A Full Blown Recession, At Your Service @ by Robert E. Swift (NAPSA)—Did you read about the problems of the telecommuni- cations industry as reported in virtually every major business publication in the country? The companies that make up the sector are burdened by over $650 billion of debt, much of it invested in building out a new fiber optic infrastructure to replace the copper wires that for years conveyed information around the world. But technology moves apace, and optics can move data many times faster in our time sensitive world. The problem that emerged from all this investmentis the cre- ation of a glut—too muchfiber for current demand. The result— thousands of workers are being laid off to cut costs, placing a huge dent in employment prospects in the service sector. Generally, given the diversity of our economy, at least one sector or more has a chance of showing strength as others weaken, and this factor can lead us into a recovery. And so the question: Knowing this, why is our govern- ment ceding the manufacturing sector to foreign economies, thus weakening a mainstay industry that has long been the source of middle-income jobs? How can the deep thinkers in Congress not understand that a service-based economy, which traditionally pays, on average, approximately 28 per- cent less than manufacturing, cannot stand by itself and sustain cost to some. As the Financial Times said in a recent article “The debate over globalization is heating up and some prominentvoices from Ivy League Universities are speaking up. One is Dan] Rodrik from Harvard, who strongly chal- lenges the prevailing assumptions about free trade and global integration, and in a paper prepared earlier this year (The Developing Countries’ Hazardous Obsession with Global Integration), which was published in the magazine Foreign Policy, Rodrik says “Global integration has become, for all practical purposes, a substitute for a development strategy. This is bad news for the world’s poor.” While Rodrik looks at the issue from the perspective of the develop- ing country, the other side of the issue is at the American end, where “new poor” (those who havelost their high-paying manufacturing jobs) are being created by this country’s manufacturers, who are feeding at the cheap labor trough and encouraged by our government to do so. In the process, these com- panies are firing hundredsof thousands of workers here and replacing U.S. jobholders with counterparts in faraway places like China, Indonesia, and closer to home, Mexico. It is a question we must all ponder—how can our government pull the legs out of one of our most important business sectors—manufacturing—in service to the our standard of living as a nation? Yet to review recent and pending trade initiatives designed to vague and unproven principles of globalization? And how can it so international policy, is to understand that the American worker other countries? Andfinally, what support the political needs of readily trade away our U.S. jobs in favor of someone else’s jobs in appears like a sacrificed pawn. A are the long-term ramifications of such policy? host of measures from the North American Free Trade Agreement, to support of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, then on to the move to spur free trade from numerous countries on the African and South American continents and beyond, has resulted in unbridled competition for American jobs. Globalization comes at great Perhaps we can peer a bit into the future, as we suffer the effects of a weakened economy with no counterbalancing strength on our flanks to protect us from the deeper damage of a full-blown recession. Robert E. Swift is executive director of the Crafted with Pride in U.S.A. Council, headquartered in New York City.
