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Congressman Jared Golden of Lewiston represents Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
America has become a nation of consumers. But it wasn’t always this way. I believe we must again become a nation of producers.
That’s why I’m submitting legislation to impose a 10 percent tariff across the board on all imports. This policy is broadly supported by working- and middle-class Americans, who understand the need to prioritize domestic manufacturing, American jobs and homegrown innovation.
It’s almost become folklore — a past when far more American workers were highly skilled in producing quality, reliable goods and were paid enough for their work that they could afford the quality products made by their fellow Americans.
But that was the reality for generations in our country, including here in Maine. Seventy years ago, employment in manufacturing made up more than 40 percent of nonfarm jobs in Maine, according to the Maine Department of Labor. Today, it’s less than 10 percent. The losses accelerated in the 1990s with the signing of NAFTA, after which Maine lost 1 in 3 manufacturing jobs — with 25,000 lost to outsourcing alone. Forty percent of those who lost jobs had to take new ones with lower pay.
In exchange, we got cheap foreign goods. This is the globalization tradeoff America has come to expect. Yes, we had to lose our industrial know-how, sacrifice good jobs and cede the fight for technological innovation to our competitors. Yes, corporations went multinational, reaping massive profits by shifting production overseas at the expense of American jobs.
But, hey, at least we got cheap clothes, cheap food and cheap electronics.
Many Americans realize this is a raw deal. So do some of the architects of the system of globalization and free trade. For example: The Biden administration could have removed the tariffs on Chinese imports put in place by the Trump administration, but it didn’t. In some cases, the administration even expanded them.
That’s a recognition that as a matter of both national security and economic interest, we must act to reposition ourselves in the world economy, to a place of strength and self-sufficiency. That’s what the universal tariff I’m proposing is all about.
There are still skeptics. This newspaper’s editorial board recently published an editorial criticizing the resurgent popularity of tariffs. The argument goes that tariffs run the risk of increasing prices, and that’s a risk we can’t afford.
Setting aside the fact that increasing the cost of foreign goods — not domestic ones, a distinction often glossed over by skeptics — is the mechanism by which tariffs encourage domestic production and jobs, I think Americans must wrestle with the high cost of low prices.
By making cheap products and low prices their north star, advocates of globalization and free trade miss the long-term opportunities available if we instead pursue a goal of encouraging and sustaining American industry and jobs.
The case for cheap goods is an argument for the status quo, where the nearly $1 trillion national trade deficit continues to balloon out of control, making us dependent on foreign competitors for imports and to finance a growing national debt driven by our lack of production and exports.
The argument against tariffs also casts Americans solely as consumers in the global marketplace, buyers of cheap jeans and out-of-season produce, rather than as citizens of a nation whose industrial strength has been and could again be the envy of the world. (It’s no coincidence that tariffs played a key role in developing America’s economic strength: One of the first laws Congress ever passed was the Tariff Act of 1789 to protect American industries.)
Even among those who support tariffs, there is opposition to the universal import tariff. They ask, why not target specific nations or goods? Many businesses I speak with make a similar argument, supporting tariffs that benefit themselves while opposing ones that could affect their supply chains.
The universal tariff is a declaration of intent, that we will all share the work to prioritize domestic innovation and production across our entire economy, not pick winners and losers.
Overwrought concerns about keeping prices low belie a lack of imagination about what a comprehensive economic policy focused on production and exports could look like. For example, we can use revenue raised by tariffs to subsidize domestic products and production, cut taxes for the middle class, or reduce the deficit — strategies to increase American purchasing power or strengthen the underlying economy.
With our trade deficit and foreign-owned debt growing by the minute, the clock is running out for America to reverse course. It took decades for the globalization consensus to get us here, and it’s going to take time, hard work and sacrifice to get out of it.
But I am confident that with policies aimed at prioritizing the things that made our economy great to begin with, we can turn the page and usher in a new age of American economic strength.
