China’s Unfair Trade Puts U.S. Auto Parts Jobs at Risk
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More than 1.6 million American jobs in the nation’s auto supply chain are at risk unless China’s illegal trade practices are curtailed, according to three new reports released today. In a conference call with reporters this afternoon, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard said:
China is cheating unmercifully in this sector and we are saying to China—and asking our government to stand up to China and say—“enough is enough.” It is time to enforce our trade policies.
Two reports from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and one from Stewart and Stewart, a law firm that has won cases challenging China’s unfair trade practices, detail China’s persistent and growing violations of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and outline plans by China’s government to use these same tactics to boost their auto parts exports even further.
In the past 10 years alone, China’s auto parts exports to the United States have increased by 850 percent, while jobs in the parts industry declined by more than 400,000. Says Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM): Read the rest of this entry »
Report: Trade Deficit with China Costs 2.8 Million Jobs
The U.S.-China trade deficit has eliminated or displaced nearly 2.8 million jobs, mainly in manufacturing, following that country’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, according to a study released today. View an interactive map of jobs lost throughout the United States here.
“Growing U.S. trade deficit with China cost 2.8 million jobs between 2001 and 2010” by Robert Scott, EPI’s director of trade and manufacturing policy research, finds that all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico suffered jobs lost or displaced as a result of the growing U.S.-China trade deficit.
The report cites illegal currency manipulation as a major cause of the trade deficit. Unlike other currencies, the Chinese yuan does not fluctuate freely against the dollar, but is artificially pegged in order to boost China’s exports.
AAM’s Job Search Tracks Candidates’ Jobs, Manufacturing Statements, Promises
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Our friends at the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) have just launched Job Search, a new online tracking tool to keep up-to-date tabs on what Republican presidential candidates and President Obama are saying about and proposing to do to solve the nation’s jobs crisis and fix the economy.
The goal of Job Search is to provide a comprehensive repository of statements these candidates have made about the issues Americans care about the most—jobs and the economy.
How would Mitt Romney’s 59-point jobs plan affect manufacturing? Has Rick Perry’s record as governor of Texas been too friendly to Chinese state-owned companies? Is President Obama living up to his campaign promises on creating a level playing field for America’s workers? Did any of the Republican candidates even mention the word “manufacturing” during the recent GOP presidential debates? Find out on Job Search.
Be sure to check back often—Job Search will scan candidates’ speeches, statements, tweets and media appearances daily and will record everything they say about manufacturing and jobs.
Nation Adds 117,000 Jobs; Jobless Rate Dips to 9.1 Percent
The nation gained 117,000 jobs in July while the U.S. unemployment rate dropped slightly from 9.2 percent in June to 9.1 percent last month, according to Department of Labor data released this morning. Analysts had predicted jobs would grow by about 90,000 in July.
The unemployment rate has topped 9 percent in 10 of the last 12 months. The decrease in the jobless rate last month was entirely due to the increase in the number of unemployed workers who stopped looking for work and are no longer counted in the government’s figures, says Heidi Shierholz, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Companies hired 154,000 new employees last month while some 37,000 jobs were lost in the public sector. This rate of a rate of job growth “keeps us firmly in low gear and on track for persistent high unemployment,” Shierholz says.
Health care employment continued to grow, adding 31,000 jobs in in July. Manufacturing employment also increased in July by 24,000.
Today’s jobless report shows the U.S. economy is not close to getting back on its feet, says Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM).
Job creation is still below a level necessary to bring the unemployment rate down in any substantial way, and the manufacturing index released earlier this week shows that the industry may face some tougher times in the months ahead.
Some 25 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed or have stopped looking for work, and wages are essentially flat. Yet Congress passed a budget bill that did nothing to address the nation’s jobs crisis.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the slwo pace of job creation puts our fragile recovery “in jeopardy of stalling altogether.”
While Congress spent weeks fussing over a politically manufactured debt ceiling crisis, our economy continues to flounder from the jobs crisis. And any Tea Partier or presidential candidate who says this is a reason to further destroy our nation’s safety net should spend some time studying Herbert Hoover.
The American people want their government leaders to focus on jobs. Some 56 percent of those surveyed in a recent poll say Congress and the president should work on jobs this year and 48 percent say those jobs should be in manufacturing.
When asked whether Congress and the president should focus on the federal budget deficit or jobs, 67 percent say jobs, according to the poll conducted by the Mellman Group and Ayres, McHenry & Associates for the AAM.
Meeting this week in Washington, D.C., the AFL-CIO Executive Council announced an America Wants to Work mobilization to
focus on jobs that gives voice to the jobless, including unemployed veterans, students who cannot find meaningful work as they enter the labor force and communities of color that have been especially hard hit by the recession and the refusal of corporate America to invest in job creation.
