By Dan Murphy with Frank Spotorno
For many of my friends in the union movement, they are unhappy to hear that I support our President Donald Trump, specifically in his fight against China, unfair trade and bringing some of those millions of jobs back to America.
Ten years ago, when I started the Bring Our Jobs Home movement, I was one of the first to talk about the World Trade Organization’s decision to admit China into the WTO. Since that decision in 2001, China has ‘eaten our lunch’ by stealing our technology and patents, and taking most of the 6 million manufacturing jobs we lost last decade from 2000-2010.
Some skeptics said that the reason we were losing so many jobs was because of robots and the automation of our manufacturing economy. I said nonsense, the real reason was China, and now economists from MIT agree. Professor David Autor argues that China, and not automation, is the root cause for the loss of 6 million manufacturing jobs, and it all began with the China -WTO deal in 2001.
No political party is to blame because Democratic Presidents Clinton and Obama, and Republican George W. Bush, all opened the doors to free trade, which at the same time let out doors get offshored. And most of our American corporations took the quick buck and moved their factories overseas, with most going to China. .
This left countless families devastated and deprived many areas in the middle of the country of a good fountain of economic opportunity. Manufacturing jobs have long been a great source of economic mobility for less educated Americans. Those who lost their jobs had to fall back on menial, less well-paying work.
Most recently, some of the states that lost the most from the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector paved the way for the 2016 election of Trump and the huge political upheaval in Washington that is still ongoing. Trump better understood what blue-collar workers were thinking and who they blamed.
Many economists are not happy with Trump’s latest attack on China, and the imposition of tariffs. But the answer has not been forthcoming from Congress, or anyone, as to how to solve the problems with China, the biggest two problems being the theft of intellectual US property and the manipulation of the Chinese currency against the dollar.
Vice President Mike Pence, recently attending a regional summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in New Guinea, said that the U.S. “will not change course until China changes its ways.” Later this week, President’s Trump and Xi will meet in Buenos Aires at a G-20 Summit. The stakes are high, but for the millions of Americans in middle America who could use a good manufacturing job paying $20 per hour, the stakes are even higher.
