Last week several groups, including the United Steelworkers, petitioned the federal government to whack the latest trade mole – illegally traded auto parts from China.

With President Obama announcing creation of a new trade enforcement unit in his State of the Union Address, the feds probably will investigate. But even if they whack down the auto parts mole, experience has shown a new mole will pop up.

Mole-by-mole trade enforcement isn’t the solution to America’s massive trade deficit. Although conservative candidates revel in ridiculing Western Europe, America could learn crucial economic lessons from Germany, which doesn’t rely on Whack-a-Mole and maintains trade surpluses, including one with China in auto parts.

The Steelworkers – along with the United Auto Workers, the Alliance for American Manufacturing and Campaign for America’s Future – explained why the federal government must smack down the latest trade problem that has raised its ugly head.

China and several other countries promote their auto parts manufacturers by providing subsidies and engaging in additional practices banned by the World Trade Organization (WTO). As a result, the United States imports more auto parts than it produces, a situation that kills manufacturers and manufacturing jobs here. For example, over the past 11 years, as the U.S. auto parts trade deficit increased by 867 percent, the Unites States lost 45 percent of its auto parts jobs – a total of 419,000.

The reason the groups sought action against China specifically is that its exports of auto parts to the United States have increased faster in the past three years than any other country’s and China supports its auto parts industry in ways that violate its commitments to the WTO.

For example, China provided $27.5 billion in subsidies to its auto parts industry between 2001 and 2010. It’s fine with the WTO if countries subsidize industries that sell their products domestically. But it forbids subsidies for exported products because that distorts the free market, wrongly destroying jobs and industries in the countries that buy those artificially low priced goods.

Beijing also aggressively limited import of American-made auto parts. This is hardly startling. In December, China imposed steep tariffs on imported American-made sports utility vehicles and other large cars. And the WTO affirmed last week that China violated its trade commitments by restricting export of key raw materials. Earlier, the WTO supported President Obama’s imposition of tariffs on tires imported from China because Beijing had violated international trade rules. Read the rest of this entry →

"10 Yuan Note" by upton on flickr

America is being played.

The U.S. allowed China to join the club of trading partners in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 under the condition that China observe club rules.

Over the past decade, however, China has profited immeasurably by ignoring, flouting and circumventing the rules barring market-distorting practices. Among the most destructive of these violations is China’s deliberate undervaluing of its currency, which makes Chinese exports to the United States artificially cheap and U.S. exports to China artificially expensive.

This nurtures Chinese industry and poisons American manufacturing.

In the trade contest with China, the referees have been absent or silent or completely craven on the issue of currency undervaluation, even as it kills U.S. factories and jobs. American workers need a trade rule enforcer. With unemployment above 9 percent, the situation is desperate. American workers can’t be played anymore.

Just last week, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a non-partisan think tank, issued a report showing that the trade deficit with China cost the United States 2.8 million jobs since the WTO allowed China into the trading club. Every congressional district in the U.S. lost jobs as Chinese exports to the United States overwhelmed U.S. exports to China.

The trade deficit is the difference between the value of Chinese exports to the United States and U.S. exports to China. It was $84 billion the year China entered the WTO. Last year it grew to $278 billion – a 230 percent increase. Read the rest of this entry →

Uribe protest by Public Citizen, on Flickr

Tragically, the government of Colombia exhibits the behavior of an addict. And, just as regrettably, the United States is co-dependent, so addicted to so called free trade that it plans to award Colombia an agreement based solely on promises.

Addicts always promise. They’ll stop, they pledge. Their co-dependents desperately want to believe, so they cooperate with the addicts’ demands.

Colombia, the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, has pledged to try to stop the murders to persuade Congress to approve a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Promises, promises.

And the United States has agreed to accept those promises rather than demand performance before signing an FTA. American’s Wall Street banks and multi-national corporations crave another FTA so badly they will believe anything.

