love this dude,finally someone been look after my people.

I think you all misunderstood what he's trying to say... He's for American Samoa not against it... And he's saying that Washington's legislation really messed up the economy here which is true. 60mins did not talk about that which is why it's important to educate washington on whats going on here and how it's affecting the people / economy of American Samoa.

Bravo. Great insight.

The date of this post is 11/3/2010. I just returned from a trip to American Samoa and can tell you first hand that this report is right on. Both canning plants are now closed and are virtually no jobs for Samoan people. However, the people remain kind and welcoming to visitors. There are still people living in FEMA tents since the tsunami and damaged buildings remain untouched all over the island. And yet the beautiful spirit and culture of this people remains intact and as strong as ever.

Excellent video.

Thanks you for your video

good one Peter!

What great investigative journalism. What other aspiring politicians would take the initiative to get to the bottom of a story like this. Bravo, Peter. Very enlightening.

Amen Peter, you're right on target. American Samoa has the highest rate of military service per capita of any U.S. state or territory. So the U.S. Government comes along and rewards this by devastating their economy …. sounds about right :(

Thank you for your support 😁

Thanks for following up on that story. I saw the 60 minutes story and it left me with a lot of questions. You have answered them for me. Nicely done.

Thanks, Peter!

well said

When you hear "I'm from the government and I'm here to help", in most cases a disaster is soon to follow.

You are so true man is the little 🏝️ that missed out God bless you

Good commentary.

I'm a samoan who is currently on-island and have just finished watchin ur report. I wish that ur forecast for the economic turnout for american samoa were wrong, but sad to say that it is EXACTLY as u have predicted. The inflation on EVERYTHING from food and groceries to gas and everyday products is staggering!! And the unemployment rate has shot through the roof!! Businesses are suffering and the people struggle to look for work to provide for their families!!

Peter Your so right as you seem to get the point time after time. Lou

Thank you so much for this valuable video...I will pass this on to my family from Charlevoix Michigan to all the way back to Am.Samoa....Again!...thank you...Allyn Alama

good video

Excellent analysis....

@WOTM I say those Islands because there are many books published on the history of those islands and can be used to tell the events that took place throughout the Pacific.

Thanks for the upload Peter!

Awesome video!!!!!!! Schiff for senate!

Peter got a new camera! Nice camera Peter.

AMEN to that sir......

Well Said !!

The Boeing Machinist priced themselves out of the labor market here in Everett. The second line for the 787 Dreamliner will be in South Carolina.

nice video

Excellent reporting Peter Schiff. Your grasp of economics and genuine sensitivity to ordinary peoples problems is a breath of fresh air. Good luck with your campaign for the Senate!

Great video peter. Thanks for putting it all in perspective.

good facts...

excellent rebuttal with the truth.

Just another example of the law of unintended consequences... Peter, please keep fighting the good fight, because you are right on.

I appreciate that you carefully listened in to 60 mins and realized that there was more behind the story of Samoa. Im sure 60 mins was focused on simething else but yet u managed to see a greater picture beyond their interest. The US sure did take so many jobs away, but it wasn't just them. They couldn't have done so without the help of our island's greedy politicians also. Sometimes, when the money is so sweet they forget about their children's future and the lives of those who work harder doing the work they wouldn't dare. Most times politicians think for themselves not the lives of those they're hurting. If all politicians had an ounce of consideration for ones behalf instead of himself/herself, this world would be a better place and so would American Samoa!

I thought we are preaching to the choir here but someone thumbed me down. Most of the public do not understand at all.

7 years later...

I followed Peters

I agree with most of what you're saying and wholeheartedly with the fact that closing the canneries causes the domino effect with regards to jobs and importation into Samoa. What I would like to add though is the level of government corruption in Samoa is out of hand. I worked for StarKist Samoa as a sub-contractor as well as sub-contracting to the government of Samoa and I was always in awe as to how much corruption was/is there. I

Thank you for this!!! Well said

Typo correction, tuna factory closed because there are no duties on imports to us territories. Means that countries with slave labor conditions can undercut local production costs because human rights cost and are worth big bucks.

We are not talking about getting rid of all media of exchange. We are talking about allowing other ones to come in so that competition will sort out the better ones.

Thank You SCHIFF For Being Considerate And Concerning For Our People Back In American Samoa. I MySelf Was Born And Raised There. I Appreciate Your Knowledge On The Matter, And It Is Very Educating. Most Of Us Knows The Situation And Understand It Like You Do But Somehow I Feel Like Our Politician Leaders Either Don't See It Like We Do, Or They Just Don't Care. Thank You SCHIFF For The Post. Hopefully Washington And The American Samoan Leaders Would Look Into This Video And Come To Their Senses.

