AFL-CIO: End trade cheats, attacks on working people
In Florida, we understand that good jobs are the backbone of strong communities, which is why it’s so frustrating to hear Wall Street CEOs holler about the steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by President Trump.
For decades, the American labor movement has raised the alarm about unfair and predatory trade practices, which have closed more than 50,000 factories, mills and plants in America in the past two decades.
Wall Street investors don’t mind the trade cheaters, because they have invested in many of those new offshore factories. Wealthy investors don’t care about the shuttered factories, the lost local tax revenue or the blighted neighborhoods. They don’t live in our communities. We’re the ones who pay the price.
The members of America’s labor movement care about good jobs, and we aim to hold trade cheaters to task. Unions like the United Steelworkers have pressed the case for raising tariffs at every level of the Trump administration, including with President Trump, to crack down on trade violations.
Not long ago, in Lakeland, Nucor Corp. announced it would invest $240 million in a steel rebar mill. That’s wonderful news. The steel tariffs may help retain the 100 new jobs created by the plant.
And I say all this regardless of how you feel about President Trump. Partisan politics isn’t the issue. Both parties have failed working people when it comes to trade. For too long, conventional wisdom has turned a blind eye to a system of trade that hasn’t really been about trade at all. It’s a system of bad trade that has to change, and the time to change it is now.
By the way, if you want to know which politicians are in the pocket of Wall Street, just listen for the ones who holler about a trade war.
Speaking of trade wars, allow me to unpack that claim.
Trading partners commonly use tariffs to reinforce trade agreements, not to break them or start trade wars. Effective tariffs are used strategically by targeting the countries where the cheating has been happening, like China.
Tariffs are nothing new. Between 1994 and 2005, trading partners around the world levied nearly 1,700 anti-dumping tariffs: 219 were imposed by the United States and 193 were imposed by the European Union. President Obama targeted nine countries with steel tariffs in 2014.
Nevertheless, global overcapacity in steel has been growing for most of the past two decades, and the main cause of the problem has been Chinese steel mills.
The overproduction has pushed down prices so far that more than half of America’s basic steel furnaces have been shut down or idled, ending about one-third of all steel jobs. The low prices have prevented the entire American steel industry from making a profit over the past decade.
This is neither fair nor normal. The Chinese mills aren’t more efficient. Instead, the Chinese steel mills gain their competitive advantage from subsidies from the Chinese government. All of their excess production gets dumped on the global market.
It’s time to stop Wall Street CEOs and powerful billionaires from rigging our economic rules to protect and maximize their profits. Trade rules today reward companies that violate labor standards, degrade the environment and outsource jobs. That’s not OK. Wall Street should not be able to write global trade rules that cut the legs out from under working people and our communities.
Tariffs won’t start a trade war, but they may stop the economic attacks being waged on working people. Wall Street has been kicking our butts for way too long, enriching powerful corporations at our expense.
When America’s workers compete on a level playing field, we win. Tariffs are one important step to help us do exactly that.
Richard Trumka is president of the 12.5 million member AFLCIO, America’s labor federation. He comes from a small coal-mining town in southwestern Pennsylvania.
Wall Street has been kicking our butts for way too long, enriching powerful corporations at our expense.