Let's give Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume their blame-NAFTA chorus of doom before the Ohio primary was due to lack of information. We're here to arm them with some facts on manufacturing and trade, so they won't repeat their mistakes in the run-up to the April 22 primary in abutting Pennsylvania.
It's true the number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. has declined, from a peak of 19.4 million in 1979 to about 14 million last year. The peak period for loss: About 2.8 million of those jobs vanished between 2000 and 2003. That period included a brief U.S. recession and a prolonged stretch of weak manufacturing demand both in the U.S. and in countries that buy our products, according to a 2004 Congressional Budget Office report. But since 2004, exports have recovered and losses of manufacturing jobs have slowed to about 100,000 a year, reports Dan Ikenson, associate director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies.
And consider this striking anomaly from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative: Even with those job losses, U.S. manufacturing output rose by 58 percent between 1993 -- the year the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed -- and 2006. That is greater than the 42 percent rise in manufacturing in the 13 years before NAFTA.
The ability to make more goods with fewer workers reflects ongoing productivity improvements that are shrinking manufacturing workforces all over the globe. (That includes China, which lost 15 million manufacturing jobs between 1995 and 2002.) But while it's compassionate to mourn the loss of U.S. factory jobs, that loss shouldn't dictate whether the U.S. signs free trade pacts.
Those pacts hugely benefit exporting states such as Ohio and...Pennsylvania. The Keystone State still makes things. But it now enjoys a thriving service sector too, especially in health care, finance and education. The decline in manufacturing jobs mirrors the national picture, with steep drops in the years 2000-2003 and far less severe losses since then.
Pennsylvania exported $29 billion worth of goods to the world last year -- nearly double the value in 2002. A total of 94 percent of Pennsylvania's exports are manufactured goods, according to the U.S. Commerce Department, and manufacturing supported 661,283 jobs in the state last year.
Pennsylvania's exports have grown substantially to countries that have free-trade agreements with the U.S., according to the Commerce Department. Its top two foreign markets are NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico -- with those exports rising 136 percent since NAFTA took effect. The state's exports to Chile rose 164 percent and to Singapore 45 percent since trade pacts with those two were signed in 2004. Exports to Australia rose 44 percent since a 2005 pact, and to Bahrain 140 percent since a 2006 pact.
Those are the facts. Now it's up to Obama and Clinton to be honest about manufacturing and trade. The number of U.S. manufacturing jobs will continue to shrink. But blaming trade and trying to wall out the rest of the world won't stem that decline.
Despite that job loss, U.S. manufacturing output will rise because of our factories' and our workers' growing productivity. That's a net positive. So is opening foreign markets. That's what NAFTA did. That's what the Central American Free Trade Agreement and other bilateral pacts have done. That's what deals pending in Congress with Colombia, Panama and South Korea would do.
The candidates could help by telling us what they would do to make sure U.S. workers remain the most productive in the world.
Senators, tell us how you'll transform an education system that fails an unforgivably high number of our citizens. Explain how you'll see to it that American workers won't get left behind in the competition for jobs yet to be imagined. Tell us how you'll fix health insurance so that the loss of a job doesn't mean the loss of care. Arm us to grow and prosper -- and trade -- in the 21st Century.
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