Mission of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC) is to preserve and create American manufacturing jobs through the establishment of trade policy and other measures necessary for the U.S. manufacturing sector to stabilize and grow.
Employment in the U.S. manufacturing sector provides millions of American jobs, enables a diverse workforce and sustains communities and families in both urban and rural America. Manufacturing contributes billions of dollars to the nations gross domestic product on an annual basis and is vital to the armed forces and overall national security of the United States.
The crisis in American manufacturing is historic and unprecedented. It is demonstrated by the loss of millions of U.S. jobs, major company bankruptcies, and hundreds of plant closures. In addition, the hemorrhage in the U.S. manufacturing sector has a ripple effect throughout the economy due to the fact that an additional one-and-a-half non-manufacturing jobs are lost for every single manufacturing job lost. The culmination of these events has prompted the formation of this coalition.
These job losses have been created, in large part, by trade deals such as NAFTA and the WTO-Uruguay Round, where manufacturing jobs have been used as a bargaining chip to settle non-trade issues. These same trade deals are hollowing out all American manufacturing.
The manufacturing crisis, which has cost the U.S. economy nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since January 2001, is cause for alarm. Our national security, as well as our economic security, is at risk.
Our mounting current account trade deficit that will exceed $700 billion in 2005 is unsustainable. Consequences of this huge trade deficit include havoc with the lives of individual Americans and their families and communities; weakening the underlying strength of the dollar; large capital inflows for additional production capacity in low-wage nations; increasing foreign ownership of U.S. assets and companies; and the condoning of pollution, unfair labor and other reprehensible production practices around the globe.
Action Steps:
Block trade legislation detrimental to U.S. manufacturing jobs and investment.
Insist on vigorous enforcement of existing U.S. trade laws.
Develop proactive legislative and administrative remedies, including an examination of the value of existing trade laws to U.S. manufacturing.
Ensure that the interest of the domestic industry and workers are upheld as part of major trade negotiations including the FTAA and the Doha WTO.
Review and promote polices, beyond trade related measures, to benefit domestic industry.
Augustine D. Tantillo
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Lloyd Wood
DIRECTOR of MEMBERSHIP and MEDIA OUTREACH
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