When the Colombia FTA was first proposed, Congress refused to approve it because so many trade unionists are assassinated each year by the Colombian military and paramilitary forces that the murders exceed the number of unionists killed in all other countries of the world combined. In 2007, the year that former President George W. Bush completed the agreement, 39 Colombian unionists were slain.

The Colombian government knew why Congress denied approval. It could have responded four years ago by protecting trade unionists and preserving their lives. It did not.

Instead, the murders increased. In 2008, 52 Colombian trade unionists were assassinated, one a week. In 2009, the number declined by 5 to 47, but it was back up to 52 last year. Six have been slain so far this year, including Hector Orozco and Gilardo Garcia, members of the agricultural union known as Association of Peasant Workers of Tolima, who were threatened by the Colombian military just before they were assassinated. Promises, promises.
Read the rest of this entry →

Map of China (source: CIA World Factbook)

America plays the role of abused partner in its relationship with China. Although the Asian giant repeatedly injures U.S. industry by violating international trade rules, America has responded, almost exclusively, by pleading and begging for China to stop.

China says it’s sorry. And continues to violate the rules. America respectfully beseeches China to discontinue manipulating its currency, and China says it will. Then it allows the value to increase a completely insignificant amount. Still America does nothing. Nothing. It simply accepts the abuse.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Michael Williams, senior vice president of U.S. Steel stood with me Wednesday at a press conference in Pittsburgh to urge President Obama in his meetings this week with Chinese President Hu Jintao to announce that America is done with soft talk. We want President Obama to tell President Hu that America has heard enough promises; the United States is bucking up and pulling out that big stick that Teddy Roosevelt carried in foreign policy negotiations.

This is a rare issue on which politicians, Republican and Democrat, manufacturers and organized labor all agree. Here’s what Sen. Casey said at the press conference, “In my estimation, and that of a lot of Americans, the time for talking is over. The time for action is now.” He, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., plan to introduce legislation next week to force the federal government to hold China accountable, to enforce compliance with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules – rules that China agreed to comply with when WTO countries permitted it to join even though it is a non-market economy.  . . . Read the rest of this entry →

Japan, no economic small fry, challenged China last month. The conclusion of the dispute is a cautionary tale for countries confronting China about currency manipulation.

In September, Japan seized a Chinese trawler captain after his boat collided with two Japanese Coast Guard ships near some East China Sea islands claimed by both countries.

Immediately afterward, China “coincidentally” detained four Japanese employees of Fujita Corp., charging them with filming in a restricted military area. When Japan proposed a prisoner swap, China upped the ante instead — halting shipments of rare earth minerals to Japan. China controls 93 percent of the world’s rare earths, which are minerals essential for manufacturing high-tech and energy-efficient products, from cell phones to wind turbines.

Japan caved, releasing the Chinese captain unconditionally. Suddenly, China rescinded its restriction on rare earth exports to Japan and released three of the four imprisoned Japanese nationals, ending the dispute one captive ahead of Japan.

This incident confirmed China as a burly international tyrant. The caution for countries attempting to negotiate with China is to avoid Japan’s mistake, which was single-handedly contesting the giant. For America, that means seeking an end to China’s currency manipulation by simultaneously pursuing every option the United States has, including formally naming China a currency manipulator, imposing tariffs on imports from countries that undervalue currency and creating a community of allies to campaign together to combat the illegal trade practice.

Rallying partners should be reasonably easy, as Japan, Brazil and the European Union all have exhorted China in recent weeks to allow the value of its currency to freely float on international markets.

Like the United States, each has acted unilaterally. Last week, EU finance ministers confronted Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at a European-Asian economic summit in Brussels. Wen rejected their demands for China to speed appreciation of the yuan in relationship to the euro.

Also last week, Brazil doubled a tax it charges foreigners who purchase Brazilian bonds. This was an attempt to slow speculation that has increased the value of its currency, the real, by 39 percent against the dollar over the past 22 months.

A day later, Japan announced it would lower its benchmark interest rate and purchase $60 billion in government bonds and securities, both actions designed to lower the value of the yen, which would cheapen its exports.

