Ahead of the Oct. 29 'Building the New Economy' conference in Washington, one can state the obvious: something has gone terribly wrong with the U.S. economy. But chalking up the blame to a few bad apples on Wall Street and their risky financial instruments, and responding by simply providing...

President Obama deserves credit for making a tough call on trade. On September 11, he decided to impose tariffs on consumer tires from China for the next three years, resisting the pleas of most opinion elites across the nation and one of the principal financiers of our massive public...

Our nation faces rising unemployment, staggering debts, shrinking trade, and no sense of when (and if) a real recovery -- one that reaches Main Street and working families -- will take hold.

As the federal government responds to these concerns, and especially since President Obama was sworn in, shrill warnings...

On Tuesday, I joined more than 1,000 people-mostly laid-off Steelworkers and their families in a dusty, windswept lot where piles of subsidized, imported steel pipe from India destined for a major oil pipeline served as the backdrop.

Just a mile or two away stood the Granite City, Illinois works...

China's pollution costs lives, warms the planet, and distorts trade. It also harms American jobs. Unless the damage caused by China's pollution is addressed, the debates on climate change and global trade will inevitably get sidetracked and deadlocked.

China's steel industry deserves particular scrutiny because it accounts for a...

The Dow breaks 7,000 and suddenly we're on the road to recovery? No, Wall Street is recreating a fantasy bubble that shuts out the continued torrent of real and painful economic news from communities all across America.

Here's the economic news you may have missed over the past seven days:

Leave it to David Letterman to make the most critical economic point this year in one of his Top Ten lists. Maybe he should be the next Secretary of Commerce. Why? Because the late show host simply gets it in a way that most policymakers and pundits on the left...

To hear the critics of Buy America, you would think those misguided souls advocating it, like 84% of the American public, are either out to start a global trade war, responsible for the creation of a second Great Depression, ignorant of economics, or guaranteeing pink slips for even more...

Barack Obama knows the story of American manufacturing firsthand. He cut his political teeth as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago in the shadow of shuttered steel mills, working to salvage hopes and dreams that had been crushed by the weight of layoffs and economic decline. As...

On Monday, Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton came to Pittsburgh for substantive dialogue about their trade policies and, particularly, how they plan to address China's unfair trade practices. The Alliance for American Manufacturing, a labor-management, non-partisan partnership, hosted the forum and rightly put the candidates on the spot...

Monday, manufacturing jobs took center stage at a candidates' forum sponsored by the Alliance for American Manufacturing in Pittsburgh featuring Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.

Some pundits deride any candidate who stands up for manufacturing or who questions America's failed trade policies. They put labels...

Every day, America sends the equivalent of $700 million to China. That's the toll of our imbalanced trade relationship with the "butchers of Beijing." We send our manufacturing jobs, consumer dollars, and technological know-how to China. In return, we receive low-cost, under-inspected, and, all too often, unsafe consumer products. China...

I've finished watching the twentieth, and possibly final, Democratic candidate debate. For someone like me who follows economic and jobs issues closely, the debate was both fascinating and frustrating.

First, the fascinating. Both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton said they would renegotiate the job-killing North American Free...

It's now confirmed: economic issues will drive both the Republican and Democratic primaries until the presidential nominees are determined. Exit polls in New Hampshire showed that pluralities of Democrats and Republicans rated the economy as the most important issue for them, outpacing Iraq, immigration, health care, and terrorism.

Reporters often heap scorn upon the rigid views of social conservatives and evangelical Christians, but very few of them acknowledge their own overwhelming religious bias: too many reporters worship unflinchingly at the discredited cult of "free trade," even in the absence of facts to support their beliefs.

They...

With apologies to Don McLean, we may all be singing "Bye-bye, American jobs" in a matter of months as cars from the Chery Automobile Company of China, spurred on by a sizable investment of technology and capital from Chrysler, start rolling into the United States in 2009.

This is a...

A presidential candidate debate in Las Vegas can't slide by without at least a couple gambling analogies, so here is my contribution: If the last Democratic debate is any indication, I'll bet the candidates are more likely to be asked in Las Vegas about whether they've seen a UFO (Dennis...

When the Democratic presidential candidates converge on Drexel University in Philadelphia for Tuesday night's DNC/MSNBC debate, which of them will draw on the rich history of that city to offer a new economic vision for America?

When people think of Philadelphia, Betsy Ross or the Declaration of Independence...

This is the moment I've been waiting for. Year after year, the Wall Street Journal pumps up the virtues of "free trade" through its own editorials, submissions on the op-ed page from various luminaries, rants against anyone who dares to challenge the orthodoxy and slanted news coverage of trade-related matters....

While the primary and caucus calendar continues to be condensed, the presidential candidate debates seem to plod on and on. As more people start tuning into the debates, let's hope the candidates and moderators start getting serious about more issues that matter to voters.

So far, we've figured out who...