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The following appeared on the Alliance for American Manufacturing's blog in response to an editorial in the Washington Post on January 5, 2009.
Shame on the Washington Post
by Steven Capozzola
Yesterday’s Washington Post editorialized about the continuing loss of manufacturing jobs in America. Essentially, The Post said that it’s okay if the U.S. sheds factory jobs because the country “has been gradually going out of the manufacturing business for nearly half a century.”
And even though wages have stagnated in the U.S….
-and a $700 billion annual trade deficit has led to a declining dollar…
-and the U.S. no longer produce some of the key military hardware on which it relies…
-and one-third of displaced manufacturing workers will never find new employment…
-and the pensions of millions of Americans have evaporated…
-and Middle Class manufacturing jobs are being replaced wholesale by hourly wages at the local mall…
No worries—The Post believes that “Overall, trade helped the country grow richer—with much of the gain accruing to consumers in the form of lower prices and greater quality.”
If The Post is correct, then, it’s an affordable situation, for example, when a worker spends nearly $4 on a tube of toothpaste. They’re spending roughly half of an hour’s net retail wages to purchase one necessary item—but no matter, “[o]verall” they’re benefiting from “lower prices.”
And it’s a workable situation to eat poisoned food, ingest fake medicine, or purchase toxic toys—all because consumers are benefiting from the “greater quality” of imports.
Sitting in the shiny glass offices of The Washington Post, it may actually be possible to believe that shifting U.S. workers from $50,000/year factory work to $7/hour retail jobs is good business for the nation.
And it may be possible, too, for The Post to actually believe that the current trade regime is also working for “billions of working-age men and women, from China to Peru.” Yes, it’s their estimation that all is of good cheer in the Third World shacks that knit shirts, shoes, and toys for American consumers. No matter that, as Bloomberg News recently quoted one Chinese manufacturer, “To be blunt about it, we manufacturers profit off the workers. The only profit we make is on how low we can push the price of labor.”
Shame on The Washington Post.
The burden of adulthood is to question one’s surroundings, to make INFORMED decisions. Blindly praising a global trade system that continually displaces American workers while simultaneously grinding down the world’s labor supply, shows willful ignorance. It is the antithesis of responsible journalism.
What’s needed is an honest appraisal. For what really matters are jobs. And because facts are stubborn things, The Post must first and foremost address 4 million lost U.S. manufacturing jobs if it believes that current trade is working.
Unfortunately, The Post closed its editorial by saying, “The challenge for the United States now is to find new engines of growth, profits and jobs—whether in manufacturing or some other sector.” But having touted the decline of manufacturing earlier in the same paragraph, they’ve revealed their own contradiction. Without a manufacturing sector, where do they expect to find these new jobs?
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