Barack Obama continued his tour through the swing states in Michigan yesterday.  He gave a speech outlining his economic proposals that could specifically help economically distressed communities like Flint.

For a few moments Senator Obama sounded a lot like, Senator John McCain: “I believe in free trade,” said Obama, “It can save money for our consumers, generate business for U.S. exporters, and expand global wealth.”  However, Barack Obama emphasized that there are significant problems with the trade deals that have been negotiated recently, trade deals without environmental and labor standards, or the agreements that undermine the long-term interests of the American industries. 

Obama stated: “Allowing subsidized and unfairly traded products to flood our markets is not free trade and it’s not fair to the people of Michigan. We cannot stand by while countries manipulate currencies to promote exports, creating huge imbalances in the global economy. We cannot let foreign regulatory policies exclude American products.” 

Senator’s long-term plan to ensure America’s continued economic growth and prosperity includes investments in secondary and higher education to create a work force that is able to compete globally; a new energy strategy that weans America off foreign oil and invests in research and development, and the manufacturing of “green” technologies in the U.S.; a more efficient health care system that ultimately costs less and allows American businesses to stay competitive; investment in scientific research and in our infrastructure to meet our current and future needs.
 

The Primary process is inevitably winding down (who would have thought that was going to happen?). The last primaries will take place on June 3 in Montana and South Dakota. A recent AP article claims that “free trade issue dropped as race finished in Montana.”  The article explains that trade is not a crucial issue in Montana and South Dakota because both states rely on agricultural exports and therefore need open overseas markets.

However, trade is a complex issue and you can not ignore the losers of free trade just because trade has benefited some.  Manufacturing is a significant component in all states’ economies.  Manufacturing contributes $1.5 billion to Montana’s GSP; and $3.1 billion to South Dakota’s GSP.  Unfortunately, since 2000, these states lost 1,500 and 1,100 manufacturing jobs respectively.

The fact is both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have clearly stated their positions on trade and that record is available to the public.  The voters will be voting their economic interest comes November and the candidates’ positions on trade will play an important part in the voters’ decision-making.

Senator Obama continued yesterday on his campaign tour of Florida. Obama touched upon several important topics at his first campaign rally in St. Petersburg, FL.  He talked about foreign policy, he talked about gas prices, and he talked about economic proposals in his election platform.

If elected, Obama would establish a $1,000 per family tax cut paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes and a $4,000 yearly college-tuition credit to every student in exchange for community service.  He would eliminate income taxes on Social Security payments and change corporate bankruptcy laws to protect worker pensions.  Senator Obama would make a $150-billion investment over 10 years in alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power, and biodiesel fuel.
Barack Obama contends that investing in alternative energy will create new jobs, protect the environment and lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Another way to create jobs in the U.S.?  Obama also said he would put 2-million people to work by investing in improvements to roads, bridges and mass transit. “If we can spend $10-billion a month in Iraq we can spend $10-billion a month right here in the United States of America,”
he said.

Undoubtedly, America’s infrastructure needs a comprehensive upgrade program.  We need to build up America’s manufacturing base, so that our economy is a net exporter and not a net importer.  We’ll employ more Americans at home and borrowing less overseas to pay for the things our nation needs.

Barack Obama returned to Michigan to campaign here with an eye on the general election.  Obama visited Macomb Country and toured the Chrysler Stamping Plant in Sterling Heights.  The symbol of America’s manufacturing strength for the better part of the 20th century, Michigan’s auto industry has been struggling to stay profitable and relevant in the era of outsourcing and rising oil prices.  The state served as a perfect backdrop for Barack Obama to unveil his Manufacturing Agenda that outlines his priorities for this crucially important sector of our economy.

Obama began by acknowledging the struggles of the industry.  The auto industry lost 300,000 jobs in the past eight years - about a third of which were lost in Michigan.  “That’s hundreds of thousands of workers who will no longer be able to count on a paycheck to pay the rising costs of health care and college; gas and groceries,” said the candidate. Obama noted that manufacturing supports one in six American jobs, and that we’ve lost nearly 4 million of them in the last eight years.

Here are the main initiatives of the manufacturing agenda that Barack Obama highlighted in his speech:

• $150 billion investment in “green energy sector” that will create “up to five million” new green jobs in the U.S.;
• 10 billion a year investment in Clean Technologies Deployment Venture Capital Fund that will assist with bringing breakthrough technologies invented in America to production also here in America;
• Advanced Manufacturing Fund to invest in “innovation and job creation in places that have been hard hit by the decline in manufacturing”;
• Double the funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership;
• $60 billion infrastructure fund to rebuild highways, bridges, roads, ports, air, and train systems, lower transportation costs for manufacturers and spur job growth in manufacturing;
• Fix the health care crisis and investing in science and math education from kindergarten through graduate school; and
• Reform our trade policy to ensure our workers can compete on a level playing field and to create good jobs at home and real markets for American products abroad.

