The Real Winner after Iowa and New Hampshire: Economic Issues

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.

One important aspect of these economic concerns is the dramatic impact that trade and globalization are having on jobs, potential job growth, and voter anxiety about the future.

Despite their third place showings in New Hampshire, John Edwards and Mike Huckabee have given considerable focus to economic issues like trade and outsourcing. Over the course of the campaign, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have taken more aggressive positions on reforming trade policy because of this healthy competition of ideas.

John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Guiliani will find it hard to consistently appeal to the plentiful supply of blue-collar Republicans in Michigan and South Carolina unless they drop their blind faith in so-called free trade, which has destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs in both states. Not surprisingly, Republican opinion nationwide has turned decidedly against free trade. As I wrote in October, nearly sixty percent of Republicans now have a negative view of free trade, a stance that is still not reflected by most of the GOP candidates.

Some pundits try to chalk up these concerns to Lou Dobbs, "demagogues," and--I'm not making this up--pure ignorance on the part of voters. Give me a break. Dobbs reaches a modest audience, and few voters could give a hoot about the views of Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot. But the voter concern is real. Many pollsters are reporting that voter anxiety about the future is at record levels. And the jobs losses are real, too. Over the past seven years, one in five manufacturing jobs has vanished. And since 2001, more than 1.8 million jobs have been lost due to our grossly imbalanced trade relationship with China alone. Millions more are at risk.

The contests in South Carolina and Michigan will draw even more attention to economic issues like manufacturing, jobs, and trade. By now, voters all over the nation know about the unfortunate plight of workers in Michigan's auto industry and South Carolina's textile mills. But there has been little national discussion about how we can strengthen our economy by changing America's failed trade policy, much less any action by Congress or the Administration. It will take more than a basic economic stimulus package to make any lasting difference. We need an overhaul of our trade relationship with China and more investment in domestic manufacturing to grow jobs. 2008 could be a welcome year of change for manufacturing and trade policy.

Comments

[H8FascistCons]

Finally someone talking about retaining and increasing manufacturing in this country. What most of the so called business pundits don't understand is that a service economy is the least efficient way to generate wealth and increase employment. When you actually make a product the domino effect in increased revenue and additional employment to other local business is increased exponentially, thus increasing state and local tax revenues for schools and badly needed infrastructure. Why do you think China is growing so rapidly, they actually make products and they are growing and getting wealthy on our money!!! America aren't you getting tired of watching your country go bankrupt and being the laughing stock of the world?. The Ronald Reagan supply side, service based economy is a complete failure!!! Wake up...

[NABNYC]

The only candidate who is talking about the economic situation is Edwards. And the media refuses to give him any coverage. And the debate questioners refuse to ask any honest questions about our current economic situation.

In fact, our government lies about the economy. That way when people wonder why they're broke, but they hear from Bush that The Economy Has Never Been Better, then people figure it's their own personal shortcomings, not something system-wide. For example, some estimate inflation in 2007 was 20-30% (notice your grocery bill?) but the government omits gas, energy, utilities, and groceries so they can claim it wasn't that high.

If we want to fix the economy, we need to tax the rich. Use that money to help the rest of us. If we tax the rich, then they cannot amass fortunes and buy up every single thing in the world. What is the possible benefit to anyone in having Bill Gates own 1/3 of the country, Buffet another 1/3, and Murdoch the last 1/3? No benefit.

Tax them, re-distribute that money by funding schools, hospitals, healthcare, roads, bridges, infrastructure. And have an intentional policy to prevent any individual from amassing so much wealth that it endangers our democracy.

Under Bush, taxes are cut and the few keep more and more for themselves. The bottom 50% gets something like 12% of the wealth. We are more and more looking like South Africa, with the very few owning everything, and every else just plain poor.

Taxes. That's the answer. Use the money to create new industries -- joint venture developments, to research and develop green energy, for example.

We could also prohibit anyone from taking jobs outside of the U.S. There is no benefit to working people to having jobs taken out of this country. It is only the investor class who benefits. And whenever they screw up, they call on Greenspan or Bernake, who gives them billions of our dollars to compensate for their losses.