1.8 Million U.S. Jobs Lost Due to China Trade

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/05/03/18-million-us-jobs-lost-due-to-china-trade/

1.8 Million U.S. Jobs Lost Due to China Trade

by Tula Connell, May 3, 2007

The U.S. trade deficit with China has soared since the Bush administration took office—the nation ran a $233 billion trade deficit with China last year, and this year’s first-quarter $46.4 billion deficit is twice as large as in the same period last year. Now comes word about the human cost of this trade deficit.

The U.S. trade deficit with China between 1997 and 2006 has displaced production that could have supported 2,166,000 U.S. jobs, according to a report released this week by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Most of these jobs (1.8 million) have been lost since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Contrary to the predictions of its supporters, China’s entry into the WTO has failed to reduce its trade surplus with the United States or increase overall U.S. employment, according to the report, Costly Trade with China. Specifically,



between 1997 and 2001, growing trade deficits displaced an average of 101,000 jobs per year, or slightly more than the total employment in Manchester, New Hampshire. Since China entered the WTO in 2001, job losses increased to an average of 441,000 per year—more than the total employment in greater Dayton, Ohio. Between 2001 and 2006, jobs were displaced in every state and the District of Columbia. Nearly three-quarters of the jobs displaced were in manufacturing industries. Simply put, the promised benefits of trade liberalization with China have been unfulfilled.

But you wouldn’t know anything is wrong if you listened to the Bush administration (do we ever?). Just today, USA Today reports Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson insisted that a Bush administration initiative he heads is spurring China to quicken its economic reforms. Says Paulson:

We’ve made a lot of progress.

Really.

Paulson has traveled to China multiple times since he became Treasury Secretary last year, but so far, all his nice talk with Chinese officials has failed to convince China to lower its trade barriers and bring its laws and regulations into compliance with international standards.

As economist Thomas Palley notes:

In retrospect, the 2000 U.S. decision to permanently open its markets to China seems poorly conceived. That decision was driven by manic optimism about globalization that pushed a biased benefit—cost calculus that ignored economic and political reality.

Opponents claim that the trade deficit stems from lack of U.S. saving, not exchange rates. This argument misunderstands market economics. Reducing the trade deficit requires increasing exports and decreasing imports. That requires inducing foreigners to buy more U.S. made goods, and inducing Americans to “switch” their spending from imports to domestic made goods. Market economies accomplish this through changed relative prices. That calls for exchange rate adjustment that makes foreign goods more expensive for U.S. consumers and U.S. goods cheaper for foreign consumers.

FULL story at link.

[madfloridian]

1. Our Democrats who went along were promised money from business..

to make up for what they lost from more traditional constituents like unions.

Here are some of the names involved then and now.

http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/7/dreyfuss-r.html

"Representative Gregory Meeks, an African-American lawyer and assistant district attorney elected to Congress in 1998 to represent a middle-class black neighborhood in Queens, New York, was undecided last year on the divisive issue of trade rights for China. Lobbyists for big business were battling the AFL-CIO and environmental groups on Capitol Hill for every vote, and Meeks, who'd previously voted against granting fast-track negotiating authority to President Clinton, was a prize.
Sensing an opportunity, Representative Cal Dooley, a moderate California Democrat closely allied with that state's high-tech sector, moved in. As co-chairman of the House New Democrat Coalition, a bloc allied with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), Dooley was targeting fence-sitters to vote aye.(on fast track for Clinton)

Along with fellow New Democrats Harold Ford, Jr., of Tennessee and Bob Matsui of California, Dooley hooked Meeks up with a stream of corporate officials from Silicon Valley and the New York financial district. "My boss made sure there'd be support for Meeks from the business community," says a Dooley aide. "He spread the word, through groups like the Business Roundtable, that here was a guy who deserved their support."

"Congressman Dooley helped bring in businesses who otherwise Congressman Meeks would not have known, and didn't have a relationship with, to knock on his door. As a result, scores of meetings were held with the congressman," says an aide to Meeks, citing sit-downs with the CEOs of American Airlines and New York Life Insurance Company. High-tech executives helped ensure that Meeks would be one of two undecided members to accompany President Clinton on his high-profile trip to China before the vote, the aide said; and Meeks also won significant backing from industry political action committees, which ended up nearly matching labor's donations to Meeks's campaign treasury. Included were $5,000 PAC contributions from American Airlines and New York Life. And in the end, Meeks voted business's way.

The DLC's effort to win Meeks's vote was part of a vigorous campaign by New Democrats to assure legislators that business groups would replace campaign contributions from labor lost by a pro-business China vote. In The New Democrat, the DLC's monthly magazine, Washington's most powerful business lobbyist, Thomas J. Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote that even though some members of Congress risked losing the AFL-CIO's support, "business will stick by Democrats on the China trade vote."

Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

And they are still doing it. Harold Ford is chairman now, and he gets a policy say. Others don't. Congressional leaders told Dean he would take his "cues" from them, that he was not to mess in issues.

Our country has been sold out, deliberately. And many of our Democrats went along.

[MichiganVote]

2. Headline: US Congress sells US out from underneath citizens

[bonito]

5. While providing jobs in the army

To further promote wealth for the elite at the cost of your lives.

[MichiganVote]

6. Yup. Its all working according to plan. Their plan.

[ClayZ]

3. K & R

[Bitwit1234]

4. We buy from China and they don't buy from us

this is FAIR TRADE...are they an arm of Fox News who are Fair and Balanced.

[Shallah Kali]

7. Not to mention what we get ranges from tainted to out and out poisoned - lead babybibs & lunchboxes

Bibs http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2833149&mesg_id=2833149

Lead Lunch boxes http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/18/AR2007021800528.html

Lead in Vitamins http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660215681,00.html

Lead in Honey http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2835813#2836038

AntiFreeze ingredient sold as glycerin killing hundreds http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2835813&mesg_id=2835813

and since the FDA started testing up to end of April "agency has so far taken 750 samples of wheat gluten and products made with wheat gluten and found 330 positive for melamine or melamine combined with another substance. It also found 27 positives out of 85 samples of rice protein concentrate and products made with rice protein concentrate."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2829464&mesg_id=2829464