The way a business work is this: I calculate the price of raw materials required, I calculate the projected sales price of the final product, then from the difference I determine how many laborers can I hire including my own profit, which maximizes the production. If my work can be done with unskilled labor, and market price of unskilled worker is $10, revenue diff is $45, then I can hire 2 workers for $10(and $25 is my profit).

I am assuming that you have never been to American Samoa. I have lived here in American Samoa for the past 4 1/2 years. One of the canneries was sold to a South Korean company way before the minimum wage hike bill was passed. The company was going to move anyway and many conservatives wanted to put the blame on the canneries closing due to the minimum wage hike, and this is completely false. The profits made by the canneries were extremely high, and it was on the backs of those Samoans.

May our Heavenly Father richly bless you beyond measure for your courage to emphasize a message when society says otherwise about our Samoan people. Thank you very much for being a voice for the voiceless against the cruelty and hatred veneer of political incorrectness and their arrogant and pride. We are beyond grateful for reaching out to our Samoan people; it has truly cut so close to our heart in so many levels. It’s our prayer to ensure justice upon our families that had been crushed and in so much pain and struggles by these demean, self centered and less fully human in some way individuals. God bless, sir! ❤️

Good lesson master!

There's not much opportunity on those remote Pacific islands to begin with.

yes

Very informative.

thats insane.

Well said Sir. I'm Samoan and grew up in American Samoa and what you are saying are all true and are facts. All I have to say is the Samoans there can always go back to subsistence living, which some still do, and some have been doing for thousands of years. Or they have to come up with some other economical idea to provide jobs. That's the more logical thing to do since American Samoa has been spoiled from being Americanized and Westernized and would probably not want to go back to old ways.

this guys has a point.

Brilliant!

Great vlog today!

They planned to shut down that plant months before the vote on the minimum wage. They have invested in the automated plant months before minimum wage was an issue.

peter its a pleasure to listen to you as always.

thank you for this.

And what happens to price when commodity speculators reduce the supply by hoarding large amounts of food?

i was watching the show......and yes, i found myself wishing they would do a story on that......also the tsunami........why did we never see anything about that..........thanks for your research........

Watching this 14 years later this needs to be updated? It appears looking a Wikipedia that A.S. primary export today is 93% $70M canned tuna. Its main export partners are Australia, S.Korea, China, Kuwait 63% respectively, exports among others. Where is the US? Its imports $147M are from Malaysia, Singapore, Fiji, S.Korea, China, NewZealand 89.43% respectively. I guess it's doing okay by excluding the United States. Not even speaking of your favorite The Jones Act.

This is so TRUE. I work in the can plant across Star Kist, our soul customer. Our jobs are in jeopardy, because our only customer is about to leave due to minimum wage. They just recently let go over 300 workers, trying to lower cost. Now families that work at the cannery, have little to nothing to make ends meet.

i was looking for some Soccer info on American Samoa.. and found this... interesting. he makes a Great point.

very true, balances must be established based on the situation. Not a "market" but a situation of resources (people, skills, living costs, what to sell, eg. tuna) before a market can be made. 1 rule for all regions doesn't seem to work, much less 1 currency for all regions, nations, etc.

We've nearly reached that point with food. In the West, 3% of the population is involved in agriculture. I think in 1800, around 80% of people were engaged in agriculture. The prices are relatively high due to farm subsidies - farmers are paid to farm below their maximum productivity. These subsidies are necessary to make farming profitable enough to function in a market economy. The only way to have lower prices is to remove some agriculture from the market economy, somehow.

U ARE THE MAN PETER SCHIFF

If I were unemployed in Samoa, I wouldnt worry. It's a tropical country. They dont have to worry about winter and having heat, and they can grow garden crops all year round, and plenty of wild papaya, coconut, banana trees, etc.

Sorry Charlie; Mr. Shifty seems right about this one.

you da man uso! im a born n breed new zealand samoan but its good to see someone not from our race make a stand!! dont matter if you wanted it or not..... you are now an uso haha! 4life uso!!

What this man is saying (that is if you have any common sense) is absolutely 100% true. Some people just don't get it they just changed the subject and blamed America. Well, America politically is structured within two major political parties. One is right and the other is to blamed for the mess which caused all these hard working Samoans to loose their jobs.

Peter, seems to me, 60 minutes said they were no income taxes in Somoa. That probably didn't sit well with the mafia politicians.

How many of those companies would donate to charity if it wasn't tax exempt?

