At President's Export Council Meeting, Brown Revives Call to Extend Trade Adjustment Assistance

Press Release

At a White House meeting today of the President's Export Council, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) revived his call to extend a Department of Labor program known as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). TAA is a package of training and reemployment services designed to help workers--who have lost their jobs as a result of foreign trade--develop the skills they need to find new jobs. Since mid-February, eligibility for the TAA program has been denied for service workers and for manufacturing workers who lost their jobs due to trade with countries with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement, including China.

"The President's Export Council had a lively and productive discussion today that focused around how we can spur America's economic recovery and add jobs by increasing American exports," Brown said. "But at the same time, we cannot afford to forget about the workers that have been left behind by free trade agreements. These are Americans who lost their job, their pension, their health care--maybe all three--when the company they worked for moved operations overseas or shed their employee benefits obligations during bankruptcy proceedings. Congress has delayed for weeks in renewing TAA, but enough is enough. We need to extend this critical program without delay."

The President's Export Council (PEC) is the principal national advisory committee on international trade. Brown is a member of the PEC Subcommittee on Trade Promotion and Advocacy. The Council advises the President of government policies and programs that affect U.S. trade performance; promotes export expansion; and provides a forum for discussing and resolving trade-related problems among the business, industrial, agricultural, labor, and government sectors.

To complement the work of the PEC, Brown recently organized the Ohio Export Advisory Group to help advance Ohio's export opportunities abroad. Next week, the Group will meet in Columbus with Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade Francisco Sanchez. In December, Brown's office held three export seminars in northeast Ohio--in Kirtland, North Canton, and Youngstown--aimed at educating Ohio companies and small business owners seeking to grow their businesses through global market development.

According to the Department of Labor, an estimated 32,389 Ohio workers have been certified for TAA assistance since May 2009--second only to Michigan. Of those workers, an estimated 7,119 workers would not have qualified for TAA under a pre-Recovery Act version of TAA. The pre-Recovery Act version of TAA did not cover service workers or workers who lost jobs due to trade with countries with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement, including China.

Last month, Brown led four attempts to pass an extension of TAA and the HCTC before the expiration, but each attempt was blocked by Republican senators. Also in February, Brown led a group of 14 senators on a letter to members of House leadership, including House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, urging them to pass an extension of TAA in the House. As one of the last acts before 111th Congress adjourned, Brown secured a six-week extension of the TAA program, including an extension of the Health Coverage Tax Credit (HCTC), a program that helps trade-affected and other dislocated workers afford private health insurance. Brown fought to extend the program for 18 months, but the Senate only cleared a six-week extension, leaving it up to the new Congress to reconsider the issue.

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