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The latest World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Development Round ministerial level talks collapsed on July 29 after more than a week of intense negotiations. While countries reportedly reached agreement on 17 of the 20 negotiating points, the refusal of India and China to lower trade barriers on agricultural products without an easily triggered safeguard derailed the Round. A safeguard is a mechanism that allows a country to increase tariffs or establish quotas in response to surging imports that have caused damage in its market.
Specifically, the dispute was over the threshold for when developing nations could trigger agricultural safeguard tariffs and how high those tariffs could be. India and China wanted the ability to use the safeguard at a mere 10 percent increase in imports, while the United States wanted developing countries to accept at least a 40 percent import trigger. Neither side was willing to move on this issue, and the talks collapsed.
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The American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition’s (AMTAC) mission is to preserve and create American manufacturing jobs through the establishment of trade policy and other measures necessary for the U.S. manufacturing sector to stabilize and grow.
AMTAC strongly opposes granting Vietnam permanent normal trade relations (PNTR). Our opposition is based on the view that granting Vietnam PNTR replicates the flawed trade policy model of allowing China to join the WTO before that country made sufficient progress transitioning from a non-market, state-run economy to a non-subsidized, free-market economy. As applied to Vietnam, this model grants unlimited access to the U.S. market to producers in Vietnam who use massive subsidies, intellectual property theft, pennies-an-hour wages, low or nonexistent labor standards, and less than minimal environmental standards to undercut U.S. domestic manufacturers. In return, U.S. domestic manufacturers gain less than full access to a market that is only a fraction of the value of the U.S. market.
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Testimony Archive
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The truth is that American families are in hock to foreign countries like China to the tune of $2.5 trillion. That’s $21,875 for every household, enough to pay the tuition for your child’s four-year college education.
How did we get to this point? It's blind faith in ‘Free Trade’ policies that ship our manufacturing jobs overseas and expose our markets to unfair competition -- policies that forget the primary goal of U.S. trade policy should be to ensure the prosperity of each and every American’s future.
So what is our future under ‘Free Trade’? The chart above illustrating America's exploding trade deficit with all of our Free Trade Agreement Partners. It tells you all you need to know. The red ink will continue to get worse until America stands up for itself.
Think about that the next time a politician tells you about how wonderful free trade is.
AMTAC tracks U.S. trade and employment data and other leading economic indicators. You can find everything from the U.S. trade deficit with China to employment gain or loss by industrial sector.
To find the data you want pick a topic below:
Jobs- Savings and Income - Wages - Output - Prices - Economic Growth - Trade Deficit Data
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73 Members of Congress and
U.S. Textile Industry
Urge U.S. Govt. to Expand Textile Monitoring Program to Imports from China
September 30, 2008
Washington, DC – Seventy-three (73) U.S. Representatives led by Textile Caucus Co-Chairs Howard Coble (R) of North Carolina and John Spratt (D) of South Carolina sent a letter on Friday to President George W. Bush urging his Administration to extend and expand the Textile Monitoring Program (TMP) to cover U.S. textile and apparel imports from China beginning on January 1, 2009, the first day following the expiration of U.S.-China textile bilateral signed in 2005. The TMP currently monitors U.S. apparel imports from Vietnam for illegal dumping.
Ten textile and fiber industry trade associations and the labor union UNITE HERE also sent a letter on Monday to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez and U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab making the same request.
“The strong congressional support for the textile monitoring program further exemplifies the changing current towards a stronger trade enforcement policy, especially when dealing with non-market economies that provide their manufacturing sectors with massive financial incentives and WTO illegal subsidies. We appreciate their leadership and encouragement to find real solutions to the unfair trade balance in our manufacturing sector,” said Cass Johnson, President of the National Council of Textile Organizations.
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Read Congressional Letter
Read Letter to USTR and Commerce
Read Signatories for China Monitoring Letter
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