K-Mart
Essay Preview: K-Mart
Report this essay
The elections of new political leaders can influence foreign and domestic business policies over ones elected term. The Bush administration over the past seven years has made three large tax cuts, expanded the federal role in primary and secondary education, softened environment regulation, introduced a prescription plan, increased police powers for dealing with terrorist, and formed a massive Department of Homeland Security. Lower taxes, sharply higher spending and reduced revenues from a stagnant economy have produced a reversal of fiscal fortunes. Since 2001 President Bush and congressional leaders have promised that enacting each of a series of tax cuts would strengthen the economy by bringing faster growth, more jobs, and greater investment. The United States $5 trillion budget surplus projected in 2001 for the decade has turned into a $5 trillion deficit. Health care cost are rising at an even increasing pace, which more and more companies are passing the extra cost to the employee. In turn, the spending power of the American people will decrease as they anticipate this raising cost.
During the 1990s (under the Clinton Administration) the American economy entered an economic boom. Leading into the 21st century the United States economy was headed in the right direction. In February 2000, the United States entered the 107th consecutive month of economic expansion which is the longest economic expansion in history. In the 1990s 22.2 million new jobs were created since 1993, the most jobs ever created under a single Administration and more new jobs than Presidents Reagan and Bush created during their three terms. Of these new jobs, 91 percent (19.9 million) of jobs were created in the private sector, the highest percentage in 50 years. The Unemployment rate was down from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 4.0 percent in June 2000, and in April the unemployment rate was the lowest in over 30 years. The poverty rate has fallen from 15.1 percent in 1993 to 12.7 percent in 1998. Thats the lowest poverty rate since 1979 and the largest five-year drop in poverty in nearly 30 years .
The political agenda of Administrations can greatly influence the state of economy. These to Administrations took two different approaches to the economy each ending with different results.
NAFTA and the emergence of China as a global power house have impacted the United State economy too. NAFTA is a free trade and investment agreement that provided investors with a unique set of guarantees designed to stimulate foreign direct investment and the movement of factories within the hemisphere, especially from the United States to Canada and Mexico. As a result, NAFTA tilted the economic playing field in favor of investors and against workers and the environment. The rise in the U.S. trade Deficit with Canada and Mexico through 2004 has caused the displacement of production that supported 1.1 million jobs since the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1993. Jobs were displaced in every state and major industry in the United States. Two thirds of those lost jobs were in manufacturing industries. Since NAFTA took effect, the growth of exports supported approximately 1 million U.S. jobs, but the growth of imports displaced domestic production that would have supported 2 million jobs. The growth of the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada caused a net decline in U.S. production that would have supported