American manufacturing is like apple pie to American voters: we love it and want more of it regardless of our politics, race, gender, income, or hometown. If you live in a swing state like Ohio, you already know that, because both presidential candidates have flooded the airwaves with ads labeling the other guy as the "outsourcer-in-chief."
Beneath the recent accusations and counter-accusations on outsourcing, there is a simple truth: citizens believe manufacturing is central to our nation's economic health, that America is in economic decline, that outsourcing to China is largely responsible for this condition, and they want their elected leaders to do something bold about it.
Voters of all political stripes are far ahead of the debate inside Washington, D.C. More importantly, perhaps, is that nearly all Americans -- not only working-class Ohioans -- share this view.
So don't be surprised if both campaigns escalate the rhetoric and attacks on shipping jobs overseas in the coming weeks, in part to mask their own shortcomings.
That's because no one is a knight in shining Made in America armor when it comes to this issue. Mitt Romney (rightly) criticizes President Obama for not labeling China as a currency manipulator, but glosses over the fact that Republican leaders in Congress are blocking a bipartisan currency bill that would pass overwhelmingly. Romney has also been on the wrong side of Administration decisions to defend American tire workers against China's cheating and successfully rescue Chrysler and General Motors.
The GOP hypocritically accuses Obama of sending stimulus dollars overseas, while Republican Senators tried to block Buy America requirements for stimulus spending.
The fact is, accusing your political opponent of shipping jobs overseas is now an established American campaign tradition. What is missing is an honest debate about what could actually be done to promote American manufacturing jobs. Voters are ready for such a dialogue.
Public opinion research conducted for the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) by the bipartisan team of the Mellman Group and North Star Opinion Research concluded that voters overwhelmingly embrace a bold, popular, and effective agenda for growing American manufacturing jobs. Now we just need Washington to listen.
A strikingly large percentage of Americans (56 percent) believe our nation is no longer the world's strongest economy. Americans believe that we should be number one, and understand that manufacturing is the most important part of our economy. But, less than a quarter of voters believe anyone in Washington is doing a great deal to defend American manufacturing against cheating on trade or to create new manufacturing jobs.
Voters want a national manufacturing strategy and they favor proposals to crack down on China's cheating, train a skilled workforce, and enforce Buy America policies by a margin of more than 8 to 1 -- perhaps even surpassing apple pie.
But what can get done in this time of partisan gridlock? More than you think. Exactly one substantive bill passed the Senate last year over a filibuster attempt led by Mitch McConnell: legislation to penalize China for manipulating its currency, which was supported by most Democrats and one-third of Republicans. That bill would sail through the House this year if Speaker Boehner allowed a vote.
The manufacturing majority is strong and diverse. It has never been effectively harnessed because of often competing agendas between global companies and labor unions; we are the exception to that rule.
Voters will be forced to endure an endless series of 30-second TV ads telling us how bad the other guy is on offshoring. The least they deserve is a good manufacturing policy after the election.
Follow Scott Paul on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ScottPaulAAM
Markets allocate resources much better than Sociologists and Union Thugs.
America hates competition when it realizes it can't compete ! Next, Trade Barriers ?
The Tricks of the Trade Deals | Common Dreams
"...Good on Paper
Greg Palleson, now vice president of the Association of Western Pulp & Paper Workers Union, worked at a paper mill in Longview, Wash., before it closed and the machine he operated was put on a barge and shipped to China. Since the early 1980s, the Association has seen its ranks decline from 24,000 members to about 5,000. They have worked tirelessly to bring attention to the condition of the paper industry, where hard-fought-for environmental reforms on processing, treatment and disposal of paper byproducts, and workers' rights have literally been rolled back with each U.S. mill that relocates to China.
When Greg later visited China to see the transplanted mills, he saw that the workers were not really benefiting from the outsourced jobs, and neither were the surrounding communities: Paper mills have been identified as the largest source of pollution in China’s rural environment. According to Greg, a Chinese mill worker received about one dollar an hour, with no pension or benefits. Their skilled American counterparts are paid almost thirty times that, plus health care and a pension. Lack of adequate health care makes it all the more worrisome that Chinese workers are regularly exposed to unregulated toxic wastewater effluents..."
Accourding to this article the "skilled American counterparts" are not making squat as they no longer have a job. This is really our own fault. We want cheap goods from China but we also want a decent American wage...the 2 do not go hand in hand...
It's like car racing...you're looking for 3 things:
1. fast
2. cheap
3. reliable
You can only have 2, which do you want?
Same thing applies...you can have cheap goods with low wages or you can have expensive goods with decent wages. However, if you can not afford it now more than likely you can not afford it after a decent wage is put behind the product.
Ok, let's just try and see what happens.
Remember President Clinton promising while campaigning he would never sign Permanent Normalized Trade Status for China?
Some may want to paint this as a Republican problem and they are right both the Neo/Con Republicans & the Rockefeller Republicans aka Clinton Democrats as responsible for the loss of 33+% of our manufacturing jobs since 2000!
We need a new economic plan. A decentralized plan. We need to require a minimum of 10% of everything sold in BIG BOX Stores be made in America. !0% of our TV's, 10% of our i-Pads, 10% of our cloths.
Call it a National Security Issue. It is 1000 times easier to meet the nations needs in times of crisis if we already make 10%. The brain trust is in place the infrastructure is there.
Any politician that opposes this program, label that politician as weak on National Defense!
Hang those Right Wing politicians on their own Petard!
"Protectionism" of course means using tariff policy to protect American workers earning $20 an hour from having to compete with workers in Shangri La earning $20 a week.
We've been running a trade deficit of about $600 billion a year - we're buying that much more stuff than we're selling - because so much of what we buy is made somewhere else. If we divide that $600 bil by an average pay package of $33,000, we see that the trade deficits translates into a jobs deficit of about 18 million jobs.
Who benefits from the trade deficit? Corporations that can make stuff cheaper in other places, import it and sell it dear here.
Who benefits from the jobs deficit? A labor surplus keeps wages down. Too many people competing for too few jobs. If there was a job surplus and a labor shortage, wages would go up, too few people and too many jobs.
But a job shortage raises a lot of costs, such as unemployment and welfare spending, that Republicans hate. More jobs = less unemployment. More jobs = less welfare spending. More jobs = less crime. More jobs = more tax revenue. If Republicans were honest and rational, they'd be leading the charge to create more jobs in America.
When you consider the popularity of Objectivism among GOPers, their position makes more sense. They believe us to be parasites. And what do you do to parasites?
Ironically, their philosophies, when summarized by their Russian-born idol, include reason at the core...then go on to make some pretty unreasonable assertions that they seem to accept blindly.
No, the consumers do because the price is lower. I don't see people flocking to buy more expensive foreign made goods. They flock to buy cheaper foreign made goods. If you truly believe we should make stuff here than buy stuff made here. You can find almost every product you purchase made in America, unless you "need" and iPhone or massive TV. Buy locally made goods; shop in your town, not at Walmart; pay more to get local, that is the only way to encourage manufacturing here.
But outsourcing to another country takes jobs out of America and redistributes them to other countries, reducing economic activity in America. So, yes, the outsourcing is way worse than the illegal Hispanic.
Not long back the election was decided in florida by chinese made vote counting machines.
In wedlock or out? Organic or mass produced in Mexico? Made in the US (expensive) or made in China (cheap).
The point is that we need to agree on the best way to get more jobs, not that we want more.
In an interesting side swipe by former Obama White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, President Barack Obama is described as unable to effectively deal with America’s business community.
“The president has a very difficult time with the business community. Most people in business and most people who are successful are Republican. That’s just a fact of life.”