The Swiss tried intervening in the market in 2009 to hold down the value of its currency, the franc, but failed. Singapore, Thailand, India and Canada have considered it.

So far, America has just attempted to persuade China to stop undervaluing the yuan – a practice that artificially suppresses the price of Chinese exports while at the same time artificially raising the price of imports into China from America and other nations. China’s deliberate currency undervaluation accounts for a significant part of America’s massive trade deficit with China.

Last spring, the United States asked China politely to allow the value of its currency to float up. As the United States awaited China’s answer, the U.S. Treasury delayed issuing its semi-annual foreign exchange report in which it could name China as a currency manipulator, then initiate a formal response.

China replied June 19 that it would allow the yuan to float on international currency markets. Treasury then released its report – which, no surprise, failed to list China as a currency manipulator. Since China’s announcement, the yuan has increased in value less than two percent – this for a currency believed by many economists, including the conservative C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, to be undervalued between 25 and 40 percent.

Annoyed with China’s failure to keep its pledge and angry over unfair trade gutting 2 million jobs from the body of the American economy over the past decade, Congress reacted just before its recess. With massive bi-partisan support, the House passed a bill that would allow the Commerce Department to impose tariffs on imports to counter the effects of currency manipulation. If passed by the Senate and signed by President Obama, it would expand the definition of improper government subsidies to include manipulation of currency to gain trade advantages.

Afterward, just nine days before the next Treasury report on currency manipulation is due on Oct. 15, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in a speech at the Brookings Institution, offered thinly veiled criticism of China’s persistent manipulation:

“When large economies with undervalued exchange rates act to keep the currency from appreciating, that encourages other countries to do the same. . . This sets off a dangerous dynamic.”

In rebuffing the European Union’s request for revaluing, the Chinese prime minister claimed allowing the yuan to appreciate too quickly would bankrupt Chinese factories as their prices rose to uncompetitive levels, and the resulting exodus of unemployed workers to the countryside would provoke social unrest.

No one wants that. Workers everywhere applaud the rise of millions of Chinese citizens out of abject poverty. But increasing the value of the yuan will benefit Chinese workers at the same time as it begins to balance currencies worldwide. An appreciated yuan effectively increases Chinese workers’ wages.

By deliberately undervaluing its currency, the government of China is waging a stealth trade war against the rest of the world. Independently, the United States must protect its economy, but to reign in this international outlaw, America also must secure the help of a posse.

China is disrespecting America.

The Asian giant is an international trade outlaw, and U.S. manufacturers and workers are its crime victims.

China illegally subsidizes its export industries and unlawfully manipulates its currency. That kills U.S. industry and destroys U.S. jobs. Earlier this year, the Obama administration asked China nicely to allow its currency value to float up naturally on international markets. On June 19, China said it would.

And then it didn’t.

That’s flipping the bird at America.

Before China’s June 19 promise, bipartisan groups of lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate proposed legislation that would force the U.S. Treasury Department to even the score and to call China out for what it is: a currency manipulator. Hearings on the bills are being conducted this week.

Pass the legislation. It’s time for America to flip the bird back.  . . . Read the rest of this entry →

Long-suffering victim is hardly the American image. Paul Revere, Mother Jones, John Glenn, Martin Luther King Jr. — those are American icons. Bold, wry, justice-seeking.

So how is it that America finds herself in the position of schoolyard patsy, woe-is-me casualty of China’s illegal trade practices that are destroying U.S. renewable energy manufacturing and foreclosing an energy-independent future?

Come on, America. Show some of that confident pioneer spirit. Stand up for yourself. Tell China that America isn’t going to hand over its lunch money anymore; international trade law will be enforced now.

That’s the demand the United Steelworkers (USW) union made this week when it filed a 5,800-page suit detailing how China violates a wide variety of World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations.

The case, now in the hands of the U.S. Trade Representative, shows how China uses illegal land grants, prohibited low-interest loans and other outlawed measures to pump up its renewable energy industries and facilitate export of those products at artificially low prices to places like the United States and Europe.

