ManufactureThis was disturbed last week to see Seattle Times’ columnist Kate Riley regurgitating tired old clichés on the benefits of free trade in a January 7 editorial.  Her piece suggested that voters who embrace populist rhetoric on lost jobs are not “sophisticated” and also characterized campaign speeches that focus on lost jobs as a “negative trade message.”  As we’ve pointed out before, this name-calling serves no purpose other than to divert attention from the facts.

That’s why AAM’s Scott Paul wrote a letter in response to Riley’s column in last Friday’s Times.  ManufactureThis reprints it here:

Kate Riley’s criticism of the Democratic presidential candidates and her blind faith in trade to grow Washington jobs [”Doing the free trade mambo,” editorial column, Jan. 7] are misguided, as are her name-calling and fear-mongering. The candidates and the American people have not been snookered into positions that are critical of existing trade policy, contrary to Ms. Riley’s beliefs.

Lou Dobbs reaches a very small audience, yet The Wall Street Journal reports that 59 percent of Republicans (and similar numbers of Democrats in other polls) have soured on existing trade policies. Perhaps that’s because we carry a $763 billion trade deficit, which serves as a drag on economic growth and jobs.

U.S. trade policy may have helped some Washington firms and workers, but it has hurt many others. Washington has lost more than 45,000 manufacturing jobs over the past seven years (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics). More than 27,000 jobs alone have been lost due to our imbalanced trade relationship with China, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

If we continue down this path, Washington’s largest export will be jobs, not products.

Any candidate — Democratic or Republican — who casts a critical eye on our trade agreements and trade policy and calls for desperately needed change is not “protectionist” or “reckless.” Moreover, they do not favor blocking trade — except for toxic and unsafe imports that kill pets and people. They want to stop countries like China from distorting the market through subsidies and currency manipulation. The candidates favor a trade policy through which more Americans share in the gains from balanced trade.
Those changes will only help Washington workers, businesses and consumers.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Manufacturing in the U.S., AAM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.