Search Results for 'trade deficit'
Economy |
Nov 20 |
Bipartisan Report Shows U.S. Must Move Aggressively on China’s Illegal Acts
The 2009 report to Congress by the bipartisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) is a call to action for the United States to move aggressively against China’s illegal moves in the global economy and to create an industrial strategy to rebuild our manufacturing base, several experts said today.
During a telephone press conference sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future, Carolyn Bartholomew said China has developed a plan to build national wealth and increase its power and influence in the world and the United States has not.
Economy, Legislation & Politics |
Nov 20 |
Without Jobs, the Nation’s Future Circles the Drain
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After he was elected AFL-CIO president in September, Richard Trumka traveled around the country on a listening tour. Here’s one story he heard, which he described this week as the AFL-CIO, along with several key allies, launched a jobs initiative to help get our nation back to work.
Last summer at an event in Ohio, I met a young woman who is facing this crisis head-on. Lacey, who is not yet 20 years old, wants to become a teacher. But after her dad’s factory closed and he was laid off, she had to put off her hopes of attending college to help her parents keep a roof over their heads. Lacey took a job in a school cafeteria—until the state budget got cut, and she got laid off, too.
After months in which she and her father were both searching for jobs, Lacey said she felt lucky to find a part-time fast food job that pays half of what the cafeteria paid. Lacey has more unemployed friends than friends with jobs, and, like a third of workers her age, she’s still living with her parents. Here’s what Lacey said to me that day:
I wanted to be a teacher to help children get the education they need to get ahead. But now I feel like I’m just going backward myself. I’m really scared for the kids my age. We want to work. We need jobs.
Legislation & Politics |
Nov 17 |
Here’s What the World Labor Movement Is Saying to President Obama and Asian Leaders
The global labor movement and the AFL-CIO are urging President Obama and other world leaders meeting in Singapore at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to take strong stands on issues of jobs, trade imbalances, currency policy, workers’ rights and climate change.
With 59 million people expected to be unemployed worldwide by the end of the year, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other trade union leaders called on the G-20 countries, which include China and Japan, to continue to press for a coordinated global economic strategy to stimulate new jobs to ensure a real recovery. China’s stimulus package has been significantly larger compared to the size of China’s economy than the U.S. stimulus and has been credited with driving China’s rapid recovery.
Economy |
Oct 29 |
Manufacturing Crucial for Building New Economy
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Over the next decade, America is poised to invest $2 trillion in infrastructure, health care and a greener economy, but that money must be invested strategically to build a new economy, not just retool the current model, which is not working.
Speaking this morning at the Building the New Economy conference in Washington, D.C., AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the global economic collapse requires us to think of long-term strategies to rebuild and restructure our economy, with a revitalized manufacturing sector at its core.
The one-day conference, sponsored by the Institute for America’s Future and the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), is bringing together political, business, environmental and union leaders and economists to discuss the fundamental changes needed to create an economy that provides sustainable long-term growth and creates across-the-board prosperity.
Economy |
Oct 29 |
Building the New Economy
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The Campaign for America’s Future is hosting a Building the New Economy conference in Washington, D.C., today, and campaign staffer Mike Elk describes what needs to happen to make a new economy work for all of us.
Today, the Campaign for America’s Future is holding a “Building the New Economy” conference. As we build the new economy, it’s important we build one not based on the assets bubbles of the past but on the firm rock of manufacturing.
As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka argues:
Flawed trade and tax policies and a financial system focused on short-term profits drove good jobs offshore, led to record trade deficits, and left the economy in ruins. With the manufacturing share of gross domestic product withering to 12 percent (from 15.9 percent in 1995) and the financial sector growing to 22 percent, the structure of the U.S. economy looks more like Monaco than Germany. This growth model of asset bubbles, low wages, credit pyramids, toxic assets and unregulated out-of-control global capital has been a recipe for disaster.
Economy |
Oct 28 |
Where Things Are Made
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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is a key speaker at tomorrow’s Building the New Economy conference here in Washington, D.C. United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and economist Jeff Madrick also are among the keynote speakers.
To our nation’s peril, the free trade orthodoxy continues to ignore a fundamental economic fact: It matters where things are made. Over the past decade, the U.S. industrial base has suffered an unprecedented decline. The loss of more than 5 million manufacturing jobs and the closure of over 50,000 manufacturing facilities have undermined our nation’s technical capacity to innovate and to make things, while at the same time decimating our middle class.
Economy |
Oct 27 |
Let’s Foment a Green Industrial Revolution
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Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, is among several key speakers at the Building the New Economy conference Oct. 29 in Washington, D.C. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka also is among the keynote speakers. Here Gerard describes why we need a 21st century green manufacturing revolution.
We need to foment a new American industrial revolution—specifically, a 21st century burgeoning of green manufacturing in the United States.
Americans going green—manufacturing windmills and solar cells—would benefit both the economy and the environment. As the Wall Street debacle that pushed this country into the Great Recession last year showed, the United States cannot depend on trading in obscure financial products to support its economy. To survive, America must be able to manufacture products of intrinsic value that can be traded here and internationally.
Economy |
Oct 26 |
China and the U.S. Housing Bubble
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We often write about how China’s policy to devalue its currency, the yuan, has been a key factor in the U.S. trade deficit.
It’s not an easy issue to grasp. But economist Paul Krugman devotes an entire column to explaining why China’s devalued currency has such ramifications for our country. Here’s Krugman:
If supply and demand had been allowed to prevail, the value of China’s currency would have risen sharply. But Chinese authorities didn’t let it rise. They kept it down by selling vast quantities of the currency, acquiring in return an enormous hoard of foreign assets, mostly in dollars, currently worth about $2.1 trillion.
Many economists, myself included, believe that China’s asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China’s insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.
Read the entire column here.
Organizing & Bargaining |
Oct 15 |
Union Movement Rallies in Solidarity with Puerto Rican Workers
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| Thousands of workers rallied in Puerto Rico against the governor’s drastic layoffs. The sign says “Give me back my job.” | |
In states across the country, working people marched and rallied in solidarity today with their Puerto Rican brothers and sisters against draconian budget cuts and cancellation of their collective bargaining rights.
As 200,000 people march in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to protest Gov. Luis Fortuño’s plan to slash the budget deficit on the backs of workers, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent a letter of support and solidarity and rallies were held in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and other cities.
In his letter of support, which was read at the San Juan rally, Trumka said:
We are fully aware of the attacks being afflicted on the workers and their families on your island and we will do whatever we can to stop them. We are completely committed to bringing the full force of the AFL-CIO to fighting for the rights and well being of our affiliated unions, their members, and the people of Puerto Rico.
Economy |
Sep 22 |
The Lesson of Pittsburgh for G-20: Manufacturing Matters
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The revival of Pittsburgh, site of the G-20 summit this week, can provide valuable lessons for the world’s leaders. Among them: Manufacturing matters and poor trade policies hurt everyone.
“Pittsburgh, G-20 and the New Economy: Lessons to Learn, Choices to Make,” a report released today by the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), makes clear that the renaissance of Pittsburgh after the collapse of the steel industry was cut short because of the lack of a national industrial policy and the nation’s trade policies.
During a telephone news conference, CAF Co-Director Robert Borosage said some manufacturing jobs in Pittsburgh were replaced by high-end jobs in education or medicine.
But many were replaced by jobs in hotels and food services—jobs that never paid as well and proved even more vulnerable in the recent downturn. Some manufacturing jobs were never replaced at all. That helps explain why the city’s population is declining, especially among youth, who seek opportunity elsewhere.
