| U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Postal Square Building 2 Massachusetts Ave., NE Washington, DC 20212-0001 |
Phone: (202) 691-5200 |
Here they are.
Posted on 05/12/2007 5:02:32 AM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The “New Trade Policy” compromise announced yesterday by House Democratic leaders, House Republicans, and the Bush administration will become a simple sell-out of U.S. producer and worker interests if not quickly accompanied by more fundamental changes in America’s global trade strategy, the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC) charged today.
According to USBIC President Kevin L. Kearns, “Trying to raise world labor and environmental standards through trade policy is a worthy goal. Unfortunately, given the number of third world trading partners and the size of their combined populations, the measures proposed in the New Trade Policy are completely unenforceable. To date the United States has not been able to enforce current trade agreements with provisions on, for example, subsidies or theft of intellectual property. Why would anyone expect a better track record on labor and environmental provisions simply because they too become part of trade agreements? More fundamental changes to trade policy are necessary to accomplish our goals of restoring a healthy manufacturing and technology base, as well as a rising standard of living for all Americans.”
Added Kearns, “This New Trade Policy completely ignores numerous other and vastly more important problems with U.S. trade policy and world trade patterns that are endangering not only America’s economic future, but also the sustainability of the entire global trading system.”
“The biggest such problems,” explained Kearns, “are currency manipulation, pervasive subsidies, intellectual property theft, discrepancies in tax systems (particularly Value Added Tax rebates), and numerous other non-tariff barriers used by most foreign governments to distort world production patterns and trade flows – usually at the expense of U.S. domestic companies and their workers. Further, Washington’s decision to focus trade expansion on low-income countries unable to afford U.S. products, as well as regions addicted to export-led growth strategies, represents a failed approach.”
The latter approach inevitably has helped boost the U.S. trade deficit to already dangerous levels because it involves countries too poor to become consumers of U.S.-made goods but able to become producers of goods destined for the U.S. market. Thus current U.S. trade policy, which is only marginally altered by the New Trade Policy, keeps moving the entire world economy ever closer to a dollar crash and deep depression.
Because of its narrow approach, argued Kearns, the New Trade Policy “is almost completely irrelevant to the interests of America’s domestic manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, and service providers and their employees – not to mention the global imperative of restoring healthy, balanced, and sustainable growth.”
“As a result,” he continued, “the new framework itself won’t change world trade flows one bit and doesn’t address the issues of unfair competitive practices faced every day by U.S. producers and their employees at home and abroad. Nor will it offset the enormous labor glut that is the main cause of rock-bottom third world wages. Therefore, the New Trade Policy won’t preserve or create a single high quality American job or reduce the trade deficit by a penny – much less boost incomes abroad enough to begin to re-balance trade flows.”
In addition, noted Kearns, “The most problematic provisions of the New Trade Policy deal with Strategic Worker Assistance and Training (SWAT), which are naive at best. Promising workers training for good replacement jobs may assuage some consciences but is misleading. Due to current trade policies, this nation is not now creating any jobs in internationally traded industries. These are the higher-paying, better-benefits jobs. Promising portability in health care and pensions likewise sounds good, but these two traditional benefits are being phased out as remaining American businesses try to survive in the globalized economy. As for improving education and technical skills, we have been trying to do so since the Soviets put up Sputnik fifty years ago. No one has yet figured out how to do so successfully. In fact, the best way to assure decent jobs, good incomes, and reasonable benefits is to preserve and expand manufacturing, technology, and high-tech service bases – as well as to see that our farmers and ranchers survive.”
“No wonder ardent outsourcers ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Republican Congressmen like Jim McCrery and Roy Blunt are so pleased,” said Kearns. “They know that this deal will permit multinational companies to continue the unabated increase of their profits by hollowing out America’s productive base.”
Among the measures USBIC proposes to address America’s biggest trade policy challenges include:
– imposing a moratorium on all new U.S. trade agreements and rejecting renewal of fast track trade negotiating authority for President Bush until the United States figures out how to reduce our massive current account imbalances, to enforce effectively existing trade agreements, and to make trade policy work for all Americans.
– identifying currency manipulation – along with a host of other similar practices – as a substantial and actionable trade subsidy, and applying countervailing duties against imports from offending countries. This goal could be accomplished through prompt passage of the Ryan-Hunter currency manipulation bill or similar, broader measures that attack subsidies across the board.
