Bill Lynott has a rather blunt message for those Americans who subscribe to today`s widely accepted ideas about the global economy and international trading partners like Japan.
”There is no such thing as a global economy,” Lynott said last week.
”There is only an amalgam of individual national economies in direct competition with each other. While we are not in a war of violence or hatred with Japan, we are, nevertheless, in a titanic economic struggle that can produce only one winner and one loser. The consequences of being the loser will be far worse than most Americans understand.”
Those are not words that will endear Lynott to Japanese diplomats and America`s free-market economists, but the former Sears, Roebuck and Co. executive doesn`t mind, because, as he points out, he is a man on a mission.
”I began thinking seriously about the economic problems afflicting our country about 18 months ago. But at some point you have to start doing something,” said Lynott, 64, a soft-spoken man who worked 33 years for Sears before retiring as the company`s East Coast director of consumer relations.
What Lynott did was sell off the small management consulting business he created after his retirement and start the Buy America Foundation-a registered non-profit organization that he says is dedicated to educating Americans about the ”importance of supporting and buying American-made products.”
Headquartered in his home in Abington, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, the 3-month-old foundation`s purpose, according to a free quarterly newsletter, is to educate and inform the American public about the ”harmful impact on our economy, our citizens, our workers and our society in general by the purchase of foreign-made products in those cases where American-made products of equal or better quality and value are readily available.”
The newsletter contains a section called the ”Buy America Hall of Fame” in which 100 percent American-made products are listed without any endorsement. It also contains a section called ”Orchids and Onions” in which American firms like Harley-Davidson are awarded an orchid for regaining its leadership in the domestic super-heavyweight motorcycle market and firms like AT&T are given an onion for shifting production of a telephone manufacturing facility from Shreveport, La., to Singapore.
The newsletter, Lynott says, accepts no paid advertising, though the foundation itself depends on public donations to pursue its ”mission of education.”
Included in that education process are Lynott`s strong views on world trade, which he insists is a zero sum game.
”America is engaged in a titanic struggle for economic survival…a contest that can produce only one winner and one loser,” said Lynott, dismissing the arguments of many economists who insist that ideally, the new global economy of multinational borderless corporations should function with multiple winners, rather than with winners and losers.
For example, say those in the free-trader camp, where a product is made is not as important as where it is marketed and consumed. By spreading production all over the planet, everybody benefits. Newly industrializing nations benefit from the creation of new jobs requiring higher skills while consumers benefit by being able to purchase products at lower costs.
Hogwash, says Lynott.
”America is hurtling down the road to economic disaster. America`s incomprehensively huge trade deficit is draining off America`s wealth and lowering our standard of living while increasing the wealth of our trading partners and raising their standard of living.
”The so-called global economy is seriously misunderstood by Americans,” Lynott continued. ”It benefits almost every other trading nation at the expense of America. Americans who simply throw up their hands and surrender because some products are a mixture of domestic and imported components are allowing themselves to be misled about the nature and gravity of the core problem.”
That core problem, Lynott insists, is the erosion of America`s manufacturing base-created partly by foreign competitors and partly by American firms who have moved their manufacturing operations offshore in pursuit of cheaper labor and higher profits.
”There is really nothing wrong with that if you don`t go overboard with it and hollow out your own manufacturing base,” said Japanese economist Ko Amaya. ”It has been going on in Japan for the past several years. Japanese manufacturers have put plants all over Asia and even in America where products can be made and delivered to markets more efficiently and more profitably.”
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The problem in America, Amaya suggests, is that too many American manufacturers moved too much offshore too quickly. Now, America is paying the price.
America`s failure to protect its domestic manufacturing base has been a suicidal course, Lynott argues. American manufacturers who move their manufacturing bases abroad are sowing the seeds of their own destruction by losing technology and abandoning the domestic work force.
”I`m a conservative fellow by nature, and I`m aware that when you start talking about `buy America` it conjures up images of flag waving, Japan bashing, maudlin patriotism. And that`s certainly one extreme. But that`s not what we are all about. But we are also not supportive of the other extreme, either…the extreme that says it doesn`t make any difference if I buy an American or a foreign product because we are living in a global economy.”
The Buy America Foundation, insists Lynott, is there somewhere in the middle, trying to explain to an American public that, he says, is apathetic and ignorant about what the term ”global economy” really means.
”The terms global economy or global marketplace suggest that America need not concern itself with a foreign trade policy designed to serve its own best interests because the market itself will serve those interests,” said Lynott.
”But the fact is, almost every other developed country in the world has carefully crafted a foreign trade policy to serve its own best interests, while we in the U.S. still cling to the 18th Century laissez faire, free-trade ideas of Adam Smith,” Lynott continued.
”My objection to the idea of a global economy as it has been presented to the American public is that it suggests all nations are working together for some mutual advantage, when, in fact, they are not,” Lynott said. ”In fact, we are nations of totally different cultures, values, legal systems, economies. We are competing against each other…every nation is an opponent …there can be only one winner and one loser.”
Americans, Lynott insists, have been sold a faulty bill of goods and have been lulled into believing that the loss of its manufacturing base is one of those inevitable drifts and progressions of economic history that we have no control over.
In fact, says Lynott, Americans do have control over their economic fate. ”The American consumer holds the key to changing our present course,”
Lynott said. ”Collectively, the American consumer is the mightiest economic power on earth. Once Americans understand the need to buy American, we`ll have taken the first step on the road back to recovery.”
What Lynott insists he and the Buy America Foundation are doing is waving a red flag in front of the American consumer.
”History is screaming at us and trying to teach us that control of the leading manufacturing bases of the day translates into economic dominance of the world,” said Lynott. ”Spain had it for a while and lost it to England. Then the U.S., a nation with incredibly abundant natural resources, took over. ”Then we invited the rest of the world to come in and weaken our primary manufacturing base and take over,” Lynott continued. ”And it has. In the 1950s, the Japanese went to the history books and learned that you can achieve and sustain economic dominance by targeting specific industries and markets, which is what they did with the electronics industry.”
The response to the foundation`s Buy America message has surprised Lynott and the organization`s vice president, Dick Marsh, president of Drexel Brooking International, a Pennsylvania manufacturer of electronic control devices.
”It`s been overwhelming,” Lynott said. ”Our initial newsletter in January was 2,000 copies. The last one was 5,000 copies. The next one will probably be 10,000. People are responding…they want to know what`s going on…what needs to be done.”
What needs to be done, Lynott is quick to say, is to change the way American consumers view products made in the U.S.A.
”There is a perception among Americans that products made in the U.S.A. are no good, and I blame Detroit for that,” said Lynott. ”For years, Detroit turned out junk and the American consumer got fed up. Today Detroit is making cars that are top quality, but the perception is that they are still inferior to Japanese and German makes.”
That attitude has spread throughout the entire U.S. manufacturing base so that now all American manufacturers, no matter how good they are, find themselves tarred by the same brush, Lynott says.
”There is no doubt that it`s an American problem . . . we did it to ourselves; the Japanese didn`t do it to us,” Lynott said.
”But now it`s like we and the Japanese are engaged in a kind of Super Bowl football game,” he continued. ”We don`t hate our opponents, we don`t want to kill them or destroy their families, but it`s halftime, and we`re in the locker room and we are getting our tails kicked. What I`m saying is that we have to go back out there in the second half, and we have to win this game.”