They hate us, but they keep buying our stuff
Foreigners don’t have a high opinion of the United States, owing to the war in Iraq, but that hasn’t done much to deter a ferocious appetite for American goods and services, as had been expected.
Last year, U.S. multinationals posted record earnings in virtually ever region of the world and rose to a total of $291.5 billion — a 170 percent jump from 2001’s cyclical low — Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Bank of America Corp., noted in a report on Monday.
Those figures run counter to the global image of America. A 47-country survey released in late June by the Pew Global Attitudes Project documented wide anti-American sentiment since the survey was launched in 2002 and found those attitudes deepening this year.
The United States’ favorable ratings declined in 26 of the 33 countries for which a comparison was available, with negative views particularly strong in the Middle East.
Lots of lip service to America-bashing. But when it comes to consumer spending, the haters don’t walk their talk. Feel the warmth:
U.S. global brands continue to “inspire deep loyalty among foreign customers,” Quinlan said.
In a recent ranking conducted by BrandZ, eight of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 most valuable brands in the world were American.
Among the top brands according to BrandZ are Web search leader Google Inc., General Electric Co., whose products range from jet engines to turbines, and software maker Microsoft Corp. .
“The boom in global earnings also reflects Corporate America’s peerless global reach and the extraordinary success of U.S. firms in building global networks and leveraging global resources while tailoring goods and services to local tastes,” Quinlan said.
Like The Persuaders sang: It’s a thin line between love and hate.
***
Related: USenvy.com tracks “the hypocrisy of worldwide anti-Americanism.”
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I’ve done (and still do) quite a bit of world travel, mainly Europe and South, Southeast Asia. I’ve seen enough, if I could spend the rest of my life living in the Florida panhandle, that would suit me fine.
I’ve grown to be an isolationist. Yeah, it’s good to travel outside our borders. But just as a reminder at how Blessed our beautiful shores really are. As for those who dislike us, who cares.
MADE IN THE U.S.A., BABY!
One might add:
They hate us, but they keep on coming.
Yes, from China to Ireland, from the North Africa to Australia, many dream of coming and/or living in America.
And many of them hate America, yet they cannot resist her appeal. There are those who come and fall in love with her and those who come for the sole purpose of destroying her.
In any case, America is the light of the world, its beacon, its dream, its desire and its hope.
Therefore, I still cannot grasp why those Americans who were born and lived all their lives in this land hate her so much and accuse her of being the cause of all the miseries of the world. It boggles my mind.
All I can say is this:
America-haters need to spend some time with the legal immigrants, the true America-lovers who stood in line long hours and suffered through the terrible bureaucratic system only because they love America and want to spend the rest of their lives and die in this Land of the Free and opportunity.
from
theNorth AfricaI dunno… Leeches do have some beneficial medical uses, don’t they?
They hate us because…
A) They can’t stand that they love our stuff so much.
B) No matter how hard they try (32 hours a week, 9 months a year), they just can’t be as good as us at darn near anything.
C) We’re so good looking, have good teeth, smell pretty good, and mostly are pretty darn happy no matter how much they yap at us.
D) We inexplicably just don’t care what they think. Ergo, irrelevance bites.
E) All the above.
Funny how people never take into account how much we give in various aid packages to all the places in the world. When the Tsunami hit in Asia, guess who gave the most money? … Who keeps giving care packages to various countries in Africa? Just two easy examples of a very long list.
So when do the ingrates get what they have comming to them, I wonder. How’s the saying go? “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you”…
Watch how fast they cry for help if we stopped giving away aid and money.
Simple answer: They see the misery throughout the world, see the lack of same here and feel that we don’t deserve our success. Most of them are from money and so never had to struggle. Their guilt at being handed material success clouds their minds. They’ve examined themselves and know they aren’t worthy of what they have, therefore, they think no one is and spend their time spreading misery and thinking that destroying America will make everyone equal.
It is indeed a mental disorder.
I thank God every day that I am an American. The world is fortunate to have a country like America. I certainly understand why the illegal aliens WANT to be American – but so does most everybody else.
We are so fortunate. I guess part of the problem is that good news doesn’t sell as well as bad news. News is as capitalistic as any other American entity and the dollar is the bottom line.
God Bless America! And God keep our troops safe!
On July 9th, 2007 at 11:58 pm, ScottG said:
So true, sadly they cant stand the though of admitting it though.
So I would be lucky to be born a Muslim? A Mexican? A Russian? A Frenchperson? lol. That is just silly. Name your country. There is only one that everyone hates. Hmmmm. Wonder why?
