Are Wisconsin Voters Seriously Considering Electing A Senator Who Brags About Shipping More Of Their Jobs To China?

I had an odd dinner with some friends the other day. One of the guests was in China and participated via a skype connection. A large laptop was at her place and she was a pretty full participant, yacking away with us-- eating grapes, though, while I ate wonderful raw vegan food and the others ate pig heart pate. Anyway, she seems to spend something like half the year in China, which is where she was born. She works there doing quality control for American companies who have off-shored their manufacturing there because slavery is illegal in the U.S. and the damn workers insist on making a living wage. Well come back to that in a moment but her problem is low wages and a wrecked American manufacturing base; it's quality. And Chinese manufacturers haven't quite wrapped their minds around that concept yet.

Someone passed me a... I don't know, a smooth, round metal widget. It has something to do with motorcycles and there are supposed to be 12 ball bearings inside it. But the Chinese manufacturers save a few pennies on each one by only putting in 11. Somehow that causes accidents and fatalities. My friend in China told me that virtually everything there being manufactured for Americans is being done as shoddily as can be gotten away with. And this is the Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate, Ron Johnson's idea of a business utopia-- which, presumably means The Law of the Jungle, caveat emptor and, most important, oodles and oodles of government subsidies and plenty of corruption for greasy operators like... well Ron Johnson, of course.

On Monday Johnson told Wisconsin Radio Network that "The level of uncertainty, the climate for business investment is far more certain in communist China then it is in the U.S. here." Does that mean he likes the central planning, the institutionalized corruption, and the massive government subsidies and a stimulus program that made Obama's look like the half-assed job it was? Who knew uber-capitalist Ron Johnson was a Communist? But a Communist who believes in cheap labor-- and workers who can't afford to buy anything. His Democratic opponent, Russ Feingold, has been a steadfast fighter against the unfair trade policies-- embodied in legislation like NAFTA and CAFTA-- that shipped America's manufacturing base out of the Midwest and off to low-wage/anti-regulation economies (like China). It's left America with systemic underemployment and with weakened labor unions and with workers who can't afford to buy much. Feingold voted against these catastrophic policies, of course. Johnson is singing their praises.

"The fact of the matter is NAFTA and CAFTA have actually been successful for our economy,” he crowed to a Wisconsin radio audience on July 26. I guess they are successful-- if you own factories in China or Mexico. For Wisconsin workers... not so much. “Yeah. I think history has proven if you really take a look at economic statistics, free trade works," he repeated at a luncheon for fatcats the same day. Fatcats agree. "In a free market capitalist system there’s always winners and losers," he asserted. "It's creative destruction. That just happens. It's unfortunate. But let’s face it, if it weren't for that we'd still have buggy whip companies."

The month before, Mr. Creative Destruction told the audience of Here and Now on Wisconsin Public Television that “When you give, when you continue to uh, extend unemployment benefits, people really don’t have the incentive to go take other jobs, you know, they’ll just wait the system out until their benefits run out. Then they’ll go out and take, probably not as high paying jobs as they like to take, but that’s really how you have get back to work, I mean, you have to… you have to take the work that’s available at the wage rates that’s available.”

Takeaway: Ron Johnson, like any with the CEO mindset are just wild about doing business with tyrannical governments, like China's, as long as they can make some quick profits and don't have to worry about annoying things like workers, health safety, human dignity... all that stuff that the conservatives have always fought against here in America and are still unreconciled to. Remember, we have weekends because workers fought to get them. Conservatives called them Communists and predicted the end of the world.

There is, however, a much brighter future than the dystopian/Randian one being offered up by Ron Johnson, Paul Ryan and John Boehner. The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) is a non-partisan, non-profit partnership forged to strengthen manufacturing in the U.S. AAM brings together a select group of America's leading manufacturers and the United Steelworkers. A report they released yesterday found that the Obama Administration's decision to provide import relief on certain consumer tires from China has succeeded in restoring production, market share, and employment to the U.S. tire sector.

"Enforcing trade laws works," said AAM Executive Director Scott Paul. "The Obama Administration was absolutely right to provide three years of relief to American workers, firms, and their communities that suffered injury from a flood of Chinese tires."

In the period under investigation (2004-2008), imports had increased 215 percent by volume (from 14.57 million tires to 45.98 million tires) and nearly 300 percent by value (from $453 million to $1.788 billion).  Simultaneously domestic capacity declined from 226.8 million tires to 186.4 million tires while production declined from 218.4 million tires to 160.3 million tires.

This is the policies being pushed by Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, most Republicans and Blue Dogs and corporate shills like Ron Johnson. The International Trade Commission agreed that there had been such a rapid increase in imports that it caused market disruption for domestic producers. President Obama subsequently imposed three years of relief with tariffs of 35 percent the first year, 30 percent the second year, and 25 percent in the third year.

The study Obama's Bold Economic Move on Chinese Tire Imports Is Paying Off found that production by U.S. producers has subsequently increased significantly. Looking at the first six months after imposition of relief (October 2009-March 2010) vs. the same six months in 2008-09, domestic production increased roughly 15%, or  more than 10 million tires (based on Rubber Manufacturing Association data). Data also shows domestic consumption is up.

"What we're seeing is extremely good news for U.S. tire producers and their workers at an incredibly difficult time," said Paul.  "We know that Goodyear Tire, for example, has seen sharp increases in domestic sales volume. We commend the President for successfully fighting for American manufacturing. The last thing the Administration should do is heed the calls of the outsourcing lobby and Beijing government to end the relief and cause further manufacturing job loss."


UPDATE: Sly In The Morning

One of Wisconsin's most popular radio hosts spoke with Russ Feingold this morning on WTDY (1670 AM) in Madison about Johnson's affinity with Communist China's system. Sly points out that 52,000 Wisconsin jobs were lost because of the U.S. giving Most Favored Nation Status to China, something Feingold, presciently, voted against and Johnson supports with great enthusiasm. Sly went into how China cheats and disregards WTO rules, something Johnson apparently admires, cheating being a positive in the Randian dystopia he inhabits.