Protecting U.S. Jobs Makes Sense
As the seemingly endless debate over international trade reaches yet another crucial stage in Congress this week, President Bush is again scornfully hurling that “p” word--protectionist--at those supporting laws to protect the jobs of American workers.
Along with the scorn, reams of statistics are streaming from foes of protectionist legislation who are desperately trying today to get the House to kill a reasonable Senate-passed bill limiting the rapid growth of textile, apparel and footwear imports from low-wage countries.
The statistics from opponents of the bill are calculated to show that U.S. consumers benefit from the competition coming from the rising flood of imports and that the foreign-made products create jobs here.
But the figures exaggerate the benefits of imports and are certainly cold comfort to the millions of American workers who have already lost their jobs due to unfair competition.
Losses have been particularly heavy in textile, apparel and footwear industries because Third World companies--including many owned by Americans--pay their workers a small fraction of the wages and benefits earned by workers in this country who simply cannot compete against those earning $1 an hour, and often much less.
The old, complicated import problem affects a host of industries, ranging from high-wage ones such as auto and steel to low-wage industries such as the ones the House is now considering to act on. However, underlying all the debate is the longstanding question of whether almost unrestricted imports of foreign-made products would really be good for this nation as a whole.
With the huge trade deficit dropping only slightly and with more and more U.S. jobs being exported, it seems clear that something must be done at least about imports in the textile, apparel and shoe industries.
Last year, imported textiles and apparel totaled $26 billion, or about one-fourth of the nation’s entire trade deficit.
Twice during the Reagan years, Congress tried to help by passing measures that would slow the growth of imports in those industries. President Reagan killed them with vetoes.
This time, the Senate has overwhelmingly passed a modest measure that allows the total of all imports of textiles and apparel to continue growing at the rate of 1% a year, starting from the record-high 1989 levels. The House is almost certainly going to approve it today by a large margin. Imports already constitute 60% of the U.S. market, up from 28% just a decade ago.
Import quotas are now fixed under 38 separate agreements with other countries. The proposed plan would allow the president to vary import increases from country to country as long as the combined increase doesn’t exceed 1%--about the size of the annual increase of the U.S. market.
Since footwear imports already eat up 85% of our markets, they would remain at the 1989 record level under the Senate-approved bill.
Foreign competition has already meant the loss of more than 750,000 jobs in U.S. apparel and textile and it has helped push wages here down to unconscionably low levels.
Despite the continuing job losses, the remaining 1 million workers in textile and apparel total more than the number of workers in such other major industries as auto, paper and oil refining.
So this country cannot afford to let unfair competition from low-wage, Third World countries wipe out the rest of our textile and apparel jobs, as unattractive as they are.
The measure awaiting approval by the House will help save those industries, and while President Bush, like Reagan, is expected to veto it, this time a veto may well be overridden. Polls show that public support for such legislation is stronger than ever.
A recent Roper poll showed that 70% of Americans support restrictions on imports.
Even if the House passes the bill and a Bush veto is overridden, there are more foreign import troubles ahead for workers in those three industries and in others too.
The new trouble will stem from plans by Bush and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari for a bilateral free-trade agreement.
Such an agreement could nullify the effect of the proposed law to protect the jobs of our workers in the textile, apparel and shoe industries unless the free-trade plan exempts them, which is unlikely.
On the surface, the idea of both countries eliminating most tariffs and quotas sounds sensible; after all, we are neighbors and why have financial barriers between us?
But a free-trade agreement will mean even more Mexican imports that will cost American workers more jobs and it will not raise wages of poverty-stricken Mexicans because continued low wages in Mexico are essential for that country to beat its U.S. competitors.
Also, that means the proposed agreement will not reduce the pressure on Mexicans to come here illegally seeking much better-paying jobs, as some are predicting. Clear evidence of that can be seen in the so-called maquiladoras, the more than 1,500 factories opened by American corporations on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexican border, thereby eliminating many much-better-paying jobs once available on this side of the border and not cutting illegal immigration.
The American corporations get tremendous tax and tariff advantages, almost no anti-pollution regulations and few health and safety laws for their Mexican workers--mostly women--who are paid less than $1 an hour. The proposed free-trade pact would extend to all of Mexico most of these unfair advantages that corporations--not workers--get from the maquiladoras.
It’s time for us to start finding ways to help foreign workers other than giving them more jobs of Americans.
