Tribune Review: Summit in Cranberry Blasts Policies that Cost Jobs
Saturday, April 24, 2010
The nation's small and medium-sized businesses and their owners are frustrated by government policies.
An example: trade policies that make it easy for multinational corporations to move goods and jobs and kill business for domestic manufacturers who don't want to move production offshore.
That opinion is unpopular in Washington, said David Frengel, an executive at precision metal products maker Penn United Technologies Inc., on Friday.
But it was a oft-expressed sentiment among the 100 manufacturers and others who spent a day talking about how Western Pennsylvania companies can export more products, while building the region's stock of family-supporting jobs.
Frengel chairs the Pennsylvania chapter of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which pushes for trade laws that favor U.S. producers. He is government affairs director at the Cabot, Butler County-based Penn United, which employs 530.
The Coalition's state chapter organized yesterday's Western Pennsylvania Economic Summit held in Cranberry. It featured a Commerce Department official, two members of Congress and a former vice presidential running mate of Texas billionaire Ross Perot. The event attracted representatives from area companies, labor unions, schools, local governments and economic development groups.
Frustration simmered on several topics:
• The nation's lack of a comprehensive trade strategy, while countries like China, Germany and Korea aggressively pursue the industries they want.
• The belief by many U.S. economists that free trade means a completely open domestic market, no matter what tactics other countries use to discourage imports.
• The related economic theory that countries that "dump" subsidized steel in the United States benefit consumers by providing cheap products.
Computer chip maker Intel Corp.'s plan to build a $6 billion plant in China largely was driven by the country's undervalued currency, and the $3 billion in tax abatements and other subsidies the Chinese are putting into the project, said Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a public policy research organization in Washington.
Closer to home, Hodge Foundry Inc. in Greenville, Mercer County, was turned down for $70 million in federal economic stimulus money to expand operations and build a new foundry for windmill components, said Joseph D. Simko, vice president of business development.
But he understands a Chinese firm is pursuing stimulus money for a windmill parts assembly plant to be built in the United States that would work with pieces made in China.
Hodge employs 92 people after laying off 40 percent of its workers -- including third- and fourth-generation family members who have worked for the company. The recession has stalled windmill projects, Simko said, and the company's scrap metal prices have quadrupled, he said.
"The foundry industry is dying in this country," he said.
Several speakers touched on the hundreds of billions of dollars in investments the nation needs for new roads, bridges, dams and rail lines.
"Will we make the stuff we need for our infrastructure?" asked Robert Baugh, an AFL-CIO official and the Coalition for a Prosperous America's co-chairman for labor.
The alternative is to settle for "crumbs" -- foreign companies' assembly plants that operate in the United States, but use parts made overseas, he said.
Pat Choate, a political economist who ran with Perot for president in 1996, said the nation needs to establish a capital budget -- separate from its operating expenses -- to focus attention on infrastructure projects, along with a "bank" to raise needed cash.
Reps. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, and Jason Altmire, D-McCandless, appeared at the event.
Murphy described his bill to open continental shelf drilling, and to use fee and tax revenue from the resulting $8 trillion to be generated from oil and natural gas to replace dirty, coal-fired power plants, build nuclear plants, modernize electric grids and develop wind and solar industries over 20 years.
Kim Leonard can be reached at kleonard@tribweb.com or 412-380-5606.[ Back to News ]
