The paragraph in Pietra Rivoli’s which interested me is within Chapter 7. This chapter discusses the power of political influences on the free trade, and the less powerful market influences. The paragraph, second on page 115, speaks about how free trade is having negative, possibly short-term, influences on employment in the United States. Rivoli states “5,000 textile workers lost their jobs on a single day in 2003” (Rivoli, p. 115). The chapter continues on to discuss Auggie Tantillo’s, and the alphabet army’s, influence on suppressing imports into the United States. There are a couple paragraphs that talk about the restriction on imports of which importing countries must abide to, especially China.
After reading this chapter, I began to wonder where the influence of exports of the United States came into play, if at all. In an article titled The High Price of ‘Free Trade, the author Robert E. Scott discusses the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its’ positive and negative influences in the U.S. economy. Since the implementation of this agreement, there has been a displacement of manufacturing countries in the U.S. to foreign countries. This means, that products that would have been exported from the U.S., and employing many citizens, are now coming from other countries where labor and production costs are lower. Maybe I am biased because I have been focused on Rivoli’s book, but I found it surprising that Scott’s article focused more on the influences of Mexican and Canadian exports and imports and not at all on China. Perhaps this is because Scott’s article is about manufacturing displacement in general and not primarily on textile industries.
In the article, Scott states that NAFTA favors the investors, and not the workers. I found this statement comparable to, in Rivoli’s book, Julia Hughes (representative for the U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel) arguments for free trade and limited restriction on the apparel imports from China. I feel as though Hughes sees the job losses in U.S. manufacturing industry as a necessity for the development in the autonomy of the women employed in textile industries. However, even though these women are more autonomous, their innate human rights are still being violated. I feel as though their autonomy obscures these violations of human rights.
There were also quite a few interesting facts in Scott’s article. As stated previously, in the year 2003, 5,000 U.S. textile workers lost their jobs in one day. Scott speaks about the ever increasing percentage in imports and the declining percentage in U.S. exports as a major factor in the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. In the beginning of NAFTA, from 1994 to 2000, employments were very high, but since 2001, 2.4 million manufacturing jobs were lost. This shows that the problem of free trade is not just a problem with apparel and China, but with all manufacturing. Increased imports = less jobs.
The high price of 'free' trade
by Robert E. Scott
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/briefingpapers_bp147/
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I completely agree with what Cynthia is saying. I think the U.S. corporations get caught in the dilemma of whether or not to have U.S. citizens make things and sell them for a higher price here in America, or if they should make their products in other countries where it will be a lot more inexpensive. Sadly the idea that most of these corporations have about their company and product is to make the most money possible. That being said they will always outsource and have foreign workers make their product. I also agree with the very last comparison that Cynthia makes in her blog, 'Increased imports=less jobs.' However, I would add 'American' in between the words less and jobs, because in this book (especially in this book) it is shown that if we as Americans have more imports than American jobs will start to disappear. I guess it's ok because it's all in the name of capitalism, but is money really everything?
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