would not be for the better. The world would look completely different, and it would likely not be for the better.

Is not an hour's labour an hour's labour, whether it's performed in China, Korea, the USA, Japan, here, or wherever? BC's sawmills are already more productive per man hour than most of our forest industry's global competitors. Certainly many more times productive than current Chinese sawmills, which are near the bottom of the heap when it comes to productivity per man-hour. Yet, we are told, China can undersell us in the markets of the world. Now how can that be?

How can it possibly be 'cheaper' to haul resources from North America half way around the world and bring finished products back than producing those same products right here in North America?

Especially, when in cases of a definite 'low-wage' State like North Carolina, its furniture factories and the mills that fed raw materials into them, and well-experienced people who manned them, were all in place?

Just the energy alone expended to now take North Carolina hardwood logs to China instead, and subsequently return finished pieces of furniture to, in some cases, a few hundred miles from where the tree originally grew, must be a considerable 'cost' item in itself. Especially in these days of high priced oil. Not to mention the further 'cost' WE are about to endure here of supposedly allieviating OUR 'greenhouse gas emissions', and the supposed 'shortages' of petroleum we're told, endlessly, that we're ALL facing. Yet, we're told, it's 'cheaper'to send and retrieve from afar than to manufacture here. Again, how can that be?

We know SOME of the ways it can be. Manufacturers in China, and our other Third-world competitors aren't subject to the same kind of environmental, and labour, and worker safety restrictions our firms are here.

Just look at one of Suzuki's "Nature of Things" programs that aired a few years ago, and had a segment that profiled a Mexican co-operative lumbering operation-cum-furniture factory. The factory had machines driven by belts, off a central line shaft, the way we used to do it here. But not a belt guard or safety device in sight! Do they have Worker's Compensation in Mexico? Or is life itself cheap enough there they don't feel it's needed.

And in China, with their coal fired power plants? Not even the most elemental form of scrubber or precipitator on the smoke-stack! It just belches its filth unimpeded, without the slightest concern. Probably there's a high enough quick mortality rate from just digging the coal in Chinese mines for them to be worried about anyone croaking from the long term effects of breathing its smoke! And WE are supposed to compete with that! The deck is tilted so far against us before we even begin the ONLY way it might be somewhat levelled would be through tariffs.

Even so, we are still not facing the fundamental problem. For the 'accounting' surrounding international trade is flawed. The 'figures' do not in any way properly REFLECT the physical facts. Not the way they're presently computed.

The way it sits now, the system enslaves the exporting country's workers, and impoverishes the (former) ones of the importing nation. And such will be so, as long as the trade is primarily one FORCED on us in a quest for foreign 'credits' transferable into domestic 'money', rather than an freely negotiated exchange of 'goods' for 'goods' to diversify each country's domestic consumption.