What the Presidential debates have ignored

While the administration and media focus on the Wall Street debacle, they ought to pay attention also to the steadily deteriorating situation on Main Street. They should start cracking down on unfair trade practices that already cost Americans 5,600,000 jobs last year, and are costing millions more this year.

“Ending unfair trade practices can significantly improve the fundamentals of the domestic economy and restore sustainable broadly shared growth of jobs and income,” says Robert E. Scott, director of international programs of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

A new briefing paper authored by Scott reports that the net job loss due to the massive trade deficit has jolted all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The hardest hit of all, with a 7.5 percent loss in employment, is Michigan , where the McCain campaign recently suspended its presidential campaign.

“Elimination of the U.S. trade deficit over the next few years can create millions of new jobs in manufacturing and other trade-related sectors of the economy and help the domestic economy recover from the devastating effects of the current downturn,” Scott wrote in the October 2 briefing paper.

Strangely, the U.S. unbalanced trade policy did not come up in the two Presidential debates so far. Are the moderators filtering out the public’s questions?


You can find the text of the EPI briefing paper at http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp222.

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