The U.S. aids renewable energy industries, like solar cell and wind turbine manufacturers, but no where near the extent that China does. And the American aid lawfully goes to renewable manufacturers that produce for domestic consumption. China, by contrast, illegally subsidizes industries that export, a strategy that kills off competition.  . . . Read the rest of this entry →

America and China share a terrible delusion. They are in denial about currency manipulation. Both officially state that China is not devaluing its currency.

In mid-March, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao flatly denied that China deliberately suppresses the value of its currency against the dollar, a practice that decreases the price of its exports and increases the cost of America goods imported into China. Similarly, the U.S. Treasury Department, which is required by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 to name foreign currency manipulators in bi-annual reports, has not in the past decade and a half called out China — including in the past two reports submitted during the Obama administration.

China and America decline to acknowledge what everyone else knows: China suppresses the value of its currency to gain a trade advantage over America. The New York Times reported on the practice in a story published March 14 describing how currency manipulation has worked wonders for Chinese industry while killing American manufacturing.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner came to Pittsburgh, home of the United Steelworkers’ International Headquarters, this week to talk about the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. He visited a modern Allegheny Technologies Inc. specialty steel mill and met privately with business and union leaders. We deeply appreciate his time and attention. What he must do now, as a first step in leveling the playing field with China, is insist that the Treasury label China as a currency manipulator in the next report, which is due April 15.

That would end the denial – at least on the U.S. side — and could set in motion sanctions to reduce the manipulation or at least the effects of it. Ending the imbalance would create between 1.5 million and 3 million U.S. jobs, without Congress passing a new stimulus bill, without adding a dollar to the national debt.

America has talked to China about this problem for too long. Three years ago, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka, who was then the federation’s secretary-treasurer, wrote that over the previous seven years warnings had proved worthless:

“The script is always the same. The Treasury Department admits there is a problem but can’t find a technical violation of the law. Then comes a warning against Congress taking action that is followed by a promise of increased dialogue with the Chinese government.”

That dialogue never produced effective results. China briefly allowed its currency value to increase by about 15 percent against the dollar from July 2005 to July 2008. China stopped the revaluation at the height of the world economic crisis. The 15 percent rise now has been offset by increased productivity in China, according to conservative economist C. Fred Bergsten, the free-trader and currency expert from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. So the net effect of the brief Chinese currency float is zero.

Still, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk is suggesting more dialogue. He told the Associated Press in Brussels late in March, “. . .my first preference is always to see if we can’t build a partnership to work with China to see if we can’t get a resolution sooner rather than later.”

This inexplicable response came after Chinese premier Wen Jiabao denied that China’s currency – called renminbi and traded in a denomination called yuan — was undervalued. And China’s Vice Commerce Minister Zhong Shan said, “It is wrong for the United States to jump to the conclusion that China is manipulating currency from the sheer fact that China is enjoying a trade surplus. . .Besides, it’s wrong for the United States to press for the appreciation of the renminbi and threaten to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese exports. That is unacceptable to China.”

It is unacceptable to America to continue countenancing China’s currency manipulation.

It’s too costly to America.

It works like this. Chinese exporters are paid in dollars. They exchange them for yuan in Chinese banks. No matter the value of the dollar on the international free market, the state-controlled market in China pays 6.83 yuan for every dollar. While the value of the dollar fluctuates against the Euro and other market-based currencies from day to day, China determines its exchange rate to be 6.83 every day.

In a market-based economy, the value of currency in an export-strong country increases. That is what would happen to the yuan if China stopped interfering in the exchange rate. Essentially, demand for Chinese goods would raise their prices. But that doesn’t happen in China because the government stops it. China’s manipulation has caused the yuan to be undervalued by between 20 and 40 percent, according to even the most conservative economists.

The result is that every time a Chinese company sells a $1 product in the U.S., it has received a subsidy from the Chinese government of as much as 40 cents.

