More than the war in Iraq, trade policy and the loss of U.S. jobs to India and China are becoming central issues in the 2004 presidential campaign. Given that, Butler County was given a helpful glimpse into the complex issue last week at a labor-management forum sponsored by the Coalition for Trade Sanity and held at Butler County Community College.
The loss of American white-collar and technology jobs to India has been making headlines across the country in recent months. The loss of manufacturing jobs in Butler County and across most of the industrialized mid-Atlantic states has been a growing concern in this region for years. Some people are predicting the virtual death of manufacturing in Pennsylvania within decades unless something is done.
A recent surge in voter support for Sen. John Edwards' campaign for the Democratic nomination for president is linked for his outspoken criticism of trade policies that many believe have cost U.S. jobs. Democratic front-runner Sen. John Kerry has begun to pick up on Edwards' appeals by blasting the job losses attributed to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in spite of the fact that Kerry voted for NAFTA. Edwards was not in the Senate when NAFTA was passed, but says today he would have opposed it.
Trade issues are complex. It is not as simple as a politician lamenting the loss of U.S. jobs and offering some vague promises. Campaign rhetoric nearly always falls short of explaining the details of any complex issue. This is true whether the issue is tax policy, healthcare or trade. Too often voters are treated to sound bites and partisan shots, but little detailed analysis.
It is one thing to lament the loss of U.S jobs to workers in India, China, Mexico or Cambodia, it's another thing to propose a solution. Kerry and Edwards might pound on the loss of U.S. jobs, and by intonation, blame President Bush. But free trade has been supported by presidents from both parties for decades and it was President Bill Clinton who pushed for passage of NAFTA.
The issue is not Democrat vs. Republican, no matter how hard Kerry and Edwards try to make it sound that way.
Last week's forum at BC3 included representatives from union organizations as well as manufacturers. The crisis of manufacturing job losses in Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, is not a typical labor-management dispute. It goes deeper than an "us vs. them" argument and has much broader implications.
In the past three months, the Butler Eagle editorial page has featured six columns on the topic of free trade, including one by guest columnist Dave Frengel, of Penn United Technologies.
One writer pointed out that overseas manufacturing jobs help raise the living standards of some of the world's poorest people in China, Cambodia and elsewhere. It has also been pointed out that the shift to overseas manufacturing is largely responsible for keeping prices to the American consumer well below where they would be if all manufacturing were still done in the U.S.
Another columnist focused on the 3 billion people in China, India and Russia that represent a massive market that U.S. companies cannot ignore. To gain ground in this massive, emerging market, many U.S. companies are creating jobs in those countries.
This is not unlike Honda, Toyota and Mercedes Benz making cars in the United States. It was a good way to make inroads into a new market.
Do those who lament U.S. manufacturing jobs going overseas want to eliminate the Honda, Toyota and Mercedes Benz jobs in Ohio, Kentucky and South Carolina and send them back to their respective countries?
Do those who complain about the loss of textile jobs from Edwards' home state of South Carolina, explain that every American would pay more for just about every piece of clothing they buy if overseas apparel jobs were eliminated?
Another columnist pointed out that low foreign wages are not the only cost issue to be considered. He noted that the actual cost of an American worker must also include Social Security payments, federal regulations such as OSHA, Family Leave benefits, the Clean Air Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Endangered Species Act and other federal or state regulations, as well as the costs of sometimes frivolous lawsuits. Many of these costs have benefited many Americans, but they are part of a U.S. worker's production costs nonetheless.
Given all these related issues, perhaps the most thorny issue on trade is how to create "fair" trade that the NAFTA critics desire without destroying the benefits of international trade in the process.
Still another columnist recently noted that many thousands of agriculture jobs were lost when tractors and mechanized harvesting boosted the productivity of American farmers. The invention of the automobile decimated the ranks of buggy makers and blacksmiths.
Progress and technological advances often threaten jobs in one area, only to create new jobs in other areas. The key to managing these transitions is to provide adequate education and job-retraining to allow workers to shift to where the jobs are growing. But education and training alone do not seem to offer a solution to the job crisis now being debated.
Jobs leaving the U.S. for foreign countries is an important issue to debate and understand. Solutions will not be easy, certainly not easy enough to be contained in 10-second political sound bites.
Some solutions might be found in changes to existing trade agreements as well as pressure on some foreign countries (notably China) to abandon their currency manipulation, which artificially suppresses prices of products made in their countries.
Will Americans be willing to pay more for their clothing, cars, some foods, televisions, computers - essentially everything they buy - to help preserve U.S. jobs? This is a question that cannot be avoided if the trade issue is fully and honestly debated.
Still, Butler County should be grateful for the preview of the trade debate offered by the Coalition for Trade Sanity. The issue of trade and U.S. jobs is likely to be pivotal in the 2004 presidential election as it registers with voters in ways that campaign finance reform, tax policy or even the war in Iraq does not.
