Manufacturing Panel: “Build Back Better” Through Infrastructure, Trade Policy

Biden is onboard with the Buy America plan, which could create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Garamendi said. He recommends that Buy America requirements should extend to the entire supply chain required to build infrastructure projects like roads, ports and wind towers. Even the ships that will be exporting natural gas from the U.S. should be made in the U.S., he said, noting that the shipping industry anticipates increasing the maritime fleet by 30-40 vessels in the next decade.

Tom Conway, International President, United Steelworkers, said manufacturing was struggling before the COVID-19 pandemic and has worsened with recent shutdowns and permanent closures of businesses. The steel and aluminum industries received a temporary boost from Section 232 tariffs by restricting imports, but they were implemented without a comprehensive plan for manufacturing and alienated allies. Mills are running at 72 percent capacity and there is no reason they shouldn’t be at 100 percent, he said.

“Our markets are so open and we don’t have an industrial plan. It is crazy not to have a plan and some restrictions,” said Conway. “There will always be room for imports, but they should not supplant our own manufacturing and should be supplemental.”

Section 232 tariffs should not be eliminated until there is a plan to replace imports with production in the U.S. It will take some time because of the loss of factories, said Conway. “We need time for the rebuilding.”

When asked about the reluctance of the Senate to pass an infrastructure bill, Conway responded that nine out of ten senators in industrial states are Republican and will have to explain to their constituents why they are impeding legislation that will put people back to work.

Trade policy needs a “reset not a retread,” said Thea Lee, President of the Economic Policy Institute. Lee said she thinks president-elect Biden is off to a great start with his economic team appointments. “We are emerging not just from pandemic and massive economic job losses, but also three preceding decades of outsourcing, income inequality and working people being left behind,” said Lee. Trillions will need to be spent following the pandemic to invest in infrastructure, clean energy and the economy. Funding will be needed to transition workers to jobs in new sectors. “I think there is potential for a durable, bipartisan push for this investment,” she added.

Lee said President Trump raised trade concerns but didn’t solve them. “We need to figure out the global rules and balance global competition with domestic needs,” she said. Democrats and Republicans are guilty of “knee jerk” policies in the past. American needs to “create the kind of global economy we want to be in.” Loopholes in the Buy America trade policy need to be tightened and multilateral trade rules established that put U.S. workers and good jobs at the center instead of corporate profits. The U.S. shouldn’t be in direct competition with slave labor or cleaning up our climate while importing dirty manufacturing from other countries, she added.

On trade policy, Lee hopes to see the U.S. in a leadership role in the World Trade Organization. The WTO rules have not addressed currency misalignment, worker rights or clarified the use of border adjustment for climate change. Systematic abuse of trade by China needs to be addressed, she said.

“Look at the trade rules we live with and see which ones are hurting us and standing in the way of our goals,” said Lee. “There is a lot of work to be done, but I think the Biden administration is on the right track in connecting big infrastructure and climate jobs at home with revamped trade policy.”