The Reality of Job Loss in the US

Via Dave Johnson from Campaign for America's Future:

Everyone knows that we have lost a lot of jobs to China since 2001. Now you can find out exactly how many, and where.

The Alliance for American Manufacturing and Economic Policy Institute released a report today titled, “Unfair China Trade Costs Local Jobs” by EPI's Robert Scott. Along with the report AAM has set up a website with an interactive map that shows job losses to by state and Congressional District.

Click the map.

It's bad. According to the report, between 2001 and 2008, 2.4 million jobs were lost or displaced with losses occurring in every Congressional district. (Note - This report does not track service industry job losses, and does not track indirect job losses.)

Here's the surprise: since 2001 we have lost more tech jobs than manufacturing jobs! -- We lost 628,000 tech jobs -26 percent of all jobs displaced by trade- between 2001 and 2008.

The main unfair advantages China uses to its advantage are:
1) Currency manipulation. China "pegs" its currency at a very low, or "weak" rate, so goods from China cost up to 40% less than they otherwise should.
2) Labor-rights suppression has lowered manufacturing wages of Chinese workers by 47% to 86%.
3) There is massive direct government subsidization of export production in many key industries.
4) China allows environmental degradation that ends up affecting all of us.
5) Intellectual property theft and piracy mean that American products that could be sold are stolen instead.
6) China has a number of policies that block U.S. firms from market access.

I joined a press conference call announcing this report, with Senators Charles Shumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Senators Schumer and Graham are introducing legislation in which "the wiggle room will be gone" and the Treasury Department must cite the Chinese for currency manipulation if currency is misaligned without having to say there is "intent," and impose additional penalties. Schumer:

"In the past Dem and Rep admins turned a blind eye to this problem. We are tired of the Chinese not playing by the rules that everyone else has to play by.

Later on the call Senator Schumer said,

Imagine if you had two stores across the street and one had a 40% price advantage – could charge 40% less than the other, where do you think people would shop?

[. . .] Every day we wait is a day we lose wealth, we lose economic advantage, we lose jobs.

Sen. Graham,

It is hard for American political leaders to keep their head in the sand any longer. ... To ignore China''s currency manipulation is to ignore economic reality and the way economics works. ... I am hopeful they [the Treasury Dept.] will go ahead and speak truth to power and the truth is that China's currency is misaligned.

Previous administrations allowed all of this to continue with impunity. It is time to do something about it and bring the world's trade back toward some kind of balance.

The Cool Media Views Obama

Have you been wondering why the media has been cool about Obama's China trip. Actually, The Mahablog has pondered, How the Liberal Media Behaves With Abject Obsequiousness to Barack Obama.

By James Fallows, who lived and worked in China and Japan for many years: “Barack Obama’s recent swing through Asia was a relative success, and certainly nothing like the disaster that most U.S. coverage implied.” And in a more recent post, Fallows says the press corps is guilty of distorting reality by “compressing every complex issue into the narrative of the DC-based ‘horse race.’”

Fallows quoted Alexandra Fenwick in the Columbia Journalism Review:

In almost every analysis of the trip, Chinese officials were portrayed as optimistic and newly emboldened to stand up to American interests and Obama was cast in the role of the meek debtor, standing with hat in hand. The line is that little was achieved and Obama was stifled, literally by state television and figuratively by the Chinese upper hand in the power dynamic.

… that negative narrative failed to take several things into account: the strict Chinese image control that doesn’t allow the sort of media celebrity that Obama enjoys elsewhere in the world; progress made in backroom diplomatic discussions; Obama’s stated objectives; and his quiet diplomatic style that doesn’t produce the kind of sound bytes that a scorekeeping-focused press Washington press corps feeds on.

Fenwick interviewed former New York Times Shanghai bureau chief Howard French, who basically said the reporting on the Asian trip sucked out loud. “Everything is shot through this prism of short-term political calculation as opposed to thinking seriously about stuff,” he said.

See also Trish Durkin at The Week. In brief, she says the idea that Obama somehow failed to obtain anything was based on the erroneous idea that there was anything that could have been obtained on one trip.

Last but not least, there is the bupkuss factor: the consenus that Obama, poor jerk, has come away with nothing. No breakthroughs. No deals. Not even an Oprah “a-ha” moment. It’s as if everybody thinks that some concrete public concession on at least one of the biggies — carbon emissions or political reform or North Korea — is something a U.S. president just can’t leave China without, like a silk robe or a ceramic tea set.

But in reality, it’s not like that. Every key element of the Sino-American relationship is too big and too convoluted for the thumbs-up/thumbs-down approach to apply.

So, relax, everybody. Obama came, he charmed, he left. And for now, that’s perfectly fine.

It is truly interesting how journalism has become a showcase for mediocre. If any of these "news folks" did a little bit of homework and looked at the reality of the politics then maybe another viewpoint would rise above the underlying right-wing hype of putting down Obama.

Martial Law in Tibet

March 10, 2009 will mark the 50th anniversary of the failed revolt against Chinese rule in Tibet.

In 1950 the People's Liberation Army of China invaded Tibet. It was nine years later that His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet fled to India. By 1960, the Dalai Lama had settled in Dharamsala which has become the capital of the Tibetan exile community in the Himalayan foothills of northern India.

Last year Tibetans rioted against Chinese rule. Now the Chinese authorities have imposed an unofficial state of martial law.

Enraged nomads stormed through this windswept town on the Tibetan plateau a year ago this month, raiding a police compound, setting fire to squad cars and forcing police officers to flee. To the north, Tibetans on horseback galloped into a schoolyard, ripped down a Chinese flag and hoisted a Tibetan one, shouting “Free Tibet!”

Now, the authorities have imposed an unofficial state of martial law on the vast highlands where ethnic Tibetans live, with thousands of troops occupying areas they fear could erupt in renewed rioting on a momentous anniversary next week. And Beijing is determined to keep foreigners from seeing the mass deployment. [...]

Last March, the largest Tibetan uprising against Communist rule in decades erupted after Chinese security forces suppressed a protest by monks in Lhasa. At least 19 people were killed in ethnic rioting in Lhasa, most of them Han civilians, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. In the ensuing crackdown, 220 Tibetans were killed, nearly 1,300 were injured and nearly 7,000 were detained or imprisoned, according to the Tibetan government in exile, which is based in Dharamsala, India.

The Chinese government accused the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, of fomenting the violence. The Dalai Lama advocates Tibetan autonomy under Chinese rule, but disavows violence and says he does not favor secession.

Read More HERE