Over the last seven years, foreign companies have been quietly eating the American elephant one bite at a time.

Chinese firms are moving in and buying up businesses with American household names, unlike in the 1980s when the Japanese were selling their brands like: Sony electronics, along with Honda and Toyota automobiles, the strategy today for the Chinese firms is to acquire existing American brands.

Most Americans don’t realize that when they go to see a current movie at an AMC theater chain, they are doing so in a theater owned by the Chinese. General Electric small appliance division is now owned by the Chinese.

Another sector that has seen significant Chinese investment recently is tourism and hospitality. Chinese “investments in 2015 included hotels (among them the Red Lion Hotels, Waldorf Astoria New York, Waldorf Astoria Chicago, and the Hyatt Regency Orange County), golf courses (including more than 20 Myrtle Beach golf courses in South Carolina). Yet another example, when the Chinese purchased Smithfield Foods, they suddenly owned 460 large farms and became the top employer in dozens of communities all over the United States…Smithfield Foods is the largest pork producer and processor in the world. It has facilities in 26 U.S. states and it employs tens of thousands of Americans. It directly owns 460 farms and has contracts with approximately 2,100 others.

But now a Chinese company has bought it for $4.7 billion, and that means that the Chinese will now be the most important employer in dozens of rural communities all over America.

Dozens of companies from China are also putting down roots in Detroit, part of the country’s steady push into the American auto industry.

Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology, selling everything from seat belts to shock absorbers in retail stores, and hiring experienced engineers and designers in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers.

“The Chinese are using American money from our trade deficit and putting it to use to acquire American brands. Given China’s $3.5 trillion in reserves, many economists figure China will be investing as much as $500 billion overseas in the near future.

The success of Chinese goods in the market place is largely due to their ability to produce quality products at less cost. However the Chinese worker’s life style would not be acceptable in western cultures. Foxconn, a multinational electronics manufacturing company, has 12 factories in nine Chinese cities. Foxconn’s largest factory worldwide is in Longhua Town, Shenzhen, where hundreds of thousands of workers as many as 450,000 are employed at the Longhua Science & Technology Park, a walled campus sometimes referred to as “Foxconn City.” Covering about 1.16 square miles, it includes 15 factories, worker dormitories, 4 swimming pools, a fire brigade, its own television network (Foxconn TV), and a city center with a grocery store, bank, restaurants, bookstore, and hospital. While some workers live in surrounding towns and villages, others live and work inside the complex; a quarter of the employees live in the dormitories, and many of them work up to 12 hours a day for 6 days each week. There is no way any American company could use this business platform as a manufacturing base in our free society yet our companies are forced to compete in this environment.

As of January 20th 2017 there’s a new Sheriff in Town. Getting rid of the old career politicians and getting a businessman as our next president might be the smartest thing voters have done since electing Ronald Reagan. Foreign countries are buying control of our food production, members of the Arab’s Oil Cartel, (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirance etc.), are buying our oil shale lands, Hillary Clinton recently participated in the sale of 30 percent of our uranium reserves to the Russians, (Uranium to fuel our Nuclear powered electric generators.) Enough is enough, it’s time we start running our Country more like a business. We could limit the amount of acreage foreign nationals may purchase, (Canada limits non-Canadians to own no more than 10 acres.) It’s purpose would be to prevent other country’s from controlling our food and energy supply’s. Mexico: Foreigners can purchase property in the country’s interior region, but are unable to directly buy inside Mexico’s “restricted zones”—a prime area encompassing 100 km from the country’s borders or 50 km from the coastline. But we just let anybody buy anything, we should have huge signs at our borders that read“Going Out Of Business Sale, Everything Must Go.”

Finally, as with any successful enterprise our country desperately needs just a touch of nationalism or as Trump states it, “America First” and for all those that still cling to their “Never Trump” status you can rest assured that we have the right man at the right time for our next president. It’s time for our country to get down to business

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Mark Schecnk

Contributing columnist

Mark Schenck is chairman of the Scotland County Republican Party