Resolved: That, on balance, the rise of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) has had a positive i

As a brief roadmap, I will refute my opponent's case, defend my own, and then prove that the benefits of BRIC outweigh the harms. (please skip to bottom to view condensed summary of this speech in last paragraph) My opponent argues in his first contention that the rise of BRIC harms U.S. hegemony. He cites an old 1999 paper and believes that hegemony guarantees safety and that BRIC's rise harms it. However, his central assumption is that this is a zero-sum game: their rise= our fall. Unfortunately, he is misportraying our relationship with BRIC as an antagonistic relationship (which makes their rise bad), rather than a mutualistic one, where we all benefit and their rise is good. The most important thing that BRIC gives us is the safety of the American people. Let's look at how India guarantees this security. The United States and India share a common enemy: Al-Quaeda. On June 2005, the U.S. and India signed the "New Framework for the U.S.-India Defense Relationship," which advances bilateral cooperation and information sharing on such areas of common concern as bioterrorism, aviation security, advances in biometrics, cyber-security and terrorism, WMD terrorism, and terrorist financing. We've also carried out counterinsurgency operations with Indian soldiers. In summary, we've cooperated with India to quash a dangerous threat to our citizens: terrorism. Both our countries are democratic nations that believe in the same ideals, and a rising India can only mean a safer United States, being our staunch ally. The only impact that my opponent stated is that India has "a growing influence in Middle East." I'll put a turn on this: you've made an argument for me! Thank you for stating this, as currently, the U.S. enjoys India's friendship with Iran as a possible method to halt Iran's nuclear program! Its influence in the Middle East is a stabilizing one. My arguments here outweigh his case, as I am guaranteeing the safety of you: the American citizen. Therefore, because our relationship with BRIC is mutualistic, a multipolar world with BRIC rising will only make the United States a safer place. (Citation: CRS Report for Congress (http://assets.opencrs.com...) My opponent argues in his second contention that our trade deficit with BRIC leads to the loss of billions of dollars from our economy and millions of jobs. This contention is a terrible misunderstanding of the impact of a trade deficit on a country. According to the official definition of a trade deficit, all it means is that we buy more than we sell, or in other words: "an excess of imports over exports" (wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn). Buying more than we sell means nothing. My opponent has completely misunderstood a trade deficit for a budget deficit, where we actually owe them money. This is NOT the case. In fact, according to Walter E. Williams in his paper "Trade Deficit: Good or Bad?" we ran a trade surplus during the Great Depression! (http://townhall.com...) A trade deficit is not an accurate measure of our GDP according to Williams. In fact, according to Daniel T. Griswold of the reputed Cato Institute, a trade deficit is actually good for our economy. America's economy has actually performed better during years of deficits, statistically speaking. On average, real GDP averages at 3.2%/year during deficits rather than 2.3%/year with low deficits. "Without a trade deficit, Americans could not import the capital we need to finance our rising level of investment in plants and new equipment, including the latest computer technology. " Now to refute his job argument. He proposes that the trade deficit causes job loss, but I can easily outweigh it. When you look at the big picture, according to economist Charles Schultze, Chairman of the CEA under President Carter, this loss of thousands of jobs, he cites 353,000, is MINISCULE compared to our working population of 150 million. This doesn't even matter! To add credibility behind my statement, even Ben Bernanke, the Head of the Federal Reserve, has stated that job losses due to outsourcing and to other countries is miniscule compared to the real cause: corporate corruption and our financial meltdown. It is common knowledge that companies are laying off and cutting costs because people have stopped buying due to our recession. It is not BRIC causing this, so that impact is miniscule. Now to make sure that you cannot win the economic argument, I will outweigh you once more. According to Vice Chairman Jim Saxton of Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, what we ignore a lot is how much we insource from these countries. As these countries rise, they insource more. From 1988 to 2002, investment in America grew by a whopping 326%. According to his study, we insource a whopping 6.8 million jobs in total, with a majority from India and China, according to the International Monetary Fund with my dad and his company being a second proof of my argument! We even get more high paying jobs from them than the average job here, as wages from insourced jobs are 30% higher, employing more of our people and giving them higher wages too. Also according to the Organization for International Investment, the rate of insourcing is growing by 82% per year, which is higher than the rate of outsourcing, which is only 23%, and these jobs are more high paying. In summary, first, my opponent's 353,000 jobs impact is miniscule in the first place. Second, we insource more jobs and higher-paying ones than we lose. Third, the loss of an insignificant amount of manufacturing jobs doesn't matter in the switch to a service economy with higher paying jobs. So I have refuted him in three possible ways. Now, it's time to defend my case. C1-My opponent misread my case and believed I cited Robert Krol. Unfortunately, I cited a more credible statistic from Morgan Stanley (in Jain's book), which says that we save $600 billion from China ALONE in the past decade, unlike what he believed to be an indefinite time period. And its $900 billion from all the BRICs in total. I should win right now on this massive economic impact alone, as he said that we only lose $400 billion. (Morgan Stanley -http://www.moneyweb.co.za...) C2- His only response to my argument about how it helps our companies is by cross-applying his already refuted 2nd contention, which I refuted by outweighing with my $2.7 trillion statistic, by saying that his job losses are insignificant, and by stating that we gain more jobs than we lose from BRIC. And the car company statistic is calculated by multiplying vehicles sold*average price of vehicle. C3- His response is that we lose more jobs. I've already refuted this 3 times, as #1-job loss is insignificant, #2-we get more jobs than we lose, and #3-tiny job losses don't matter in a switch to a service economy. Now, to show you why the affirmative should win this debate right now. My benefits outweigh his harms. $600 billion saved for American consumers, HP gaining $10 billion, American automakers make $36 billion off BRIC, we get jobs off BRIC, and perhaps most importantly, BRIC makes America a safer place by helping us with counterterrorism, disease-prevention, loaning us $ when we need it, and by helping us out in the drug war. I have the impacts of safety and economic benefits on my side. Currently, my opponent only has U.S. loses political power (nothing compared to my safety arg.) and economic detriments. I've outweighed his detriments and have proved why multipolarity protects the United States by explaining how BRIC nations protect the U.S. I've also cited MUCH more statistics than he has and I've also given much bigger and more heavily cited responses. Because my benefits outweigh his harms, you should vote for the affirmative in this debate.