@snakecharmer133: I think you are referring here is called "import substitute" policy. That is no be-all end-all. Many countries (especially those in Latin America) tried to emulate that without success - so it wasn't just their protectionist policies behind their growth. Well, the fact that India produces more engineers than China & South Korea combined probably has more to do with it. In the 80's and 90's, DEC used Indian engineers to write softwares for japanese firms as well.

You know some politician was making money on this deal. Maybe not via Samoa but some other territory. Samoa may be a casualty of a politicians greed. But as Tent cities pop up everywhere in America, I can't help but see labor for $2 an hour just sitting there making nothing. Sure it's not a living wage now but I bet it would increase or become the living wage standard if there was no minimum wage laws. Remember they are doing NOTHING and getting nothing right now.

"The term and meaning of a Resource-Based Economy was originated by Jacque Fresco. It is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude." Umm, are we talking about the same thing?

Wow, great take by the Polangi

Shearers would get paid per sheep shorn. A guy with a blackboard would sit watching them work, and tally each worker's output. But there's a famous Australian song, "Click go the Shears", in which the lyrics talk about a shearer trying to get the next sheep on the line because it has a bare belly, (less work to shear, but still counts as one fleece). It's a good example of how fixated people get on gaming any system, and to what lengths you would have to go to be perfectly fair.

My first salary as IT engineer in India was $2.77 per hr(In 06) & my mom distributed sweets, dad threw a party, & I took my gf to dinner in a five star restaurant. Now I'd want $5 per hr to live in Bangalore decently. My cousin makes about $10 per hour basic(he is a 7-8 yr exp IT guy in Bangalore) and he has one of the fattest salaries people in my home town have even heard of. $2 per hour can get you a college grad female secretary in India.

Perhaps the lesson begins further back in Samoa's history. Had the US not colonized and taken over Eastern Samoa, they could be reaping all of the profits from the tuna cannery industry instead of simply being a cheap labor state for America. Eastern Samoa would also be in control of their own economy and regulations, including defined wages.

Lessons need to learned from this. It's a classic case that should be etched in stone for all politicians to see forever.

AMEN!!!!

I appreciate your concerns and thoughts. It's wonderful that you did this piece concerning American Samoa. Your awesome!

@leonscorpio19 you said 'was' there... how is it now over there? has it turned for the better?

isnt that lady from HP running against her now?

couldn't the Samoans come up with a union. and the union say that they are being hired as independent contractors? This would get around the minimum wage permanently. No longer would the independent contractor be limited either way to minimum wage requirements.

My Hamo islanders wake up america doesn't car about us islanders I'm Puerto Rican I feel your pain.. the samoan government should cut ties with these white people, change the name from (american samoa) and unite with western samoa become one,and never deal with the Americans they are bad news AIGA!🇵🇷🇦🇸🇼🇸

He says its bad and going to get worse, is an expert, and has predicted things like this before. You'br got nothing on your side.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions". That is right up there with the famous quotes of Ben Franklin and Jefferson. WELL SAID PETER!

Great Post man... Although I am from Western Samoa it good to see how the inter-workings of a Non-parliamentary government works.

Great vid schiff. I support you all the way.

Although I do agree it right for government to stop printing money first then drop minimum wage. It will not help those in tent cities. Peter should go to Washington to form a bill allow the public to have hard money after a specific amount of time. That time can be determined in another bill just not the one proposed. This does not commit any politician to anything but it's a nose under the tent kind of thing.

This is what I was trying to explain to my family members in A. Samoa when there was a lot of talk about the minimum wage. Some were mad at the Congressman Eni Faleomavaega for voting against the bill. This is why people, he knew the consequence and how it would affect the Territory.

Why would samoa be devastated if it had no jobs? They didn't have jobs or money before whites arrived and they did just fine. They lived off the land. That's one of the nice things about a tropical paradise.

its encouraging to hear that people with such thoughts still exist in this materialistic and godless world.

Greater automation has lowered the cost of manufacturing, and part of the profit margins were consumed by growth in advertising, marketing, and design. The other thing that's happened is that things become obsolete and disposed of long before they're really worn out.

By Schiff's reasoning, there would be no problem outsourcing American jobs to countries with substantially lower minimum wages.

bc it would be extremely expensive to export the machines to the Samoan island

shalcall: let's eliminate all corporate tax and see.

Yes, the law does apply to them. What do you think would happen if they re-opened the factory themselves, and contracted out to Starkist?

@myloser - the government sets tariffs. If a tariff for a product made in, say, Panama, is high, then, there's no profit in manufacturing in Panama, and you will go to another country, or stay in the US (if there are tariffs on all countries).