From Mexico to Malaya and Beijing to Borneo products are being constructed
at a tenth the cost of the same goods made in Michigan or Mississippi.
The American auto industry is reduced to assembling foreign made parts
into a whole. You cannot watch an American Made television. There
are none. Our American made technological revolution is stamped “Made
in Korea”. You can’t find a Made in America label on anything
hanging in your closet.
We have sent whole industries abroad with trade policies that encourage
the export of jobs and tax policies that reward closing American factories
to reinvest in foreign factories. We have become an economy in which
job opportunities are restricted to flipping burgers and data entry
and even data entry jobs are more plentiful in Bangalore than in Boston.
We have gone from being a nation of producers to a nation of processors
and it is only a matter of time until McDonald’s figures out
how to serve burgers grilled in Bali.
A Democratic economic stimulus package should include a revision of
America trade policy to protect the American economy from unfair trade
policies abroad. It should be designed to address the economic exploitation
that results in waves of economic refugees pouring over our borders,
not by fences and fortifications but by an economic policy designed
to remove the reason for families to uproot themselves from their
homes to come to America to look for work.
A Democratic stimulus package should stand for equity for labor, whether
the machines are operated in Matamoras, Macao, Malaya or Minneapolis.
An import duty should be imposed on all products entering the United
States equal to the 90% of the difference between the labor component
of the product and the labor component of the same product if produced
in the United States. A level playing field would bring trade equity
and end the export of whole industries.
