The Economy

THE ECONOMY

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Mr. BRALEY. I would like to thank my friend from Maine, and also my friend from Illinois who happened to bring up the issue with the Maytag jobs. And I think this leads us to another topic that is not discussed very often in terms of some of the hidden costs of our current trade policy.

The former world headquarters for Maytag was located in Newton, Iowa. And I grew up about 30 minutes from Newton, Iowa. I got my first driver's license at the Jasper County Courthouse in Newton, Iowa. Over 150 years ago, my great, great grandfather, George Washington Braley, walked from up in your neck of the woods from Vermont all the way to Iowa and settled in Jasper County. And Maytag has been a foundation of the economy in Jasper County for many, many years, and Mr. Hare talked about the plant in Illinois, the Maytag plant that lost many of its jobs to Mexico.

What happened about 10 years ago was, in an effort to develop competition between competing Maytag factories for the Neptune washers, it was decided that there were going to be incentives offered by the State of Iowa and the State of Illinois in the competition to keep those jobs in America. And so the legislature in Illinois and the legislature in Iowa both went to work to pass special tax statuses for expensing of manufacturing equipment to make it more attractive for those companies in Iowa and Illinois to be able to compete for these new Neptune washers.

Unfortunately, as we have seen, that competition was short-term only. And the Maytag headquarters no longer exists in Newton, Iowa. The Maytag jobs in Illinois have now left for Mexico. And we are seeing the impact that this trade policy that we have pursued for the past decade is having on American workers.

And, like my friend from Illinois, nobody I talk to, my friends in labor, my friends in small businesses and manufacturing, thinks that trade is a bad thing. We need to encourage trade, because that is what creates job opportunities for American workers. What we are talking about is making sure that our trade policies are fair and balanced. And one of the unique things that I have seen since I came here is that we seem to see more and more small- and medium-sized manufacturers and labor coming together and talking about a need for a comprehensive reform of our trade policies.

One of the things we know is that the Constitution gave this body, Congress, an important role to play in international trade, and one of the problems with the fast-track trade promotion authority that previous Congresses gave to the chief executive was that, in a sense, it involved an abdication of our responsibilities to be an active partner in setting trade policies. And what that means is that we have also abdicated some of our responsibilities to the workers of this country, to the workers of international countries where trade laws and workers rights are not held to the same high standards they are in the United States. We have penalized American manufacturers because of environmental regulations they are required to comply with in this country that are not imposed upon foreign manufacturers. And we have seen the exploitation of workers and human rights in other countries that allow goods to be produced at slave labor conditions and severely undercut the market for those goods on the international economy.

So I am here tonight with my friends to talk about why it is important that, when we go forward from this point, looking at the trade policies, not just for the current administration, but for future administrations, no matter which party happens to occupy the White House, it is important for us to look back on the historical role that Congress has played in making sure that our trade policies reflect the same basic values that made this country great in the first place. And so that is why I am here to talk about how we, as a body, have to step up to the plate and share our fair share of this responsibility moving forward.

And to my friend from Maine, where I know these policies have had a dramatic impact in a lot of different manufacturing and foreign good sectors, I would like to yield back and ask about some of the difficulties that his constituents have encountered in this same area.

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Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. We know from history that timber has always played an important role in the economy of your State. How has the timber industry been affected because of what is happening in the global marketplace for timber and lumber sources from other areas that don't have to comply with the same types of restrictions we talked about earlier?

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Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. One the things that we often don't talk about when we talk about the loss of jobs overseas is the direct impact it has on the communities where those jobs depart from. And one of the things that we know, in talking about the sad story of Maytag in Iowa, is that at the time Maytag still functioned with its corporate headquarters in Newton, Iowa. They contributed almost $1 million a year just in property taxes alone to the city of Newton and Jasper County. That is just one small component of the many intangibles that we don't talk about with these trade policies and how they impact the communities that we represent over the long term.

One of the other things we know is that a lot of people who work in those good-paying jobs take on leadership roles in their communities as volunteers, as coaches, as mentors; and when they have to leave because they don't have a place to work anymore, all of that intangible benefit that contributes to the quality of life in a community leaves with them. So I think that sometimes we focus too much on the pure economic costs of these jobs that go overseas, and not enough on the real human costs that goes along with them.

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Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. I think a good example of that was one of the first things I did after becoming a Member of Congress was look at caucuses I could join that were going to be beneficial to the constituents that I represent in my district. One of the caucuses I joined was the Steel Caucus because there is a steel plant that has a direct economic benefit to employees in my district.

And one of the things I was struck by at the meeting that I went to, a breakfast meeting of the Steel Caucus, was it was bipartisan. There were representatives of the steel industry, of labor, and everybody was there to talk about the same problem, and that was cheap steel from China flooding the U.S. and international markets.

And one of the things that came up during those discussions, again in a bipartisan sense, was the myth of the so-called level playing field, which is that U.S. manufacturers who play by the rules, provide good, high-paying jobs with decent benefits, comply with environmental regulations, treat their workers fairly, are not on a level playing field when it comes to competing with Chinese competition and other parts of the world economy because other countries do not play by the same rules.

So I think one of the things that we need to be talking about here is how we can work in a bipartisan spirit to develop those coalitions that have a direct benefit for American workers, American manufacturers, American employers and consumers of these products, because we all are literally in this together.

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Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. I know the gentleman from Pennsylvania has a fondness for college football so I am going to root this question in that. One of the great football players at Iowa State University when I attended there in the mid-to-late 70s was a gentleman named Tom Perticone from Clareton, Pennsylvania. And while Tom was playing football at Iowa State, the movie ``Deer Hunter' was very popular, which was filmed in and around Pittsburgh general area, and also near Clareton. And one of the things that film depicted so well was the whole culture of the community where a life's history has been devoted to a particular industry and how everything revolves around it. And we have seen that in my home community of Waterloo, Iowa, near the old Rath Packing Company, where a virtual community of businesses and services formed around the factory, and everyone's lives were tied up in that.

And I was hoping that you might be able to shed some light on the very real, personal toll on the culture of those communities in your district that have seen this dramatic shift, and how employment is available to the people who graduate from high school and don't have the same opportunities they did 15 years ago.

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