Trade Is the Real Jobs Solution

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Free Trade: With unemployment at 9.4% and worse on the way, there's no doubt the economy's hurting. If the White House and Congress are serious about ending job destruction, they must open up new markets.

It's not easy to flip-flop on a campaign promise, but it's urgent for President Obama to push for free trade as a way to create new jobs - one of the few really effective ways of doing it.

Obama's appointment of Ron Kirk as U.S. Trade Representative shows he's coming around. Kirk, a free-trader, has reached out to Korea, Colombia and Panama, allies who've been waiting three years for Congress to approve trade deals.

Opening Korea's market alone will create a market for American goods as big as that of Mexico, our third-largest trading partner. The jobs that follow from that would be in the millions.

That's attention-grabbing because recent data look so ugly.

Forty-eight out of 50 states and the District of Columbia lost 345,000 jobs in May, adding to the 5.7 million lost since December 2007. Michigan's jobless rate hit 14.1%, California's 11.5%, Oregon's 12.4%, South Carolina's 12.1%, Illinois' 10.6% and Indiana's 10.2%. Some 20,000 people have lost their jobs each day in 2009.

Moody's Economy.com economist Mark Zandi estimates the U.S. must create 150,000 new jobs each month just to break even.

Obama's 66,000 government jobs added since the Democratic Congress' $787 billion stimulus doesn't begin to address what's needed. Only a big stimulus for the private sector - like new markets or tax cuts - can do this. Even with the economy showing some signs of recovery, employers still aren't hiring.

The public knows this. Two polls last April showed a dramatic turnaround in pro-free-trade sentiment. Congress supports it, too - how else to explain House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's backroom maneuver last year to prevent a vote on free trade for Colombia?

Meanwhile, a month ago, a congressional letter seeking to halt a vote on Panama's pact drew a mere 55 signatures from Congress, not even close to a majority, yet somehow enough to ice that treaty.

The reality is, free trade is a proven job creator, responsible for six million new manufacturing jobs in the U.S., or one out of six, according to the USTR's new Web site, which shows a state-by-state analysis of the jobs created by exports. In Michigan alone, a quarter of all factory jobs are created by exports.

Creating more jobs by opening new markets will cost government nothing, add tax revenues and cut welfare rolls. Now with joblessness hitting new highs, Obama must move immediately on trade - or get politically buried by the economic fallout.

 

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