– promptly passing the bipartisan border equalization tax measure about to be introduced by Reps. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), Michael Michaud (D-ME), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), and Walter Jones (R-NC). This bill would redress the inequities faced by U.S.-based producers by the World Trade Organization’s failure to address the trade distortions created by foreign Value Added Tax systems and their rebates to exporters.
– placing a cap on U.S. trade deficit by limiting it to one percent of GDP. Separate measures introduced in the last Congress by Rep. Michael Michaud (D-ME) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D.-ND) would prevent the U.S. trade deficit from spiraling out of control and restore the balances necessary to preserve the world trading system.
According to Kearns, “The New Trade Policy represents a small, but likely ineffective, step in the right direction. If we really want to solve the problem of our massive current account deficits and the wrenching dislocations they cause, much stronger medicine is necessary. The longer we wait to take effective action, the more difficult it becomes. USBIC strongly supports the efforts of genuine trade reformers among House Democrats to use the above-mentioned and other related measures to hold their leaders accountable for their promises to turn U.S. trade policy into an engine of domestic growth, not to continue as an incentive to offshoring factories and jobs.”
Ping of interest.
Thanks. I just learned of the news yesterday. My first reaction is that it is a “sell out” also, but from a completely different perspective.
Cap the trae deficit. What a joke. Anyone that proposes measures like this designed to inflict pain on the populace should go to jail.
“The latter approach inevitably has helped boost the U.S. trade deficit to already dangerous levels because it involves countries too poor to become consumers of U.S.-made goods but able to become producers of goods destined for the U.S. market.”
The above quote is valid but it misses the larger mark that countries like China use slave labor.
I produce a product with automation. The Chinese can make the product by hand and offer it at half the price. If we tried to make it by hand, our price would be 10 times theirs.
My wife and I see the prices of Chinese products and just can’t believe its possible even with slave labor and free transcontinental shipping to sell the stuff so cheap. I fear something is going on thats far more sinister than we realize.
The corporations are chasing profits, fine.
But the politicians who consistently tilt the playing field against the United States, in return for nebulous promises of someday possibly having new markets open up...
The US did just fine for a long time by letting the Third World alone.
It is only the past 20 years or so that there has been wholesale importation of students from the Third World to become the knowledge workers, followed by importation of workers via H-1B and L-1 visas for high-paying jobs, and the eradication of the US border to take out the pay scale for the lower classes; and the offshoring of manufacturing to eliminate the working classes.
I am beginning to fear that some of the tin-foil hat people are right, and that this is designed to ensure the destruction of the middle class in the US, and the destruction of the US as a world power.
Rant mode OFF.
No Cheers, unfortunately.
The Chinese are out-polluting the Eastern Europeans and are more corrupt than the Democrats.
Lack of health or environmental standards, no health care, slave wages, bribes, and government subsidies work wonders.
The days of the robber baron have returned!
I think Bush is doing the globalist thing in order to attempt to stave off massive social destabilization in India and China, as their population of working age folks with no hope of a job skyrockets.
He's still wrong though: the way to approach the problem is to have those countries produce for domestic consumption, rather than for export to the US.
Cheers!
OH where, oh where did the middle class go? They got rich. That’s where. And then they sent their kids to college to study to be docs and lawyers.
As my Bro, an (AF LtCol) says, “ We are building one of the largest militarys in the world, and it's not ours!”
Some did, some didn't.
Speaking of doctors and lawyers, here's a chestnut for you.
Would you rather be a lawyer's proctologist or a proctologist's lawyer? They both do pretty much the same thing to each other...
Cheers!
Not trying to sidetrack the thread, but I had a lawyer once lament to me (over a good number of drinks) that, “people spend years effing-up their lives and then walk into my office expecting me to make things right for a hundred bucks.” I thought, there’s a kernel of truth in there.
PING
QFT
If there’s one thing about American society today that I despise, it’s the fixation with lawsuits.
>Oh where, oh where did the middle class go? They got rich.<
>>Some did and some didn’t.<<
And some are hangling on by their finger nails.
Bring back, bring back, oh bring back our jobs to US.
>If there’s one thing about American society today tht I despise, it’s the fixation with lawsuits.<
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! If HB 1592 (the Hate Crime bill) is passed, all lawyers will be singing hallelujah!
| U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Postal Square Building 2 Massachusetts Ave., NE Washington, DC 20212-0001 |
Phone: (202) 691-5200 |
Here they are.
We need to stop pretending there's such a thing as free trade.
Our DC Representatives need to assure we have "fair trade".
What is your definition of fair trade?
Whatever buys the most votes.
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