Kevin L. Kearns, 6/17/2009
Kevin L. Kearns, 6/10/2009
|
As a business organization, USBIC has since its founding in 1933 spoken out on a wide range of economic issues. But the Council has always been deeply concerned about U.S. national security. This focus reflects the nature of our membership, which is mainly comprised of small and medium-sized manufacturers with deep roots in their communities, strongly held Main Street values, and a fundamental awareness that the country’s safety depends heavily on a strong productive, innovation, and wealth-creating industrial base at home. Manufacturing has long dominated this base quantitatively, and it will remain dominant for the foreseeable future.
As President Obama and so many others have said, the economic crisis represents a genuine crossroads for our country. Washington’s responses will greatly determine whether America will emerge at least as safe and prosperous as it has been since the end of World War II, or much weaker, much poorer, much less politically independent, and much less influential.
|
|
|
More Opinion
|
Kevin L. Kearns and Alan Tonelson, 6/2/2009
With a full-pager in this morning’s Washington Post, the U.S. Business and Industry Council continued its major ad campaign to spotlight the devastating, economy-wide effects of the intertwined and worsening trade policy and manufacturing crises.
|
|
Kevin L. Kearns and Alan Tonelson, 6/2/2009
DOMESTIC MANUFACTURERS CONTINUE ISSUE AD CAMPAIGN WITH OPEN LETTER TO OBAMA ON NEGLECT OF DOMESTIC MANUFACTURING IN FIRST 100 DAYS
|
|
Alan Tonelson, 6/2/2009
President Obama's new Economic Recovery Advisory Board (ERAB) could become a invaluable source of policy advice, especially with the recession still deepening, and therefore the need for fresh thinking still growing. But none of the president's efforts to seek outside economic counsel can reach their potential without filling at least one big gap in the administration's advisory circles - the absence of domestic manufacturers.
|
|
Alan Tonelson, 5/15/2009
|
|
Kevin L. Kearns, 4/29/2009
The domestic manufacturing crisis is deepening but has received scant attention in President Obama's First 100 Days in office. Without swift action to install pro-manufacturing policies and sweeping changes to the ill-advised trade policies that got us into the habit of consuming foreign goods with borrowed foreign dollars, America's ability to escape from the current economic crisis will be severely limited.
|
|
Kevin L. Kearns and Alan Tonelson, 4/22/2009
The world trading system is totally out of whack -- due mainly to East Asian protectionism. The rest of the world is also trying to get rich by exporting goods made with deliberately excess capacity to the United States. Trees don't grow to the sky. Hence the economic collapse and current recession/depression. Another casualty, aside from the U.S. current account, is the environment. China and the rest of the third world produce goods by sending greenhouse gases galore into the air we all breathe. If the Obama administration understood any of this, they would address the US. domestic manufacturing crisis by increasing domestic production, limiting imports made in dirty factories powered by dirty power, increasing U.S. jobs - and producing our way out of the recession while reducing greenhouse gases.
|
|
Alan Tonelson, 4/16/2009
President Obama's first foray into major multilateral politics shows that personal popularity counts for little in matters of state. The U.S. failed to convince and thus failed to lead on the all-important question of rebalancing world trade. Without doing so, all the trillions of dollars in stimulus spending will ultimately come to naught. Unless the U.S. produces more of what it consumes and the rest of the world consumes more of what it produces -- instead of depending on Americans to buy a disproportionate share -- the stimulus will merely have temporarily recreated another unsustainable bubble.
|
|
4/6/2009
President Obama has set the nation on a course toward economic disintegration. The fundamental problems are our massive, long-standing trade deficits, imported oil, and abuses of the free market system by Wall Street entities. Instead fixing the banks and confronting China and other mercantilist states and free-riders in the world trade system, the Obama administration has given the banks a free pass and bowed to the international chorus warning against protectionism. By avoiding protectionism, the foreigner leaders mean American must keep its markets open at all costs, restore the imbalanced world trading system to its former heyday with American over-consumption with over-borrowed foreign dollars making everyone rich. Obama seems to be obliging them, setting the stage for a second, much larger, much deeper crash when the stimulus wears off. The only way out of our current crisis is to make more at home, consume it here, and cut imports radically thus restoring balance to the trading system.
|
|
Kevin L. Kearns and Alan Tonelson, 4/6/2009
USBIC's Kearns: "None of the president's G-20 goals, and none of the summit's agreements, will re-start sufficient U.S. growth or reduce the imbalances ultimately responsible for the global crisis. Genuine health in the U.S. and global economies will remain a pipe dream unless foreign mercantilist systems that warp trade and capital flows are dismantled."
|
|
Kevin L. Kearns and Alan Tonelson, 3/31/2009
USBIC’s Kearns: “If the G-20 leaders don’t produce a credible plan to slash America’s trade deficits quickly, including by increasing their own domestic consumption and lowering their exports, Washington should act unilaterally for the entire world’s good. Without more balanced international trade patterns, resulting largely from increased U.S. domestic production and consumption thereof, lasting global recovery will be impossible.”
|
|
View our plan to save American Manufacturing
Multimedia educational shorts on key trade issues