September 21, 2011 Hearing: "Manufacturing in the USA: How U.S. Trade Policy Offshores Jobs?"

"It is long past time to debunk the myth that the economic freedom to trade leads to offshoring of U.S. jobs. The facts are just the opposite. It is the absence of an aggressive, pro-active trade agenda that leaves America falling behind its global competitors and places our manufacturers at a severe disadvantage when competing for the 95% of the world’s consumers that live outside our borders.

For American manufacturing, trade means jobs. America is the third largest exporting nation in the world, and our share of global manufacturing has essentially held steady through the past 30 years. The concern is that our share of the world’s market in manufacturing has declined significantly while the Chinese share has exploded upward.

If you examine what America sells and ships overseas, it is manufacturing that accounts for the bulk of U.S. sales abroad. Much of those sales are in advanced technology and capital goods such as computers, electronics, scientific instruments and aerospace equipment – along with chemicals, oil and coal, machinery and equipment critical to the production of finished products. These are high value items, creating high paying jobs and requiring high-value research and development.

Trade is important to American workers. Not only is one of every five American manufacturing jobs tied to sales overseas, workers in the most trade competitive industries earn an average compensation package of $86,000 a year – which is nearly fifty percent higher than they would earn in the least trade-competitive industries, according to a report by the National Association of Manufacturing..."

Opening Statement from
Rep. Kevin Brady
Vice Chairman
Joint Economic Committee

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