Manufacturing group blasts House passage of Peru trade deal
-- Manufacturing Business Technology, 11/9/2007 9:58:00 AM
The U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC) condemned the House of Representatives' passage of the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement in the face of Congress’s failure to address the biggest trade threats facing domestic manufacturers and their workers—specifically, currency manipulation by China and other East Asian countries, and a host of other economic practices they engage in."Congress is fiddling with midget markets like Peru while domestic companies and their workers are being burned by China and the rest of East Asia," says USBIC President Kevin L. Kearns. "Congress’s misplaced trade priorities indicate that the new Congressional leadership is no more serious about promoting domestic production and jobs through trade policy than is President Bush.
"House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) announced last week that the leadership's legislative timetable would not enable the House to address the China issue until 2008 at the earliest. So factories and jobs continue to be shipped overseas wholesale while Congress pretends there are more important priorities than healthy American businesses and good American jobs," Kearns continues.
Peru is an economy only slightly bigger than Hartford, Conn.—"$79 billion according to the latest 2005 comparative figures, says Kearns. "And the U.S. Trade Representative's office itself pegs the country's poverty rate at nearly 50 percent. Clearly, the Peruvian market for U.S.-made goods will be negligible under any trade arrangement, and thus will have minimal impact on American production or jobs."
Kearns believes that increasing Trade Adjustment Assistance is not a solution to the central problems. Rather, it treats only one of the symptoms of dysfunctional U.S. trade policies. Worse, says Kearns, it allows a bipartisan majority in Congress to believe that they have actually accomplished something when in fact they have punted on the major trade issues facing the nation. The leadership's trade program is of benefit only to outsourcing multinational companies, not businesses that create middle-class jobs in the United States.
Talkback
Related Content
Related Content
Sponsored Links
More results on MBT Research Library