Bad Omens on the Eve of U.S.-China Chat
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Several disturbing items out now as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gets set to meet next week with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
At a time when our nation has a massive jobs deficit and an urgent need to catch up with other nations that are moving ahead of the United States in green industries, the Alliance for American Manufacturing notes today that Evergreen Solar, a maker of solar panels in Devens, Mass., is closing a factory that employs 800 people. The company says it can’t compete with cheap Chinese solar panels.
Evergreen Solar is just the tip of the iceberg, as demonstrated by the Alliance’s next news note:
In 2011, the U.S. is poised to lose its 110-year run as the world’s leader in factory production to China. China’s economy surged ahead of Japan in 2010 to become the world’s second largest. While the U.S. remains the largest by gross domestic product, analysts predict that the U.S. risks losing that position by 2025—if not sooner. China has moved into the #2 position in the publication of biomedical research articles.
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.
