By Robert E. Swift
The airwaves are thick with presidential politics as candidates from both parties craft messages they believe we want to hear. Cynicism is always a part of the listener process but there’s always hope. Nevertheless, absent from the most recent dialogue is the issue of jobs.
The candidates are looking at the unemployment numbers and can tell there appears to be little profit in banging away at this subject. There are too few voters out of work and the media’s attention has drifted elsewhere.
It is moments like these that one can only wish for an insightful individual to cast our vote for, and feel good about it. There is some very fundamental economic churn underway in this country and it may haunt us in the next millennium unless we do something soon.
Third world countries have become a job-fare for positions once occupied by American manufacturing workers. As a result, headlines like these continue apace: “Job Decline Continues in June.” Women’s Wear Daily, which ran this story in an early July edition, stated in the article, “Apparel and textile manufacturers continued to frantically cut jobs in June, with the industries losing a combined 10,000 workers.
“According to Labor Department statistics, the apparel industry employed 684,000 people, down 6,000 from May and 91,800 below year-ago levels. Textile employment fell 4,000 workers in June to 559,000 which is 45,800 below June 1998.
“The textile market has lost 4,000 jobs each month for the last four months. The apparel decline too shows that jobs are moving offshore.”
The article goes on to note that total manufacturing employment in general fell 35,000 in June. Factories have lost nearly a half million jobs since employment in this sector peaked in March 1998. The textile and apparel industry’s loss is being experienced by many other manufacturing sectors such as electrical equipment, food products, fabricated metals, instruments and paper products.
Headlines describing job losses in the textile and apparel industry have persisted for years, but this won’t go on forever. At the current rate, the manufacturing sector of the industry simply won’t continue to exist in to the United States. There are too many factors working against the continued vitality of this once growing and contributing industry.
The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing will phase out all quotas for World Trade Organization member nations by the end of 2004, providing the opportunity for even more goods to be imported in the U.S. As large as this market is, it’s still finite, and can soon be flooded with a surfeit of foreign products that will continually pressure domestic manufacturers and thereby cost jobs.
Then there’s the North American Free Trade Agreement. This is yet another initiative that throws the American market wide open, in this instance to Mexico and Canada. According to The Wall Street Journal article “U.S. Trade Gap’s New Culprits: Canada, Mexico,” if this year’s reported pace continues, Canada and Mexico could enjoy a record $50 billion surplus with the U.S. in 1999-four times the figure five years earlier.
For facts on helping our economy by buying items made in America, write to the Crafted With Pride in the U.S.A. Council at 1045 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10018; or call at 212-819-4397 or fax 212-819-4493.
Robert E. Swift is executive director of the Crafted with Pride in U.S.A. Council, headquartered in New York City.
- North American Precis Service
