We’ll be watching the candidate debate tonight and grading both the candidates and ABC on whether they discuss the issues that really matter to voters– jobs, the economy, and enforcing our trade laws.

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Today, AAM hosted a presidential forum in Pittsburgh to give the candidates an opportunity to fully discuss their stance on trade, China and the state of the domestic manufacturing.

Barack Obama made his remarks to the audience first.
He spoke of Chicago’s shuttered steel mills and the laid-off workers he helped as a community organizer. His heavy criticism went to the “Washington insiders”: the Bush administration and the elected representatives who, influenced by lobbyists, put the interests of wealthy corporate CEOs above the interests of their constituents when voting in favor of trade deals like NAFTA, CAFTA and the PNT with China.

Obama promised to “finally confront the issue of trade with China.” His solutions were to “use all the diplomatic avenues open to me to insist that China stop manipulating its currency,” if elected President; and to not “ignore violence against union organizers in Columbia, or the non-tariff barriers that keep U.S. cars out of South Korea” in the trade agreements that he will negotiate as President. Obama added that his administration “won’t just negotiate fair trade agreements, we’ll make sure they’re being fully enforced.”

To stop the bleeding of American jobs overseas, Obama proposed that the Patriot Employer Act must be enacted “so we can stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and start giving them to companies that create good jobs with decent wages here in America.” He added that “we’ll modernize our steel industry, strengthen our entire domestic manufacturing base, and open as many markets as we can to American manufactured goods when I’m President.”

Obama stressed that rebuilding America’s infrastructure and investing in the “green energy” sector will create additional opportunities to have good-paying jobs in the U.S. that “can’t be outsourced.”

When Hillary Clinton took the podium, she too criticized the Bush administration for its failure to effectively enforce our trade laws. “For seven years, the Bush Administration has ignored or under-utilized legitimate trade enforcement tools as countries like China have violated trade rules and hurt U.S. manufacturers,” Clinton said. “It has also dragged its feet in addressing China’s currency manipulation and actively worked against efforts to provide legitimate relief to threatened U.S. industries.” She noted that the trade deficit has nearly doubled to $708 billion and China’s holdings of U.S. public debt have risen to almost $500 billion. “President Bush has allowed China to become America’s banker, making it harder to promote our interests and push back against their unfair trade practices.”

To address the unfair trade practices that countries like China are for now able to engage in with impunity, Clinton unveiled a new plan to strengthen trade enforcement.

She proposed that we need to better use and strengthen the trade enforcement tools that we already have in our arsenal. As President, she would fully utilize the WTO dispute settlement mechanism to challenge practices that violate WTO commitments; work toward establishing WTO rules and policies that respect and strengthen workers’ human rights and protect the environment; and push to speed up the decision making process at the WTO.

Among her other proposals, Clinton mentioned a new Intellectual Property Enforcement Network that would improve inter-agency coordination and create a new international task force to work with foreign governments on IPR enforcement.

Hillary Clinton promised that she would “crack down on China’s unfair trade practices,” if elected President. Her proposals on Chinese currency manipulation were specific: adjust export prices to account for the price distortion caused by currency misalignment; disallow the federal government to purchase products or services from China; direct U.S. banks to pause in issuing loans to China; pressure the IMF to consult with China; and/or impose a 27.5 percent tariff on all Chinese goods. She would also provide “Section 421” relief for U.S. industries hurt by surges of Chinese imports and apply countervailing duties to non-market economies like China, who subsidize their export industries.

From States News Service:

The following information was released by the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton

“The FDA has now tripled its estimate for the number of deaths connected to the blood-thinning drug, heparin. The latest figures indicate that as many as 62 Americans have died because of allergic reactions to heparin products. The FDA’s analysis came after we learned a Chinese factory used a cheap heparin substitute made from animal cartilage in heparin products sold in the United States by Baxter International.”

 MSNBC reports that Hillary Clinton met with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) today and said she would oppose the Colombia trade deal and fix NAFTA:

“As I have been saying for some time, no trade deal with Colombia while violence against trade unionists continues. I was very disappointed that President Bush decided yesterday to try to push the Colombian deal through Congress. Well, I have news for President Bush. As I have said for months. I oppose the deal. I have spoken out against the deal. I will vote against the deal, and I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the Colombian free trade deal.”

In a further story on the CWA event, MSNBC noted that Barack Obama also declared his opposition to a Colombia FTA, noting that “because when organizing workers puts an organizer’s life at risk, as it does in Colombia, it makes a mockery of our labor protections. We’ve got news for White House, we’ve got news for America. It’s not the Department of Management, it’s the Department of Labor, and we are here to take it back!”