The mobilization will kick off on Labor Day, building to a National Week of Action in early October that focuses on the demand for good jobs and demonstrates in communities all across the country that America Wants to Work.
Currency Manipulation Should Top U.S.-China Talks
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China’s currency manipulation should be the main focus of talks this week between high level U.S. and Chinese government officials, says Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM).
The meetings in Washington, D.C. May 9 –10 provide an important opportunity for the American delegation—led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner—to back up the Obama administration’s tough talk on the Chinese government’s undervalued currency with strong action, he says.
If the administration will not get tough and demand that China play by the rules, Congress will have no option but to once again pass tough legislation to counter the artificial advantage China enjoys on trade.
Bipartisan Bill Calls for National Manufacturing Strategy
During the past decade, 5.5 million American manufacturing jobs have disappeared, mostly due to bad trade and tax policies that encourage U.S. companies to move jobs overseas. Further fueling job loss has been the global economic crisis and lack of a comprehensive national manufacturing strategy.
Yesterday, U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) introduced legislation requiring the development of such a strategy. Says Brown:
If we’re going to out-compete and out-innovate other countries, it will require a national manufacturing strategy. The United States has been without one, and our economy has paid the price.
Scott Paul, executive director for the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), says the United States is the only industrial nation in the world without a cohesive manufacturing strategy.
To rebuild our manufacturing base and create good middle-class jobs, our federal government needs to deploy a coordinated set of trade, tax, training, procurement, and investment policies.
The bill—the National Manufacturing Strategy Act of 2011—would require the secretary of commerce to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the nation’s manufacturing sector and submit to Congress a National Manufacturing Strategy to increase manufacturing jobs, identify emerging technologies to strengthen U.S. competitiveness, and strengthen the manufacturing sectors in which the United States is most competitive. Says Kirk:
Record Trade Deficit Shows Need for Currency Legislation
The U.S. Commerce Department announced today that our trade deficit reached $497 billion last year, including a new record $273 billion deficit with China.
Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) Executive Director Scott Paul said a record trade deficit with China “does not put us on a path to win the future.”
It will be hard to get our unemployment rate down if our trade deficit keeps going up. And while I am all in favor of doubling exports, it is a meaningless benchmark unless we also bring down our trade deficit. Instead, our global trade deficit is growing at an alarming and unsustainable rate.
One way to reduce the trade deficit is to pass the bipartisan Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act of 2011, introduced yesterday. It is the same legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last September by a 348-79 margin. Read our post on the currency legislation here.
What Do Packers and Steelers Have in Common?
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What do the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers have in common–besides playing in the Super Bowl Sunday? Both teams are named after the major manufacturing industry in their towns. Both cities were built on manufacturing and enjoy a loyal following built on the middle-class, blue-collar jobs supported by these industries. The Packers’ middle-class fans are also the team’s owners–the only team not owned by a super-rich person.
This is not the first Super Bowl with both teams hailing from proud working class communities. The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) has launched the first-ever Super Bowl Manufacturing Index, which shows how many people were employed in manufacturing at the time of each working class Super Bowl. The index shows that in 1967 when the Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, there were 17.9 million manufacturing jobs. This Sunday, there are only 11.7 million. Read the rest of this entry »
Economy Adds Only 39,000 Jobs; Unemployment Rate Jumps to 9.8 Percent
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Today’s news that only 39,000 jobs were created last month lifting the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent should be sounding alarm bells all over Capitol Hill, where congressional Republicans are blocking restoration of unemployment benefits for long-term jobless workers. More than 890,000 people (and counting) have lost their unemployment benefits (UI) since Dec. 1.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said of today’s report:
The disconnect between Washington and working families is dangerous and alarming. We need to get serious about investing in job creation now and we need an immediate, one-year extension of jobless benefits. Without dramatic action to invest in America and create jobs, our economy will not see the robust and sustained recovery we need to put millions of Americans back to work.
Website Offers Loads of Information on Today’s Manufacturing Challenges
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Did you know that North Carolina lost 241,900 manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2008 and more than 94,000 of those jobs were lost because of the U.S. trade deficit with China? Or that you can sign up to participate in the “Keep It Made in America” tour, which kicks off Oct. 12?
The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) has re-designed its website and blog to make it easy to find such information and more. Re-launched last week, AAM’s site provides more tools and features to better reflect the challenges facing our nation’s manufacturers and their workers.
New and exciting features include AAM’s interactive map that allows you to locate U.S. manufacturing employment in your state and see how many millions of jobs have been lost due to the U.S. trade deficit with China. The site provides the latest data, down to your congressional district and industrial sector.
