Clinton Budget to Include Job Protection Proposals

The White House next week will propose a range of initiatives designed to safeguard the jobs of factory workers from foreign competition and boost U.S. manufacturing in the world economy, administration officials disclosed Friday.

The proposals, which will include new spending on technology research, greater enforcement of trade accords and funding to upgrade job skills, are part of the president’s budget plans for fiscal 2001, to be released Monday. They reflect political concerns that, despite the nation’s record-breaking economic upturn, many American jobs are vulnerable to overseas competition and that public support for the administration’s foreign economic policy and trade goals has been waning.

One budget proposal, for example, would add $459 million over five years to the government program that provides training and income to workers whose jobs are lost when production shifts to other countries. “We don’t have a worker shortage in this country, but we do have a skill shortage, and this will take us a long way to meeting the skills gap,” said Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman, outlining the White House effort.

The new initiatives come as Congress begins to consider the extremely touchy issue of closer economic ties between the United States and China. Under the plan, the White House would:

* Add $2.86 billion to a “21st Century Research Fund.” That would include almost $1.1 billion for research in information technology and “nanotechnology,” which holds the promise of making things at the atomic and molecular level, creating much stronger materials and tiny, powerful computers.

* Strengthen the monitoring and enforcement of trade agreements. Overseas personnel would be increased by 25% to monitor trade accords with China and Japan and the administration would increase U.S. efforts to monitor other trade accords as well. These efforts would be part of a $22-million “compliance” initiative.

* Increase available export financing by $215 million, or 26.5%, through the Export-Import Bank, an independent U.S. government agency. The money, which would help finance trade efforts of small businesses, could generate more than “$3 billion in new manufacturing exports, sustaining more than 25,000 high-wage manufacturing jobs,” according to the administration.

The proposals come at a time of fresh sensitivities and insecurities within U.S. manufacturing. Fearful of cheap, foreign competition, organized labor is fiercely opposed to administration efforts to grant China permanent, normal trade ties with the United States instead of subjecting it to annual review. Beyond that, much of the U.S. manufacturing sector bears scars from the Asian economic crisis that cost it hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Manufacturing job levels are actually up from when Clinton took office in 1993, now exceeding 18.3 million. But the level approached 18.9 million in March 1998, when fallout from the Asian economic crisis hit U.S. factories, causing a hemorrhaging of jobs that more recently has stopped and begun to reverse itself.

The proposals were prepared by an administration “manufacturing task force,” which was formed last summer at the urging of Vice President Al Gore.

Under the manufacturing initiative, Clinton on Monday also will call for new efforts to improve worker skills, expand trade promotion and increase assistance to communities hit by sudden economic problems. The administration also would increase technical aid to help small manufacturers use the Internet and electronic commerce.

Speaking to reporters Friday, White House economic advisor Gene Sperling noted that not everyone is sharing in the “remarkable expansion” and that the proposals are intended to fight that problem.

“We like what we see in the president’s proposals,” Jerry J. Jasinowski, president of the National Assn. of Manufacturers, said Friday. “The White House clearly recognizes the need to address two important, emerging trends in manufacturing: the move to e-commerce and the skills shortage in America’s work force. Both are critical to maintaining the strong productivity growth that makes our economy the envy of the world.”