How to explain the contradiction? On the one hand, the American inventive mind has been creating better things for better living for the last 250 years, from the rocking chair to the Internet. On the other hand, we tend to push a puritanical morality on the rest of the world that we seldom live up to. For example, the State Department’s abstinance-only advocate resigning after being caught on the Washington Madam’s phone records. Also, the weak dollar may result in bargains for foreigners but does nothing to win their respect.
Fine. They hate us. We’ll call in our billions of unpaid dept, stop giving more and have trade only with those places that support us. Watch how quickly they start loving their American “friends”, the spoiled loud-mouths.
We need backbone. Remember how the world got very quiet, very respectful and very supportive when it was unclear how this overpowering superpower was going to respond to 9-11? Then we got “sensitive” and they all piled on again. We need to get that respect back somehow, and not giving jr the keys to the car, so to speak, would be a dramatic way to start.
They hate us, but they keep buying our stuff
a bit like some folk who hate muslims but keep buying arab oil
I don’t hate Muslims. I do want to keep our country safe from jahadist. Apparently, America is exporting some fine goods. What do we get for it? How about antifreeze in the toothpaste and plastic pellets in the dog food. Osama Bin Laden is in a cave somewhere ticked off at America because we get pet MEDS delivered to our door!!!!!
I once spent some time in Malaysia, back in ‘99, and had the opportunity to watch the reactions to their new budget on tv. There were 5-6 news people sitting around commenting on the budget and it dawned on me after 30 minutes or so, that none of them had an opinion or disagreement with anything! All I heard was “great”, “wonderful”, “very good”. They went through the entire thing and never once disagreed with any of it! It was then that I realized that I was not in the U.S., where we are free to disagree. There, disagreement in an Islamic state could be major trouble. I’ve been throughout Europe and some of Asia, and I’ve been always happy to be back home. Those who have never been overseas should go and visit. It will be an eye-opener to them.
kouti, do you own a car??
But just as a reminder at how Blessed our beautiful shores really are. As for those who dislike us, who cares.
Zorro
The main problem, though, is we keeping importing into our country those who hate us and Israel (devout Muslims), who bring all their family members that hate us and who immigrate just because of our economic success, not our democratic values. We need a sane immigration policy. We need to also make sure that we are allowing immigrants who love us and our government into the country, not the haters of our government and lifestyle.
They hate us for envy yet contempt for the values upon which this country was founded. Mainly, Christian faith principles found in Scripture which extol freedom of the individual, equality of mankind, law based on God’s law,and love and compassion. Most of these values are not shared culturally in the parts of the world referred to here. The human heart desires these values but most of the world population is trapped in culturally perverted societies dominated by godless values which are characterised more by enslavement and domination of the individual. Thank your God that you have been blessed with what you have been blessed and pray for those born in our own country who have spurned the God who gave them all their blessings and opportunities. They will surely be held accountable for their ingratitude and woe be unto them.
I have gotten to know many people from South America over the past few years . It seems they think we are born rich . We are all lazy and arrogant . They think we do not deserve our way of life because we have not lived in poverty . It is some sort of resentment . Of course I tell them my own life story but they just write it off as an exception. Whatever .
When I went to Brazil everything American is coveted. Music , movies , electronics , etc….
I only see rich and poor. They cannot seem to develop a middle class which is essential to a successful economy.
I don’t think they don’t “hate” us per se. The reason they resent us is because we are the one and only superpower. Our culture is the prevailing culture worldwide. As stated in the piece: they gobble up our culture; they love our rock stars, our movies, our movie stars, our TV shows etc. If the world is like a big high school, we’re the jocks, the Europeans are the drama queens who hang out by the drama dept., etc. (you can fill in the rest of the blanks.)
foxforce91, they hated us just as much if not more when the USSR was around. America hatred is based on 2 things:
1) America is blessed with natural resources beyond a lot of people, and we worked hard to make the country a success. Also in our success we sometimes don’t understand how others, not so well blessed, aren’t as successful. It’s not a simple thing, but our hard work condemns others while our arrogance is not attractive.
India is a great example of the love/hate relationship of America. I have written about it here at The Jungle Report. Please give it a read.
On the one hand they hate us and our ways, on the other hand they love our companies, jobs, technology, and want to come here bad.
How can they be US and multinational?
Robert Reich of the Clinton administration famously pointed out that multinationals have little loyalty to the US.
The same might be said for the business globalists like Jorge Bush, the Wall Street Journal, and the Council on Foreign Relations, for whom the US is merely a commercial zone filled with overpriced labor that should be merged with cheap labor from around the world to form a Chinese or Indian type of low wage high profit economy wherein the businessman and investor is king.
