[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 128 (Wednesday, September 17, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1822]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        BUSH MANUFACTURING PLAN

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                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 17, 2003

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, since President Bush assumed the presidency 
in January of 2001, American and specifically Michigan manufacturing 
jobs have been lost because of our trade policies, the lack of effort 
by our President to open closed markets, and because of the tremendous 
cost of pension and health care legacy costs. Last week, the Michigan 
Democratic Delegation sent a letter to the President detailing a 
fourteen point plan that we felt could help alleviate the dire 
situation manufacturing finds itself in. Early this week, Commerce 
Secretary Evans detailed the Administration's plan to save American 
manufacturing jobs.
  I am submitting an article from today's Washington Post, by Steven 
Pearlstein, which describes our President's efforts at reviving our 
manufacturing sector as ``feeble.'' America has lost nearly three 
million jobs since January of 2001. The tax cuts have not worked. War 
has not worked. And President Bush's plan to save our manufacturing 
jobs won't work either.

                A Feeble Plan To Save U.S. Manufacturing

                         (By Steven Pearlstein)

       After a dozen town meetings, a road trip by three Cabinet 
     officers, months of study and countless meetings of assistant 
     secretaries, the Bush administration has finally brought 
     forth its program to rescue the American manufacturing 
     sector. And it's a bad joke, a melange of tired ideas, empty 
     promises and ideological slogans, and an embarrassment for 
     the White House economic team.
       The policy was unveiled in a much-anticipated speech to the 
     Detroit Economic Club by Commerce Secretary Don Evans. 
     Instead of offering his knowledgeable audience a cogent, 
     thoughtful analysis of the problems facing manufacturers, 
     Evans trotted out old Rotary Club canards about high taxes, 
     oppressive regulation and frivolous lawsuits.
       While correctly identifying runaway health insurance costs 
     as a problem, he failed to come up with even one serious 
     remedy.
       And although Evans grabbed headlines with tough talk about 
     China, the only action to back it up--hold on to your hat 
     now--was a new Unfair Trade Practices Team at Commerce to 
     ``track, detect and confront unfair competition,'' as if 
     there weren't already several hundred bureaucrats doing just 
     that.
       Perhaps most laughable was Evans's boast that George W. 
     Bush had single-handedly revived the free-trade agenda--
     conveniently forgetting that President Bill Clinton expended 
     enormous political capital to push through NAFTA and China's 
     accession to the WTO, ignoring as well the inconvenient fact 
     that his own administration had just sold out American 
     manufacturers at trade talks in Cancun to protect subsidized 
     beet farmers and cotton growers.
       So what would a serious commerce secretary concerned about 
     manufacturing have said?
       First, she would have leveled with her Detroit audience, 
     warning that there are industries and industry segments that 
     are structurally vulnerable to foreign competition and can't 
     be ``saved.''
       She would have warned them that in key industries such as 
     machine tools, survival depends on the consolidation of 
     small, family firms into larger ones that have the clout to 
     deal with large customers, the money to engage in research 
     and development, and the size to realize economies of scale.
       She would have acknowledged that the president had been ill 
     advised to cut federal funding for manufacturing research and 
     promised to make amends in the next budget cycle.
       She might have floated the idea of a 1 percent tariff on 
     all imports to finance extended unemployment benefits, health 
     insurance and training vouchers for displaced workers, grants 
     to their communities, and financial relief to employers 
     offering early-retirement incentives.
       Rather than ranting about regulations that have proven 
     successful in protecting worker safety and public health, she 
     might have said that fair trade requires trading partners to 
     maintain minimal regulatory standards of their own, 
     consistent with their level of economic development.
       And she would have acknowledged that while China was making 
     great strides toward developing an open, free-market economy, 
     it wasn't there yet--and that continuing to trade with China 
     as if it were had caused undue harm to American workers and 
     companies. Then she might have announced the immediate 
     imposition of temporary tariffs and quotas on imports of half 
     a dozen key Chinese products, followed by an open invitation 
     to negotiate their removal just as soon as China is ready to 
     get serious about opening its distribution system to U.S. 
     products, protecting U.S. patents and copyrights, and pegging 
     its currency at a reasonable exchange rate.
       It is possible to make the case for such an aggressive 
     industrial policy. It is also possible to make a case for 
     doing nothing. But the Bush administration has come up with 
     the worst of both worlds--doing nothing while pretending 
     otherwise and hoping nobody notices until after the next 
     election.

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