More ‘Made-in-the-USA’
needed to create jobs
By U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud
(D-Maine)
We need to be doing whatever we can to grow our economy and create more jobs. But efforts to do so are hamstrung when our nation pursues offshoring trade agreements and fails to follow policies that directly support U.S. jobs and our domestic manufacturing sector. As long as these items remain unaddressed, our nation will continue to see our manufacturing base erode and good-paying jobs sent overseas.
In order to turn things around, federal agencies should be forced to follow government purchasing rules. The Department of Defense (DOD) is a prime example. When it needs to buy certain items, DOD must comply with the Berry Amendment—a law that requires them to purchase certain American-made products. Congress first established this domestic preference for DOD procurement in 1941 and for decades the military branches complied by issuing American-made uniforms, including footwear, to our troops.
Recently, however, DOD has circumvented this policy when it comes to athletic footwear. In addition, a news report highlighted the story of a deployed Air Force Master Sergeant who was twice issued boots made in China. When he asked how he could exchange them for American-made boots, he was told “good luck.”
If Ralph Lauren and the U.S. Olympic Committee can commit to American-made uniforms in the future, our military should be able to do the same.
Whether it’s sneakers or boots, DOD has chosen foreign products despite the availability of the exact same items that are manufactured and readily available here in the United States. At a time when our country is at war and when our economy is recovering from a deep recession, it’s more important than ever that DOD complies with the Berry Amendment.
While these federal procurement policies don’t often make it to the front pages of newspapers, they should—they affect Main Street businesses and countless workers and their families. In fact, Berry Amendment compliance has a direct impact here in Maine and around the country.
New Balance, which employs almost a thousand Mainers in Norway, Skowhegan and Norridgewock, can make Berry-compliant sneakers and is ready and willing to sell them to DOD. In fact, over a dozen other companies have also expressed interest. And I know our domestic manufacturers would have appreciated the opportunity to get the Air Force Master Sergeant a pair of boots made in the USA.
To help make this happen, I’ve joined with Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter to rally our colleagues to push DOD to finally comply with the letter and the spirit of the Berry Amendment. Finally getting DOD to do the right thing will have a direct impact on Maine jobs and improve our domestic manufacturing sector.
And while domestic procurement rules can have a significant impact on local economies, I see them as a symptom of our nation’s greater jobs challenge.
Some leaders in Washington say fixing tax policy will create more jobs. Others say more investment in energy, infrastructure and education is needed to get us out of the recession. But even if we do all of the above, we’ll still be fighting to create jobs with one arm tied behind our back.
We need to be making more things in America again, but we are hampered by the same old NAFTA-style trade agreements that are pushed in Washington year after year.
We’ve seen the negative results of flawed trade agreements in Maine, and unfortunately the story isn’t a happy one. Maine’s manufacturing base has declined by more than 40 percent since the passage of NAFTA. We’ve seen entire industries leave our shores for low wage countries with no or very few labor standards. I’ve even seen my family and friends lose their jobs at the very paper mill I worked at for nearly three decades.
International trade can be a double-edged sword. It can open up markets and provide additional export opportunities to our businesses. But it can also send jobs overseas—many times jobs that pay well and are difficult to get back, like those in manufacturing.
That’s why I’ve been fighting so hard to get trade right in Washington. And it’s why I’ve pushed Republican and Democratic administrations to strictly enforce trade rules currently on the books.
I believe that we need to make things in Maine and America again to truly get us on the right economic footing for the short and long term. Our nation could make a lot of progress if the Defense Department followed the Berry Amendment and our government strongly supported our domestic manufacturers and stopped passing flawed trade deals.
Not acting on these issues will hurt our economic recovery. It will also hurt communities in Maine and across the country that were built on good-paying manufacturing jobs and are proud to make things stamped “Made-in-the-USA.”
