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Free
trade? C'mon
January 2008
Tooling & Production Online
By Brian Sullivan
We should rename "free
trade." Because it isn't free and it isn't fair. Since it's trade that's
regulated in favor of multinational special-interest groups, why don't
we call it for what it is: rigged market trade?
Why are we so afraid to
call a spade a spade? There are 36,000 fewer U.S. factories than there
were eight years ago. One in five manufacturing jobs has been lost
nationally in the last 10 years.
If we don't stem the tide
of multinationalism through trade law reform, then between 42 million
and 56 million of the 140 million U.S. jobs could be moved off-shore
within 20 years, including all 14 million current jobs in manufacturing.
We'll be left without any manufacturing, which is at the core of our
country's national security.
Members of the Tooling,
Manufacturing & Technologies Association (TMTA) wonder if things will
change in time. They know that most of their woes emanate from
disastrous trade laws written in Washington DC.
When the concept of free
trade was thought up, did the corporate-controlled multinationalists
anticipate that America would cease to be a land of broadly shared
prosperity? What's happened to the concept of social morality? It's been
thrown out the window.
Corporate greed feeds on
itself and U.S. manufacturing suffers. In Collapse: How Societies Choose
to Succeed or Fail, social anthropologist Jared Diamond, describes an
American society in which "corporate elites cocoon themselves in gated
communities guarded by private security, fly in corporate aircraft,
depend on golden parachutes and private pensions, and send their
children to prohibitively expensive private schools. Gradually these
corporate elites lose their motivation to support the police force, the
municipal water supply, Social Security, and public schools. Any society
contains a built-in blueprint for failure if corporate elites insulate
themselves from the consequences of their own actions."
I suppose there are some
reading this who believe this article is leaning a little to the left.
Actually, it's not. Increasingly, trade policy and the effects of
multinationalism are not partisan issues. The signs of broadening
resistance to globalization and a fraying of Republican orthodoxy on the
economy have been reported on page-one in The Wall Street Journal. The
morally shameful I-don't-care-about-you-because-I've-got-mine mentality
exhibited by Congress and this administration is a national disgrace.
Our representatives and legislators, collectively, have been responsible
for trade policy that has resulted in a cave-in of the manufacturing
industry.
At the end of the day,
there's only one way there's going to be any relief for all of us in
manufacturing, and that's through Washington, D.C. Most of
manufacturing's problems, your problems, my problems, are as a result of
bad trade laws. When the grassroots electorate becomes engaged in this
fight, we'll change bad free-trade laws into good fair-trade laws that
will reflect the interests of small manufacturers who've been absent
from trade policy deliberations far too long.
We need fair-trade reform,
and we need it now. The first thing that should happen is to freeze all
new trade agreements, especially by this current administration, until
major pro-domestic producer and worker trade strategies are put in
place.
Congress must create a
National Trade Commission. Congress must pass currency manipulation
legislation. Congress must address the unfair advantage caused by the
rebate of value-added taxes by passing a border equalization tax.
Congress has to enact countervailing duty laws. Congress has to pass
laws that standardize Rules of Origin. It has to pass laws that address
infrastructure imbalances including regulatory standards and enforcement
standards.
In this general election
cycle now, we have the real opportunity to make change. Politicians are
up for election or re-election. The Tooling, Manufacturing &
Technologies Association (TMTA) has aligned itself with other
organizations such as the Organization for Competitive Markets and the
Coalition for a Prosperous America, like-minded groups that are actually
holding politicians' feet to the fire relative to trade reform issues.
In the last election cycle
held two years ago, 15 politicians who were manufacturing-unfriendly and
electorally vulnerable were targeted for defeat.
The "kill rate" was 15 out
of 15.
Brian Sullivan is director
of sales, marketing, and communications for the Tooling, Manufacturing &
Technologies Association. His e-mail is brian@thetmta.com.
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