Billionaire Kochs to Financially Back Democrats Pushing Amnesty, Free Trade

Support for free trade absolutism, amnesty for illegal aliens, and an anti-economic nationalist voting record are basic requirements for Democrats and Republicans who want financial support from the Koch brothers, as outlined in AFP’s memo:

Four new issue specific Political Action Committees (PACs) will be created to make contributions directly to candidates. We know that candidates will seldom agree with Americans for Prosperity on every issue. But for those who do the politically difficult job of leading on a critical issue, these issue specific PACs will make it clear why millions of Americans support them on that issue, even if they have principled disagreements on others. The PACs, which will launch in the coming weeks as new entities working with our broader community, are: Uniting for Economic Opportunity, Uniting for Free Expression, Uniting for Free Trade, and Uniting for Immigration Reform. [Emphasis added]

The initiative is set to put the Koch brothers’ network of donor class organizations in line with Democrats such as Joe Biden — who has backed amnesty for all illegal aliens and continues to support the NAFTA free trade deal that eliminated nearly five million American jobs — and Republicans such as Justin Amash who opposes the use of tariffs and has previously suggested support for an amnesty for illegal aliens shielded from deportation by President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Meanwhile, the Kochs’ doubling down on amnesty and free trade puts them not only at odds with economic nationalists such as President Donald Trump and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — both of whom support tariffs on foreign imports and cracking down on multinational corporations who outsource U.S. jobs — but also with the overwhelming majority of Republican voters, conservatives, and Trump supporters.

The latest Harvard/Harris Poll revealed that the vast majority, nearly 8-in-10, Republican voters support tariffs on Chinese imports. Likewise, close to 85 percent of Trump supporters said they support tariffs on China and 76 percent of conservative voters said the same. A majority, 53 percent, of all U.S. voters said they support tariffs on Chinese imports.

On immigration, the billionaire donor class continues to be out of step with Republican voters.

While the Koch brothers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, corporate CEOs, and Silicon Valley elites have continuously demanded amnesty for illegal aliens and increased levels of legal immigration, Republican voters have said their top priorities are building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to stop illegal immigration and reducing all legal immigration to the country.

The Koch network’s economic libertarian, anti-populist agenda of free trade, mass legal immigration, and entitlement reform has little-to-no support among the American electorate. The economic libertarian agenda, once fronted by former House Speaker Paul Ryan, failed to sway voters in the 2018 midterm election.

Still one of the most telling charts of voter-profiles from recent election. The results: There is no support for economic libertarianism across U.S. Source: https://t.co/u5u99K1nW1 pic.twitter.com/TfenFo8FZa

— John Binder 👽 (@JxhnBinder) January 23, 2019

Previously, the Kochs and their network have opposed any reductions to legal immigration to raise American workers’ wages, reforms to save U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars by ending welfare-dependent legal immigration, and an end to the country’s birthright citizenship policy that rewards illegal aliens’ U.S.-born children with American citizenship.

The nation’s Washington, DC-imposed mass legal and illegal immigration policy — whereby at least 1.5 million unskilled foreign nationals are admitted to the U.S. every year — is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational conglomerates, as America’s working and middle class have their wealth redistributed to the country’s top earners through wage stagnation.

Research by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has discovered that immigration to the country shifts about $500 billion in wages away from working and middle-class Americans toward new arrivals and economic elites.

Meanwhile, decades of free trade has spurred mass layoffs, unemployment, and offshoring of high-paying American jobs while surging trade deficits. Since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), the U.S. trade deficit with China has eliminated at least 3.5 million American jobs from the American economy. Millions of American workers in all 50 states have been displaced from their jobs, which have been lost due to U.S.-China trade relations.

Story cited here.

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