The United States must fix its trade problems, particularly unfair trade with China, which has cost the nation more than 3.5 million manufacturing jobs this decade including more than 200,000 factory jobs in Pennsylvania, a panel of labor and manufacturing leaders said Monday in Greensburg.
"I think we've been hurt very badly by the trade agreements. The trade agreements have to be re-evaluated. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was proposed to create 170,000 new jobs every year, but 750,000 jobs have been lost" because of it, said David Pasquale, president of Col-Fin Specialty Steel Corp. of Fallston in Beaver County.
Pasquale was part of a panel of six people who told about 200 people at the "Keep it Made in America" town hall meeting at the Palace Theatre that unfair trade has hurt the nation and will continue to harm the economy until the government repairs its trade policy.
The meeting, sponsored by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, highlights the need for a manufacturing policy like the nation's competitors', and a trade policy that is enforced, said Scott Paul, executive director of the alliance. The nonpartisan organization composed of leading U.S. manufacturers and the Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers union is mounting a public information campaign because it wants to put the issue of job loss and unfair trade right in the middle of the presidential campaign.
Col-Fin -- which has about 80 workers producing carbon and alloy steel bars for the automotive, electronic and hand tool industries -- can't compete with the cheap labor in China, where companies pay workers 50 cents an hour to make products that end up in the United States, Pasquale said.
"It is difficult to maintain a market share when you get (trade) pressure from China, from South America and Canada," Pasquale said. He said that cheap labor and unfair trade -- where countries subsidize their manufacturers -- erode the American manufacturing base.
"If you purchased a set of hex (Allen) keys from Wal-Mart, then you probably contributed to the economy of China," Pasquale said, adding that those sold at a Sears Roebuck Co. store or a local hardware store are likely to be made in the United States.
The loss of American jobs has even extended into the advanced technology products, where about 560,000 jobs have been lost this decade.
"This is supposed to be where we are winning, and we are not," Paul said.
The country is losing the trade wars because companies are looking for the cheapest possible product, said Lucious Lewis of Greensburg, an appliance repairman for Sears for the past 16 years. Lewis said he's noticed that parts for the refrigerators he repairs are no longer made in America as they were when he started on the job.
"They're all made in China or Mexico," Lewis said.
The loss of the nation's manufacturing base also is having an impact on national security, both in terms of the loss of skilled workers and the loss of infrastructure to do the work, said Kerri Houston Toloczko, senior analyst for the alliance. Military equipment sits unrepaired because of the lack of American-made parts, or because American-made tools are no longer available to fix the equipment, Toloczko said.
Because conflict could result from the increased tensions the United States has with Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Sudan, "at some point, it is possible that we are on the opposite team from China," Toloczko said.
To maintain the flow of skilled workers to manufacturers, attitudes must change toward manufacturing jobs, said Paul Anselmo, vice president of New Century Careers, a machinist training center based in Pittsburgh's South Side. The new manufacturing jobs pay well and offer good benefits, he said.
Trying to get young people to consider a career in manufacturing is "a hard sell" because school guidance counselors don't promote it, and parents and grandparents don't encourage that path because of the memories they have of when the downfall of the region's steel industry cost thousands of jobs, Anselmo said.
"We have to capture that skill set before it's completely gone," Anselmo said.
Another town hall meeting is planned for 6:30 p.m. today at The Fez in Hopewell, Beaver County.
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