Who gives a hairy rat’s what other countries think? They can’t run their own business, and not one can take the moral high road – they’ve all had their Viet Nams and much, much worse.
I, too, travel frequently in Europe, Central and South America. Mexico, Central and South America have been settled as long as the U. S. yet still resemble Louisiana in the ’40s. There’s no excuse for it. Europe is fascinating but they’re running their countries into the ground attempting to maintain socialist proclivities to prevent strikes and riots.
An interesting fact when traveling the tourist trail in Europe and the near East: The UK is reviled by the Mediterranean countries for filling museums with their artifacts. Guides are very vocal and still quite bitter. I doubt the artifacts would exist at all if the Brits [and French] hadn’t purchased and spirited these treasures to safer locations. Go further north to the low and Baltic countries, Russia and her ex-satellites all despise the Germans for the soulless torching of national treasures whenever their military was on the retreat. These people hate us AND they hate each other. So, again: WHO CARES WHAT THEY THINK???
If they hate us so much, let’s cut off the aide, withdraw all of our military and withdraw from and evict the U.N.
And if that doesn’t make them like us, then as my old Master Sargent used to say “F**k-em if they can’t take a joke.”
I think most of this hating America is the “in” thing in many of these countries, much like hating America is the “in” thing at many universities. Why take responsibility for problems and the obligation to fix them when blaming America is so much easier? I have been stationed in Australia, Turkey, and currently in Germany. In Australia, the only folks I ran into that hated America, were the same types that inhabit many universities in the US. Turkey was very unusual in that their perception of America was based on what they saw in the movies and on TV (an oxymoron in that the same Americans creating this garbage are usually the same ones railing how hated we are). Many Turks saw marrying an American as a status symbol at the same time they were against the values promoted by our entertainment industry. Being able to buy American goods in the base commissary (grocery store) and the BX (base exchange–military Walmart) was the height of status for many Turks. Although many Turks may denounce America as part of their political theater, same as most liberal rallies here in the US, most would move here in a heartbeat. In Germany, I think the biggest issue is ego. We politely listen to them as an ally, but they aren’t as big a player as they would like to be. The UK gets consulted on many things, while Germany is an afterthought. The US has a big political influence on Germany, while Germany has little political influence on the US. Case in point is Germany was making noise in hopes of influencing our decision on Iraq. As soon as the US began talking about closing bases and moving them East, the Germans decided to tone it down because they didn’t want to lose all that money. We make international decisions and the many Germans take notice. Germany makes international decisions and few Americans pay attention. For most of Western Europe, giving up free health care and all the other socialist goodies is hard, so they are not as interested in moving to America. For most folks in Eastern Europe, Africa, South America and Asia, the US is seen as the promised land, a chance to get away from crappy dictatorships and general lawlessness.
As far as goods and services, its amazing how things work here in Germany compared to the US. At my first house, it took me 10 days to get phone service, and a month to see if I could get the internet service I wanted because I lived in a very small town. When I moved, it took 14 days to get the new phone service. Fortunately, I moved to an area that had plenty of internet options, so I got my internet at the same time, but still, it was 14 days of waiting. In addition, you pay an approximation every month of what they think you will use in utilities based on how many folks in your household. At the end of 12 months, you find out if you owe or if you get a refund. American music is very popular. It is very strange to be listening to American songs on the radio and then a German DJ. There’s more than a few Germans that know very little English that can sing along with American hit songs.
It’s puzzled me in recent years that the left pushes the notion that somehow, prior to George Bush taking office, we were beloved in the world. Where they get this cockamamie idea I don’t know.
The fact is, we have not added one single enemy since Bush took office. We’ve actually eliminated one in Saddam Hussein. But were we pals with Kim Jong Il before Bush. Did we hang with the mullahs of Iran when Clinton was in office?
Which nations hate us now that didn’t hate us on January 19, 2001? Europe? Give me a break. The French have been an enemy in all but name since DeGualle’s time. The Middle East? Yeah, right. We were very popular with the Arabs under Clinton.
The point being, nothing has changed – except the perception pushed by the left that all of a sudden, we’re some pariah nation because the left in Europe hates us even more than usual because of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. Ask conservatives in Great Britain or Germany or even France and all of them say they wish they could be more like us and less like the socialist weenies who run their countries.
But since that viewpoint is surpressed in Europe – with a few brave exceptions – Americans think we’re universally hated.
But just wait. If a Democrat is elected in 2008, we’ll be all kisses and cuddles with the Eurotwits again.
Makes me want to puke…