Obama said that he believes in trade, but we need to make sure t that our workers are competing on a level playing field, and that countries like China aren’t breaking the rules and putting American workers at a disadvantage. “Fighting for our workers isn’t bad for business; it’s good for our economy,” concluded the candidate.  Now, that’s the spirit.

Senator Obama campaigned in Oregon over the weekend.  He is favored to win in the state and his campaign has
asserted that an Oregon win will garner him the necessary number of pledged delegates to claim the Democratic party nomination.

Obama spoke at Vernier Software & Technology, an educational software company in Beaverton, Oregon, where he
held an economic discussion with voters.  Obama delivered his remarks on the economy, rightfully stressing that average Americans are feeling a lot of anxiety about their economic well-being.  The Senator said, “People are working harder for less. You’re paying more for gas, and gorceries, and tuition.  Millions of families are facing foreclosure. We’ve already lost hundreds of thousands of jobs this year.”

Obama talked a lot about the skewed tax insentives in our system that “reward wealth, and not work” and changing
the code to give working individual and families a break.  But he barely mentioned trade, except to say the obligatory:”We need to stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas.” Considering that this discussion was billed to be about the “key economic issues” the omission of trade, is troubling.  Majority of American voters now say that trade costs jobs and lowers wages.

Manufacturing is the number 2 contributor to Oregon’s economy, accounting for $27.2 billion of its GSP.  But the state
lost 22,600 manufacturing jobs from 2000-2007, and 25,700 jobs lost in all sectors in the same period of time can be
directly attribute to our trade deficit with China.

If Barack Obama is indeed more concerned about the success of Main Street, than Wall Street, as he is fond of
saying, he can’t omit trade from his discussions about how to fix our economy.

Hillary Clinton participated in the live TV show, “This week With George Stephanopoulos” in Indianapolis this Sunday.  The show was aired before studio audience, and the members of the audience had an opportunity to ask the candidate questions directly.  There was a question on trade.  Senator Clinton was asked by a voter: “Hillary, Alexander Hamilton said that the key to U.S. supremacy in the world is the manufacturing sector. Sens. Obama and McCain have stated that these manufacturing jobs that we’ve lost cannot be brought back to Indiana or United States. What is your position? Do you agree with Sens. Obama and McCain?” 
 

Well, Indiana’s manufacturing sector has been hard-hit in the last seven years.  Stephanopoulos did preface the question
by saying that Indiana lost 45,000 manufacturing jobs to China in that period of time.  That is true, but he didn’t mention that the total manufacturing job loss in Indiana from 2000 to 2007 was 109,800.

Senator Clinton said that she believed that the declining manufacturing base is a threat to the overall economy.  She continued, “we need to change the tax code to take out any single benefit from your tax dollars that goes to any business that exports a job out of Indiana to any foreign country. It’s outrageous. It’s unpatriotic that is still going on.” The candidate advocated for strong labor and environmental standards in our trade agreements. “if you go to work in Indiana, there are certain rules that the employers have to follow to protect your safety and your health, and there are certain consumer rules,” said Clinton,”but look what’s happening with China. You know, we get lead-laced toys and contaminated pet food and polluted pharmaceuticals, sent back into our market; they get our jobs.”  She specifically singled out the defence industry to say that: “if we are going to have a half-a-trillion defense budget, then I want to see American workers do what is necessary to produce the defense materials and good for our country.”

There were members of the Steelworkers Union in the audience.  These guys got up before dawn to hear the candidate speak about trade and other important issues.  The voters in TV studios and on the campaign trail should remind the candidates that real jobs and real livelihoods are at stake in this election.  What the candidates say matters a great deal to those who are will be voting tomorrow in Indiana and North Carolina.

The Labor Department released its monthly jobs report today.  Unlike in the previous months of January, February and March showing decreases of 80,000 jobs on average, the U.S. economy only shed 20,000 jobs in April.  This brought the unemployment rate to 5.0%, down 0.1% from the Month of March. 

Looking back a year, the number of unemployed persons in April 2007 was 800,000 less, and the rate of unemployment was 4.5% compared to 5.0%in 2008.  In another troubling development in just one month, the number of persons working part time for economic reasons increased by 306,000 to 5.2 million in April.  This level is 849,000 higher than in April 2007. These individuals indicated that they were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. 

John McCain issued a following statement on the jobs report: “Today’s job numbers are another clear indication of the economic challenges facing our country. With Americans hurting, we must act to strengthen our economy for families and small businesses. We must help Americans now through gas tax relief, which provides immediate relief from rising energy prices. We must also help those facing home foreclosure by enacting a HOME plan. At the same time, we need to act to lower taxes, streamline regulation, lower health care costs, ensure energy independence and open foreign markets. To help those who have lost jobs, we must focus on promoting effective worker re-training programs.”  

