USW President Leo Gerard Talks Trade, Factory Offshoring and Job Loss on The Leslie Marshall Show

For 36 straight minutes on the nationally-syndicated Leslie Marshall talk show, United Steelworkers (USW) International President Leo W. Gerard railed against disastrous trade cases that have shuttered tens of thousands of American factories, killed millions of good, middle-class American jobs and devastated communities across the nation, but particularly in the industrial mid-west.

In addition to the bad deals, poor trade law enforcement is shattering American manufacturing and jobs, Gerard told host Leslie Marshall. The USW filed 19 trade cases last year. But to win them, it must prove injury. Workers and the industry must suffer to secure tariffs against trade violators, and by the time these cases conclude, all too often, U.S. industries have failed and U.S. workers have lost their jobs forever.

Gerard explained what happens when the USW files trade cases to fight unfairly priced imports from China, which is overproducing many commodities to keep its people employed, not because those commodities are in demand:

“We have domestic overcapacity in every commodity in China. They are using that overcapacity to depress our market. They know that once they get to that point, we have to file trade cases. They’ve got anywhere from a year to 18 months before there’s a remedy, and they’ll flood our market, continuously depress our prices, put our people out of work, and then once we succeed in the trade case, they’ll sit back and wait until the remedy expires and they’ll do it again.”

Gerard noted that domestic steel companies are extremely efficient but can’t compete with subsidized Chinese steel producers that also benefit from currency manipulation.

“We can make steel at roughly 1 to .9 hours per ton. We are the most efficient steel industry in the world,” Gerard said. “Yet, in China, they’ve got plants that take 29 hours to make a ton of steel. China isn’t interested in making a profit. They’re interested in keeping people employed; they just ignore making a profit and just keep people working. So they’ll sell their steel into our market lower than the cost of our own production.”

China does that by subsidizing their steel production with low cost utilities, free land and loans that don’t have to be repaid. These measures violate trade laws when the steel is sold internationally.

In addition, when China sells the steel internationally at a price below what it charges domestically, that’s called dumping, and that also violates trade laws. Furthermore, China is producing some commodities, like steel, at rates far above what the entire world needs, then dumping the excess on the world market, causing prices to crash. And it manipulates its currency, so that its exports sell at a discount.

All of this results in the United States racking up massive trade deficits. Gerard explained to The Leslie Marshall listeners how those deficits hurt American manufacturing.

“Our trade deficit in China is $365 to $375 billion a year,” Gerard said. “That means America has roughly a billion dollars a day of trade deficit with China, and China will use that trade deficit, use billions of their money – which used to be our money – to come back to the U.S. and buy U.S. Treasury Bills to drive up our dollar and devalue their currency so our exports become more expensive and their imports become cheaper wiping out manufacturing jobs in Michigan.”

Gerard urged voters to consider Presidential candidates who will stand strong against bad trade deals and protect American manufacturing and American workers against all foreign countries, not just China, that openly and flagrantly violate international trade regulations.

Click the audio button below to hear the conversation or Click Here to visit the the Leslie Marshall conversation.