That makes competition extremely difficult for U.S. companies that don’t get such subsidies. It is a primary cause of the U.S. trade deficit. China’s share of the U.S. non-oil goods trade deficit tripled since 2005. China accounted for 80.2 percent of the entire U.S. non-oil trade deficit with all countries in the world in 2009.

That costs the U.S. jobs. The Economic Policy Institute released a study in March showing that since 2001 when China joined the World Trade Organization, 2.4 million jobs have been lost or displaced in the U.S. as a result of the growing trade deficit with China.

Unions, industry leaders, and both Republican and Democratic politicians are all sick of the talking about manipulation. During a Congressional hearing on the undervalued yuan in March, Nucor Corp. Chief Executive Officer Dan DiMicco complained about U.S. inaction, saying, “We are in a trade war. We just haven’t shown up for it.”

In mid-March, 130 Congressmen, including 40 Republicans, sent a letter to Secretary Geithner asking him to label China a currency manipulator in the April 15 report. They also asked Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to apply countervailing duties on Chinese imports. That would be legal if China’s devalued currency is deemed an export subsidy, and they said that has been clearly demonstrated.

Just a day later, a group of U.S. senators, including Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas, introduced the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2010 to penalize countries like China that undervalue their currency to artificially discount their products exported to the U.S. The legislation, if passed, would effectively compel the Treasury Department to cite China for manipulation.

“We’re fed up,” Graham told the New York Times:

“China’s mercantilist policies are hurting the rest of the world, not just America. It helped create the global recession that we’re in. The Chinese want to be treated as a developing country, but they’re a global giant, the leading exporter in the world.”

China remains in denial. They’re so far in denial, this is what Mr. Wen said:

“I understand some economies want to increase their exports, but what I don’t understand is the practice of depreciating one’s own currency and attempting to force other countries to appreciate their own currencies, just for the purpose of increasing their own exports.”

That is exactly what China has done to increase its exports.

It requires China to essentially buy $1 billion worth of dollars a day. If the Chinese stopped currency manipulation, the value of those dollars would decline against the Chinese yuan, and the Chinese Treasury would suffer a significant loss on its investment – at the same time Chinese exports would rise in price.

That is why China continues to deny manipulation.

But every day America remains in denial costs the U.S. additional manufacturing bankruptcies and unemployment.

Secretary Geithner raised hopes that Treasury would end the denial when he said of China during his visit to Pittsburgh, “It is important that they take the steps they said they would to take their currency to a more flexible system.”

***

Click here to tell the Treasury Department to stop denying that China is manipulating its currency.

It turns out a Texas windmill farm developer’s request last month for nearly half a billion in stimulus funds to create 2,000 jobs in China doesn’t rank first on the audacity scale.

Shockingly for American taxpayers, and sadly for the staggering 10.2 percent of Americans who are unemployed, it doesn’t even rank second.

That’s because Washington already has doled out hundreds of millions in stimulus funds to foreign renewable energy firms. Of the $1.05 billion in clean energy grants awarded by D.C., $849 million — 84 percent — went to foreign wind companies, according to an analysis by Russ Choma of the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He wrote:

“The cash grants were given for the installation of 1,763 megawatts of capacity – 1,566 installed by foreign companies. Using the Renewable Energy Policy Project’s own numbers, as many as 4,500 manufacturing jobs may have been created overseas.”

A strong, broad Buy American clause in the stimulus bill could have prevented the off-shoring of U.S. tax dollars intended to create jobs for unemployed Americans. My union, the United Steelworkers, and the AFL-CIO pushed hard for that language, and polls showed 86 percent of Americans supported it. Republicans and lobbyists for multi-national corporations that wanted to spend U.S. tax money overseas opposed Buy American provisions.

Congress adopted weak, limited Buy American language. Now D.C. exports stimulus dollars to create jobs in foreign countries.

