The U.S. manufacturing base employs 17.4 million people – or one in six private-sector jobs – and contributes more than $2 trillion to the national economy each year, Tantillo reported. The U.S. textile industry employs 500,000 people and supports another 1 million jobs, he added. It also produces $70 billion in goods, $24 billion of which is exported, and supplies 8,000 different types of textile products to the U.S. military, he pointed out.

 

“However,” he said, “U.S. manufacturing employment output is undermined by an unfair, illegal practice known as currency manipulation.”

 

Currency manipulation is when a country sets the value of its currency at an artificially low level in order to gain a trade advantage.

 

The U.S. textile industry, Tantillo said, is “vibrant and growing,” but “if you were looking for a poster child for a sector that has been directly impacted by unfair currency manipulation, we would be a leading candidate.”

 

Tantillo said that, amid the Asian economic crisis in 1998, various countries in the region experienced a dramatic downturn and their currencies went into free-fall. In a matter of weeks, some currencies dropped by as much as 50 percent. After the crisis ended, some countries allowed their currency to float back to reasonable levels, he said.

 

“But others became addicted to the abnormal export growth and to the massive trade surplus they could garner as a result of this artificial advantage,” he said. “So some of those countries have purposely kept their currency at an exchange rate that is dramatically below its true value.”

 

Since 1998, U.S. textile employment fell from 1.3 million people to 500,000 and output dropped from $130 billion to $70 billion. And currency devaluation has been a dramatic factor in the precipitous decline, Tantillo said.

“We're calling for both houses of Congress, both parties and the White House to come together and finally solve this issue in a fashion that doesn't give us a handout but simply puts us back into a competitive position that is fair and balanced,” he said.

 

Auto industry perspective

 

Blunt noted that the auto industry as a whole supports 8 million American jobs and is a huge exporter. His association, APAC, has endorsed every U.S. free trade agreement currently in effect – but it will not support a TPP that doesn’t include strong and enforceable disciplines, he said.

 

Blunt cited a study by the non-partisan Peterson Institute for International Economics that concluded that currency manipulation has already cost as many as 5 million American jobs.

 

“Currency manipulation has a dramatic impact on our industry and it is one of our highest public priorities to address,” he said. “And on the price of a vehicle, when a country artificially weakens its currency, it can equate to a subsidy of thousands of dollars because of the price of the average car in the U.S. today.”

Blunt noted that 230 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed a letter urging President Obama to address currency manipulation as the U.S. continues to negotiate the TPP.

“We believe it's vital that the administration listen to those members,” he said. The benefit, if we can successfully address it through the TPP and other channels, could be substantial for the American economy and that's why we are united as manufacturing trade associations on this issue.”

 

Steel industry’s view

 

Steel and other manufacturing industries are still America's job engine and the cornerstone of the economy, Gibson said, noting that more than 153,000 Americans are directly employed in the steel industry.

 

“We're making as much steel in the United States as we were in 1943,” he said. “And every job in the steel industry supports seven more throughout the economy. So we support more than 1 million jobs in the U.S. economy.”

 

He said that U.S. steel producers are “under attack” from surging imports benefitted from unfair trade practices such as currency manipulation. Currency manipulation is effectively a subsidy, which can put American manufacturers at an unfair disadvantage in the global marketplace, he added.

 

“And ending that subsidy would create jobs in every state,” he said.

 

Gibson noted that an Economic Policy Institute study revealed that eliminating currency manipulation would reduce the U.S. trade deficit by as much as $500 billion in three years. And this would increase the U.S. GDP by between $288 billion and $720 billion and create as many as 5.8 million jobs, 40 percent of which would be manufacturing, he added.

“China, in particular, continues to protect and increase its exports by manipulating its currency, which has contributed to more than a 30 percent increase in total steel imports over the last year when they were already too high,” Gibson said. “Total steel imports now have reached 28 percent of the U.S. market and that is not a sustainable level. This is particularly troubling to us, given that U.S. steel producers are using only about 78 percent of their production capacity. In order to remain internationally competitive, we need the administration to insist that our trading partners are held accountable when they manipulate their currencies to gain an unfair trade advantage in our markets.”

 

Connecting the dots

 

During the Q&A segment, Tantillo brought up a couple of issues that have been negatively affected by the decline in manufacturing, brought on in part by currency manipulation, he posited. One is the healthcare crisis.

 

“Why are 50 million Americans without healthcare?," he asked Mainly because the manufacturing base was the supplier of healthcare to the greatest degree for the private sector. When you downsize the manufacturing base, this is a byproduct of that development. If we don't have rational policy that allows manufacturers to address this, then you will begin to see a ripple effect, as we already have throughout the economy in many areas.

 

“Another specific area people don't recognize or make the connection to is college education,” he continued. “When you take the largest taxpayer, which might be a manufacturing area, out of the tax base, that means that the cost for the services and programs the state is associated with go up for everybody else. When a state has lost tax revenue from the manufacturing base due to currency manipulation, they then have to raise the cost of tuition on the average student attending that institution of higher learning.”

 

Last month, AISI, AAPC, NCTO and others wrote to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew urging that strong and enforceable provisions prohibiting currency manipulation are included in all future U.S. free trade agreements.

 

On hand for the event here were a number of textile industry members and representatives from the offices of North Carolina Senators Richard Burr and Kay Hagan, along with staff members from U.S. Congressional offices, and state and local officials.

 

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