A funny thing: a quick check of U.S. Census Bureau data shows that the U.S. trade deficit with Colombia in 2007 was $880 million. That’s a relatively miniscule amount when compared to the $256 BILLION trade deficit that the U.S. racked up with China last year. And so we ask, why aren’t the candidates mentioning China as well, another country where labor organizers are often brutally represed?

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Excerpts from Barack Obama’s remarks at the AFL-CIO conference on April 2. The Senator discuses job creation:

“Now, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that we can’t stop globalization in its tracks and that opening new markets to our goods can help strengthen our economy. But what I refuse to accept is that we have to sign trade deals like the South Korea Agreement that are bad for American workers. What I oppose - and what I have always opposed - are trade deals that put the interests of multinational corporations ahead of the interests of Americans workers - like NAFTA, and CAFTA, and permanent normal trade relations with China.

“And I’ll also oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement if President Bush insists on sending it to Congress because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements. So you can trust me when I say that whatever trade deals we negotiate when I’m President will be good for American workers, and that they’ll have strong labor and environmental protections that we’ll enforce.”

Okay, so you oppose PNTR for China, Senator Obama? What are you going to do now? Can you lay out some concrete examples of what you’ll do when you take office? How about tackling China’s illegal currency manipulation? Or dumping? Or subsidies?

With polls showing a tightening race in Pennsylvania, Senator Barack Obama appeared on CBS this morning and was asked about China. The Senator offered some criticism of Beijing, but CandidateWatch believes he didn’t go far enough in presenting proposals that would support of American manufacturing. Here’s the relevant transcript:

HARRY SMITH: …in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where the candidate had harsh words for America’s fastest growing economic rival.

OBAMA: I am a strong believer in free trade, but I think that we have not been very savvy negotiators when it comes to China. I think they’ve played us. They definitely are stealing our intellectual property, and that has direct consequences in terms of the bottom lines for businesses here in the United States.

SMITH: …and there is concern about China’s violations of human rights.

SMITH: Should we be a full participant in the Olympic games?

OBAMA: I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I think that what’s happened in Tibet, China’s support of the Sudanese government in Darfur, is a real problem. I’m hesitant to make the Olympics a site of political protest because I think it’s partly about bringing the world together.

CandidateWatch suggests a more direct answer—one that all the candidates should give: “China cheats, but I won’t let them get away with it any more. China dumps products, subsidizes its manufacturing, and artificially manipulates its currency—all in violation of world trade law. As president, I will strongly enforce existing U.S. trade law to halt the downward spiral of American manufacturing.”

A relevant excerpt from Hillary Clinton’s remarks to the AFL-CIO conference in Philadelphia today:

“Yes, we will finally get tough on China. Right now, China’s steel comes here and our jobs go there. I testified before the international trade commission to try to put the brakes on the dumping of steel in our market. They manipulate their currency, they give illegal subsidies, they abuse workers’ rights. And what do we get in return? Tainted fish, lead-laced toys, and poisoned pet food and polluted pharmaceuticals. That is a bad deal for America. When I’m President, China will be a trade partner not a trade master. And we’re going to get that done.”

Can you give us some specifics Hillary? Want to tell us what you’ll do regarding China’s currency manipulation?

At a campaign appearance in Raleigh yesterday Senator Clinton said she would call for a trade time out. Specifically, she said: “I will call for a time out to fix NAFTA. It’s time we said to the rest of the world we are happy for you to be our trading partner. I will also get tough on China for manipulating their currency. I will appoint a new trade prosecutor. China is a growing economy - we want them to expand but they should live by the rules.”

The Bush administration has never designated China a currency manipulator despite worldwide agreement that Beijing artificially devalues its currency. A good first step would be for a U.S. president to have his Treasury Department cite China for currency manipulation, thus opening up a range of U.S. remedies via the ITC.

Senator Barack Obama recently unveiled a new Indiana television ad entitled ‘For Decades.’ Standing in front of an idle steel plant, Obama opines, “I moved to Chicago to help workers whose lives were torn apart when steel plants like this one left town.” He then offers, “We’ll fix our trade laws, end tax breaks for companies who ship jobs overseas, and give them to companies who create jobs here - in America.”

The funny thing is, we already have trade laws on the books. We don’t need to fix them so much as ENFORCE them.

Some progressives are taking exception to John McCain’s recent support of Airbus in a tanker deal with the U.S. Air Force worth more than $30 billion. You can see their tongue-in-cheek video here. Some critics have suggested that the loss of such a large contract for Chicago-based Boeing could cost a net 40,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs.

There are critics who consider McCain’s support for Airbus no surprise. He has consistently opposed “Buy American” provisions in Capitol Hill legislation, calling them “ludicrous,” and sarcastically noting in 2004 that he would “sleep better at night knowing that all of our [Navy’s] carbon plates are manufactured in the U.S.”

Actually, we at CandidiateWatch would sleep better at night knowing that. Wouldn’t you?