Some of the foreign wind firms that got stimulus funds have American subsidiaries. But most of them shipped major components for wind farms to the U.S. That means American stimulus dollars employed foreign workers. One Spanish company, Iberdrola S.A., got $545 million from U.S. taxpayers.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, denounced the request to use U.S. tax dollars to create jobs in China and demanded the Obama administration deny funding. But it’s too late for the $849 million in stimulus dollars already given away to foreign wind companies. American tax dollars, meant to create jobs and nurture a green energy industry in the U.S., are gone with the wind.

Lavishing stimulus funds on foreign businesses is tragic for another reason: Those overseas companies are competitors to fledgling U.S. firms that were supposed to get the money. President Obama has said he wants the U.S. to be “the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy.” That’s not going to happen if the U.S. pays European and Chinese manufacturers to import wind turbines.

Congress set aside at least $3 billion in the stimulus bill for renewable energy projects. That investment would have two benefits. Growth in renewable energy – from sources such as windmills and solar cells – could reduce dangerous pollution from burning fossil fuels. In addition, the Blue Green Alliance estimated in its report, “Building the Clean Energy Assembly Line,” that U.S. manufacturers could create 850,000 jobs if Congress adopted a national standard requiring 25 percent of electricity to be generated with renewable sources by 2025.

The key, obviously, is that the wind turbines and solar cells constructed to meet that standard couldn’t be imported for the jobs to be created in the U.S. The U.S. industry, however, needs the kind of help foreign governments give their clean energy manufacturers. The Blue Green Alliance report notes:

“Without new policies promoting domestic manufacturing, an unnecessarily large portion of these jobs will remain overseas.”

Keith Bradsher of the New York Times in a July 13 story described China’s policy to protect and promote its renewable energy industries: “China is shielding its clean energy sector while it grows to a point where it can take on the world.” That includes, Bradsher recounted, a competition last spring where China disqualified all foreign bidders on technicalities for 25 contracts to supply wind turbines. Beijing then awarded the contracts to seven Chinese companies, including some that had never built a turbine.

There’s no reason except a desire to shoot itself in the foot for the U.S. not to protect and promote its own renewable energy industries. “The Building the Clean Energy Assembly Line” report provides recommendations for Congress to cultivate American renewable energy industries, including long-term investment tax credits, adopting a national standard requiring a minimum percentage of electricity be generated through renewable energy, passing cap and trade legislation, and providing low-interest financing.

After the Texas windmill incident, I wrote Sen. Schumer asking for bold action to support U.S. clean energy manufacturing. In the letter copied to all members of Congress, I told him we must expand and accelerate the availability of incentives for manufacturing wind turbines and other clean energy technologies – here, in the U.S. One important way to do that is for Congress to extend to the manufacture of components like turbines the funding incentives that are now provided for production of clean energy.

Clearly, another method would be to Buy American. When constructing a wind farm in Texas, why would taxpayers give their money to support importing the turbines from China or Spain when there are perfectly good turbine manufacturers here in the U.S.?

The Texas windmill farm developer announced this week that its Chinese partner plans to construct a $50 million turbine factory in the U.S., according to a story in the New York Times. But that facility won’t supply the turbines for the project that the partnership wants $436 million in stimulus funds to support. Those would come from China. So, in the end, it still means nearly half a billion in U.S. tax dollars would create 2,000 turbine-building jobs in China.

When China passed its $600 billion economic stimulus bill this summer, it adopted “Buy China” provisions. Obviously, as far as wind turbines were concerned, it was implementing a “Buy China” policy before that.

Is the U.S. going to continue thwarting itself and tilting at windmills or is it going to adopt and enforce a robust Buy American policy and build some?

Taking candy from a baby: A consortium of Chinese and American companies goes to Washington and announces plans to build a $1.5 billion windmill farm in West Texas using $450 million in U.S. Stimulus funds, which will create 2,330 jobs — 2,000 of them in China.

The baby — Washington — doesn’t cry or whine or spit in the consortium’s face. That’s what’s really wrong with this story.

So accustomed to being bought and sold, Washington simply begins processing forms so it can hand over your tax dollars to create jobs in a turbine factory in the city of Shenyang, China at a subsidy of $193,133 each.