Senator McCain, once again, is talking past the problem. The point is there aren’t enough full-time jobs.  And we are rapidly losing good-paying manufacturing jobs in this country.  The April loss is another 46,000 unemployed in the manufacturing sector.  In addition to 306,000 more people forced to work part time, there is an additional 1.4 million who are “marginally attached” to the labor force in April.  These people were not counted as unemployed only because they have not looked for a job in the 4 weeks prior to the survey.  The Labor Department indicates that among those “marginally attached” were 412,000 so-called “discouraged workers” in April.  Discouraged workers were not looking for work specifically because they believed there are no jobs available for them.

Giving people an 18-cent break on a gallon of gas, or lowering their taxes is not going to give someone hope that they once again will be counted as a productive member of society and not as someone who is “marginal” or “discouraged.”  Neither is retraining them for a job that may be gone by the end of the training.  The answer to employing more people is creating more jobs in the U.S., instead of creating them for workers overseas.  The single greatest factor contributing to manufacturing jobs’ losses is our unbalanced trade with China.  Our Presidential candidates, Republican or Democrat need to get real.

Hillary Clinton met with the Editorial Board of the Indianapolis Star yesterday.  She talked about the U.S. economic relationship with China at length, emphasizing that it is our national responsibility to hold China accountable. 

The Senator pointed out that “our companies are not competing with individual companies, but with the whole national agenda [of China].”  In Senator Clinton’s view, China’s agenda is to grow its economy as fast as possible without creating political unrest and, eventually, to dominate the world economically and politically.  Clinton added that there’s no question that China manipulates its currency; sends low-quality and unsafe imports to our market; and has a history of counterfeiting, theft of intellectual property, and industrial espionage. 

Hillary Clinton brought up the case of Magnequench, a company in Valparaiso, IN, that was shuttered in 2003 with all equipment and know-how moved to China.  The story was used in one of Clinton ads running in Indiana.  Magnequench used to make magnets for military applications.  Its production capacity along with sensitive military technology is now lost.  Clinton asserted that we allowed cases like Magnequench and others to occur because we haven’t been effectively protecting our own strategic and economic interests vis-à-vis China.

“I’m 100% in favor of free trade, but I’m not in favor of being taken advantage of,” concluded the candidate.  And she promised that “We are not going to stand idly by and lose our standard of living.”   We’ll keep following Senator Clinton’s position on this issue.  Stay tuned for Senator Obama’s view on China issues.

The race in Indiana is definitely on.  Over the weekend both Democratic candidates and their surrogates criss-crossed the state.  Indiana would be a prized win for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton: a recent national Gallop tracking poll suggests that the Democratic Presidential candidates are in dead heat.

Barack Obama has fine-tuned his communication with working-class voters in Indiana, a demographic he has yet to win over.  The candidate spoke in Anderson, Indiana over the weekend.  It’s a community of 131, 312  people, hard-hit by the closure of the Delphi autoparts manufacturing plant last year.  Between 2006 and 2007, the number of people that left Anderson cancelled out the natural population increase in the community for that year.  The unemployment rate in February of 2008 was 6.8%, compared to 5.2% in Indiana, and 4.8% nationally.

What can the future President do for communities like Anderson across the nation?  Well, certainly doing nothing is not the answer.  Sen. Obama was right on target when he emphasized that plant closures like Delphi do not just affect the laid-off workers, “the whole community takes a blow.”  He spoke about giving tax breaks to companies that invest “right here in Anderson, ” and of his plans to renegotiate NAFTA, to include stricter labor provisions, because “we can’t compete against forced labor or child labor.” 

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton toured North Carolina with an entourage of senior retired military officers to outline solutions to strengthen our military. Earlier this month, Sen. Clinton was in Indiana, the state that holds its primary on the same day as North Carolina, visiting Allison Transmission plant that builds transmissions for military vehicles. During her visit, Clinton outlined a plan to limit the Defense Department’s ability to buy foreign-made products and would launch a “comprehensive review of our defense industrial base” to determine “where U.S. capabilities are lacking.” Her argument was that when our military relies on foreign manufacturers, we are not only outsourcing American jobs, we are also outsourcing our security.

It has become evident that the U.S. regulatory agencies or U.S. corporations themselves are simply not capable of ensuring the quality standards when the goods are manufactured in far away foreign factories. The cases of unsafe imports from countries like China, threatening the health and, sometimes even lives (as is the case with tainted Heparin) of the American consumers come to the public’s attention almost every month. It’s not a stretch to think that ensuring the quality of equipment our troops rely on in battle will be more difficult if it is made overseas and not in our own country. And if something were to go wrong in the military the general public will be less likely to find out. That is why it is imperative that our leaders think ahead and make sure that the equipment and armor that our military uses is made in the USA.