Will Obama Keep His 'Buy America' Promise?

[Joanne98]

by David Sirota

Back in August, presidential candidate Barack Obama made his commitment to the concept behind "Buy America" legislation very clear in a series of campaign statements and ads lambasting John McCain for opposing such pragmatic laws. Obama even distributed campaign stickers and flyers with a special emblem (at right) declaring his support. It was part of Obama's decidedly progressive and populist campaign platform on trade and economics that many of us (me included) loudly applauded - and it was smart politics and good policy.
As Businessweek reported in its cover story a few weeks back, taxpayers lose a major bang for their buck when our money is allowed to be spent on products and commodities made overseas. Thus, the least we can do is make sure that when taxpayer money is spent, that it gets spent to create jobs here at home. That's basic commonsense that domestic business and labor be able to agree on. It's an issue, in fact, that even many progressive Democrats and Republicans agree on (note that archconservative Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter was a big supporter of "Buy America" laws).

Cut to today. Both the House and Senate, following the campaign promise of Obama, inserted the most basic "Buy America" provisions into their drafts of the economic stimulus package. As the nonpartisan watchdog group Public Citizen reports, these provisions, requiring that U.S. steel and iron be used for federal and state transportation infrastructure projects, "simply extends existing law (the 1982 Buy America Act)" and is therefore explicitly exempt from any corporate-written trade rules that seek to limit such policies.

These provisions are critical, especially because they include language making sure they don't inadvertently undermine taxpayers interests. For example, the president is allowed to waive the Buy America provisions if applying the preference would be "inconsistent with the public interest," if iron and steel are not produced in the United States "in sufficient and reasonably available quantities and of a satisfactory quality," or if inclusion of iron and steel produced in the United States will increase the cost of the overall project by more than 25 percent.

OK - so to review: Obama campaigned on the Buy America concept, Congress followed his lead and legislated them into the stimulus bill but made sure to give him enough flexibility to waive them if they ever endanger taxpayers. So has the Obama administration been cheering and applauding - thanking Congress for helping them fulfill a campaign promise? Um, not exactly.

Since the provisions passed, business front groups - representing multinational corporations yet fraudulently putting the terms "American" and "U.S." in their names - have launched a major lobbying offensive to gut them. For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Emergency Committee for American Trade in Washington are demanding Obama use his leverage to get Congress to eliminate the Buy America provisions.

The groups are getting help from individual companies like Caterpillar and General Electric (not surprisingly, two of the biggest job outsourcers) as well as the usual cast of Washington's corporate-funded think tanks and private equity firms like the Carlyle Group who make the hysterical claim that ensuring American tax dollars are spent in America will somehow initiate a global "trade war." They also throw out the canard that these provisions are somehow like the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that conservatives blame the Great Depression on - somehow omitting that the original Buy American laws were passed in 1933 (well after Smoot-Hawley) and one of the New Deal policies that got us out of the Depression. The screeching has gotten so loud, that for the first time since I can ever remember, the Washington Post (whose editorial board has been one of the most strident voices for free trade fundamentalism in American politics) put a story on page A1 about trade/industrial policy.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/31-5

[janedum]

1. How can you buy American when the average factory work in China ..

Makes $200 a month?
HOW can Obama bring all the work that's been outsourced overseas BACK to the U.S. when overseas workers make 80% less than U.S. workers make.
Overseas customer service is ABYSMAL and inferior. When I get cust. svc. overseas I hang up.
We should all BOYCOTT overseas cust. svc. HANG UP.
To get our jobs back WE MUST BOYCOTT!
But the wages will be another issue. To bring those jobs back at "living wage" standards will cut into corporate profits. Or that's what the executives will say.
Well, you know what I say .. CUT THE PAY OF THE EXECUTIVES.
NO corporate executive needs to make $16 MILLION $$ a year!

[jody]

2. If Obama breaks that promise, it will be the first one -- won't it? n/t

[olegramps]

3. One sure way to cut into the glut of foreign products.

If we could convince the Teamsters Union to refuse to unload ships until a fair tariff on these products is levied it could be solved in a New York minute.

[patricia92243]

4. There is almost nothing that the average person can buy that is American, The stuff has to be made

here before we can buy American. We don't make anything anymore - thus China, etc have killed the goose that laid the golden egg.