It’s like these bureaucrats live in Wonderland. Or an America where the unemployment rate isn’t 10.2 percent. Or where 40,000 American manufacturing facilities didn’t disappear in the past decade. Or where banks didn’t repossess nearly a quarter million American homes in the past three months.

We’ve got a message for Washington: Hell no! We’re not giving tax dollars to China. What’s wrong with these businesses and our government? It is the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It’s not the Chinese Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

It’s bad enough that we’ve off-shored our factories and technology and jobs over the past 20 years. We’re not off-shoring our Stimulus cash too. In fact, we’re tired of serving as the schoolyard wimp of the world. We need our own industrial policy so we can stand up and compete in the world market manufacturing the likes of wind turbines. And we need it now.

China has an industrial policy. And it uses that policy to dominate. Here is how Keith Bradsher of the New York Times described China’s policy to become a world leader in renewable energy, which of course, would include construction of wind turbine factories:

“Calling renewable energy a strategic industry, China is trying hard to make sure that its companies dominate globally. Just as Japan and South Korea made it hard for Detroit automakers to compete in those countries — giving their own automakers time to amass economies of scale in sheltered domestic markets — China is shielding its clean energy sector while it grows to a point where it can take on the world.”

China protects its chosen industries in many ways. It provides low interest loans, some of which don’t have to be repaid. It may give free land on which to construct buildings. And there are other perks that Bradsher described:

“When the Chinese government took bids this spring for 25 large contracts to supply wind turbines, every contract was won by one of seven domestic companies. All six multinationals that submitted bids were disqualified on various technical grounds, like not providing sufficiently detailed data. . . even as Chinese companies that had never built a turbine were approved. . .”

Later, Bradsher describes European disgust at the Chinese treatment:

“European wind turbine makers have stopped even bidding for some Chinese contracts after concluding that their bids would not be seriously considered, said Jorg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.”

China has a policy. It ruthlessly protects its own industries.

China was among the many countries that complained bitterly when the U.S. included “Buy American” provisions in the Stimulus Bill. In fact, Vice Commerce Minister Jiang Zengwei told a press conference in Beijing in February that China would not do such a thing, “We won’t practice a ‘Buy China’ policy,” he said. Four months later, that’s exactly what China did, instituting its own, stricter “Buy China” policy as part of its economic stimulus program.

China did what China felt was necessary for its economy. And it ignored foreign criticism.

That’s hardly the U.S. tactic. Wilting under criticism, Congress diminished the Buy American provisions before passing the Stimulus.

As a result, we’ve got a consortium — U.S. Renewable Energy Group, Cielo Wind Power and A-Power Energy Generation Systems – so bold that it believes it can get nearly half a billion dollars in American Stimulus money for 2,000 Chinese wind turbine jobs. The consortium says it would import 240 Chinese turbines to Texas where 300 temporary construction jobs would be created and another 30 permanent jobs established.

The wind turbines could easily be made in the USA. Bradsher, of the Times, says the Chinese concede that while their turbines cost slightly less initially, they have higher repair costs. He wrote, “United Nations data from trading of carbon credits shows that the Chinese-brand turbines produce less electricity because they are more frequently out of action.”

Really, is that what we want to buy with American tax dollars for a wind farm in West Texas?

If the United States put half the effort into supporting its renewable energy industry that China does, there’d be no way this consortium building windmills in Texas would be looking overseas for turbines.

China has a plan. In its strategy, it doesn’t consider America first or the remainder of the world first. And that’s what the USA must do. We need an industrial policy that makes no apologies for putting America and American workers first. And when that’s the calculus, no American official would ever countenance a request to give $450 million in American taxpayers’ dollars to a turbine factory in China. And no American consortium would consider making such a stupid request.

In the meantime: Hell no! They don’t get our dough!

Leo W. Gerard is the International President of the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, AFL-CIO, CLC. Gerard has also served on the U.S. National Commission on Energy Policy and is a founding board member of the Apollo Alliance, a non-profit public policy initiative for creating good jobs in pursuit of energy independence.