Senate hopeful Barletta visits Penn United
JEFFERSON TWP — A room full of executives at Penn United Technologies welcomed both a Republican candidate for Senate and his praises for tariffs Monday.
U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-11th, the candidate hoping to take U.S. Sen. Bob Casey's seat in Congress, visited Penn United for a meet-and-greet with employees and a sit down with the company's executives. Media were not allowed into the meeting with employees, but press was allowed into the latter session, where Barletta spoke about his own life story, tariffs and industries such as the skilled manufacturing at Penn United.
“I don't know how you can deny what's happening,” Barletta said. “Every metric of our economy is booming. Industry is coming back to the United States.”
Bill Jones, Penn United's president, said his company hired 100 people this year thanks to President Donald Trump's tax cuts. The company's problem right now, he said, is that it's not able to hire enough workers.
“I think, long term, the tariffs are a help,” Jones said. “It helps level the playing field.”
The room's executives, at least those who spoke, seemed to agree. Barletta's and Trump's economic policies appeared particularly dominant in the room. When one person, CID Associates President Scott Docherty, joked about one of his top employees being a Hillary Clinton supporter, Jones drew laughs by questioning why he'd keep her on.
Such political ubiquity, however, does not appear to be the case among Barletta's potential voters. Just two weeks from election day, political polling analysts at FiveThirtyEight give Barletta just a 1.1 percent chance of victory. Recent polls predict him losing by about 15 percentage points.
In an interview after his meeting, Barletta clarified how he reconciles his party's fairly recent embrace of taxing international trade with its conservative, free market values.
“I believe in a free market,” Barletta said. “But it wasn't a fair market. It was only fair for the other countries that were taking advantage of us for how many years. Finally we have a president who understands the definition of fair. It means fair to America.”
Barletta frequently describes other countries in terms of opposition: He is widely known for a law he put into place while mayor of Hazelton that made renting residences to illegal immigrants or employing them illegal.
Both he and Jones aren't worried about automation eliminating laborers' jobs. Jones said two-thirds of this year's hires are in apprenticeship programs to develop valuable skills. The robots that replace workers need engineers to run and design them, he said.
“You can't just take in somebody off the street for these jobs,” Jones said.
Barletta agreed, saying “It's not like in the Lucille Ball days.”
A 2015 Ball State University study of manufacturing job losses in the Great Recession and recent years found that increases in factory productivity related to technology are “overwhelmingly the largest impact” on manufacturing employment. The study found that 88 percent of such job losses were due to productivity growing, while outsourcing work overseas accounted for just 13.4 percent of job losses.
On the national deficit, Barletta claimed Republican tax cuts are worth their additions to the country's debt load. National debt grew 17 percent in 2018 to $779 billion, according to the U.S. Treasury.
Barletta mentioned Social Security and Medicare when discussing the debt, saying they need to be “fixed” if the nation's debt is to be curbed.
The economy, he argued, needs more training for technical skill positions to continue growing. But the country is on track, he said.
“Our country is back again,” Barletta said. “We're the most competitive in the world again.”
