U.S. Trade Reps in China Need to Ask: What Will Make America Strong?
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When U.S. trade reps meet with their counterparts in China next week for the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, they should keep in mind this frightening fact: Last year, the biggest single U.S. export to China was $7.6 billion of paper and scrap metal, while China’s number one export to the United States was $46 billion of computer equipment.
In short, says Economic Strategy Institute founder Clyde Prestowitz, the entire wealth-producing basis of the U.S. economy has been eroding over the past 30 years, and unless this nation develops an industrial policy soon, the days of family-supporting U.S. jobs are gone.
Prestowitz, who served as principal trade negotiator for the Reagan administration, gave a timely presentation here at the AFL-CIO this week on his new book, “The Betrayal of American Prosperity: Free Market Delusions, America’s Decline and How We Must Combat in the Post-Dollar Era.”
He pointed to China’s currency manipulation as a big factor in the trade imbalance between the two countries ($227 billion in 2009), with China suppressing the value of the yuan in relation to the dollar, a practice that decreases the price of China’s exports and increases the cost of American goods imported into China. (The Alliance for American Manufacturing makes it easy to send a message to President Obama and Congress and urge them to stop China’s currency manipulation. Click here.)
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.
Manufacturing a Better Future for America
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The United States cannot revive its economy without first rebuilding the nation’s manufacturing base, several experts say. While most of us understand how devastating the loss of a plant can be to a community and to the economy, policymakers don’t get it, they add.
During a roundtable discussion yesterday in Washington, D.C., several contributors to a new book, Manufacturing a Better Future for America, spelled out the case for a bold new U.S. industrial policy.
Simply put: For nearly 300 years, the United States invested in producing goods and, as a result, became the richest nation in history. But for the past few decades, policymakers have systematically dismantled our manufacturing base through bad tax policies and short-sighted trade agreements that encourage consumption of cheap foreign imports and provide incentives for U.S.-based companies to export jobs.
Old Economy Doesn’t Work—Time for a New Model
An economy in which the rest of the world produces and America consumes no longer works. The United States must begin to make more of the things we consume. That will require a new vision for our economy and concrete actions to change the core policies that created the current global economic crisis.
Speaking during a workshop at the America’s Future Now conference this morning, several members of a panel on global economic strategy said the key to long-term economic recovery is the creation of a new economic model that emphasizes production and savings, not consumption.
That new vision must include actions to fight the major causes of the collapse of U.S. manufacturing—currency manipulation, trade policies that foster a race to the cheapest sources of labor, tax policies that encourage companies to move offshore and the imbalance of power between workers and employers.
