Can Obama’s ‘Made in America’ Strategy Save Jobs—and Democrats?

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6288/can_obamas_made_in_america_strategy_save_jobs_--_and_democrats/

Thursday August 5 9:49 am

By Art Levine

On Wednesday, President Obama used the platform of the AFL-CIO Executive Council to emphasize reviving American manufacturing and keeping jobs in America as his administration's new economic priority. After having failed to aggressively push for large-scale jobs creation in the face of Washington's deficit mania, Obama has unveiled new economic promises to appeal to the labor constituency he needs for the 2010 and 2012 elections.

He even insisted that his administration would "keep on fighting" for the Employee Free Choice Act—although it's been perfectly obvious to most sentient beings that his administration did virtually nothing to promote one of labor's top legislative priorities. A few progressive bloggers attacked the hypocrisy of the comments, such as Firedoglake's Michael Whitney:

For Obama to even mention the Employee Free Choice Act as anything but a deader-than-dead failure of his administration is an insult to the intelligence of every working person in America. Obama had the opportunity to push through the Employee Free Choice Act between February and April 2009. He let it linger, then let Democrats start sniping at it, and then the ship sailed with Scott Brown's election.

Still, his broader economic message was welcomed by labor, despite the disappointment that labor has periodically expressed over centrist compromises over health reform and inaction on the Employee Free Choice Act.

"The message I want to deliver to our competitors—and to those in Washington who've tried to block our progress at every step of the way—is that we are going to rebuild this economy stronger than before, and at the heart of it are going to be three powerful words: Made in America," Obama said to union leaders' applause.

As the AFL-CIO Now blog noted, the president made clear how this upcoming election would be a choice between "polices that encourage job creation here in America or encourage jobs to go elsewhere...The choice is whether we want to go forward or we want to go backwards to the same policies that got us into this mess in the first place."

FULL story at link.

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Without tariffs against micro-wage nations, nothing will help

And Obama would never impose tariffs en masse.

And most Americans have learned to watch what Obama does instead of listening to what he says.

In the end, the Democrats will revert to the Clintonian "who the fuck else ya gonna vote for, chumps?"

[ibegurpard]

5. precisely

what's the plan to reward corporations that keep decent paying jobs here and punish those that outsource. where are the tarrifs to protect American workers against imports that our economy makes them incapable of competing with?
Are there enough white collar jobs to replace all the manufacturing jobs that are lost and are we going to help people train for them? and if that happens what's to stop those jobs from being outsourced as well?
see, I don't see any movement on that front...all I see is posturing.

[pampango]

10. Unless Smoot and Hawley are brought back to life, there won't be mass tariffs. Germany prospers

with a high wage, low tariff structure. So can we.

Germans have powerful unions, but rarely go on strike because they have a real voice in their employment. It represents an economic model with more bottom-up worker control than that of any other country in the world. Social democracy may let us live nicer lives; it also may be the only way to be globally competitive. The European model, contrary to popular neoliberal wisdom, may thrive well into the twenty-first century without compromising its citizens' ease of living — and be the best example for the United States to follow.

Germany has the largest economy by far in the European Union and the fourth largest in the world, measured by gross domestic product per person (GDP), with a thriving export-oriented manufacturing sector -- like the kind we used to have when we manufactured goods that were desired around the world.

Germany, with 83 million people and few natural resources, is the world's second largest exporter, with $1.170 trillion exported in 2009. You know who is the largest exporter and it ain't us. Hint: It begins with C and ends in A. and has more than 1.3 billion residents. Germany's service sector contributes about 70 percent of the total GDP of Germany, with industry another 29.1 percent and agriculture less than 1 percent. Most of the country's exports are in engineering, automobiles, machinery, metals and chemicals. Germany is the world's leading producer of wind turbines and solar power technology.

Geoghegan tells us that the average number of paid vacation days in the U.S. is 13, compared with Germany’s 35. New mothers in the U.S. get three months of unpaid job-protected leave and only if they work for a company of 50 or more employees, while Germany mandates four months’ paid leave and will pay parents 67% of their salary to stay home for up to 14 months to care for a newborn.

[Greyhound]

11. Yeah sure, but they also have this crazy idea that doing what you do as well as you can,

and better than the other guy is a business model. Billing a never-ending stream of suckers 'new' customers for not doing is far more profitable.
:sarcasm: (I think)

[madinmaryland]

2. It will probably "save" Steve Jobs, but I don't know if it will actually save real jobs.

I want to think it would help, but....

:shrug:

[NorthCarolina]

3. If only America still made stuff

besides cars, planes, and military hardware.

[Sinistrous]

4. Strange. I just had a flashback to President Ford's

"WIN" campaign and its associated buttons.

[david13]

8. Yes. And you can be sure that there were jobs created by those

buttons. In fact, I can get you a very good deal on some of those buttons if you are interested.
dc

[Greyhound]

12. "Whip Inflation Now!"

I'm afraid the stakes are a lot higher now, but that was funny.
:rofl:

[dflprincess]

6. Not if all he does is talk about it n/t

[sendero]

7. My question is simple...

.. HOW are you going to do that Mr. Obama. Because if history is any guide, you are going to talk and talk and maybe pass some ridiculous pointless legislation, but you are not going to ACTUALLY do jack shit.

[david13]

9. It is nice to think it's all up to Obama. It is not. We must do our part.

For our, our part, we just shipped 4 million "Made In America" stickers to China. These stickers provide rather good employment for us, and will be placed on various goods made in China, for export to all countries around the world.
Our studies show that these stickers in some cases raise the sales figures as much as 1 or 2%. Now, mind you these stickers do not say that the product is made in america. Which it is not.
What it says is that the sticker is made in america.
So you see, there is still something truly "Made In America".
dc