Speaking at the former site of A.O. Smith and Tower Automotive on Milwaukee’s near North Side, Russ Feingold blasted trade agreements that benefit multinational corporations at the expense of American workers.
Feingold argued the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), crafted by President Barack Obama but not yet passed by Congress, would ship jobs overseas, weaken environmental protections and unfairly benefit big corporations, similar to previous trade agreements.
This isn’t the first time Feingold, running for U.S. Senate against Republican Ron Johnson, has opposed a free trade agreement. As U.S. senator, he voted against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and granting China permanent most favored nation status because they enabled American corporations to outsource American jobs to low-wage countries.
He said these agreements have cost Wisconsin 75,000 manufacturing jobs.
“It became very clear to me by the time I announced for U.S. Senate in early May [2015] that this [TPP] was going to be the same deal again,” Feingold said Monday at a roundtable discussion convened by Citizen Action of Wisconsin at Century City. “It would encourage jobs to be shipped overseas because wages are lower and the companies don’t have to follow the same environmental laws or the same workers’ rights.”
He said multinational companies were driving the terms of the agreement.
“It’s not a bunch of governments negotiating,” Feingold said. “It’s a corporate handshake, over and over again. It became clear to me that the TPP was more of the same.”
Feingold said the loss of jobs has a ripple effect on the entire economy, as displaced and fearful workers won’t spend money in local businesses, such as restaurants and shops.
Feingold told the Shepherd the TPP needed to be fixed by not allowing corporations to usurp national sovereignty, eliminating special deals for Big Pharma, and strengthening labor and environmental protections.
He said the agreement could protect American jobs with “a balanced agreement to make sure you can’t exploit lower wages in other countries. There has to be that kind of balance and mutuality, otherwise jobs will be moved out.”
Feingold also blasted his opponent in the November election, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who has called trade agreements “creative destruction” and voted for giving Obama fast-track authority to pass the deal. The agreement hasn’t come up for a vote in either the Senate or the House and presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump oppose it. Johnson’s campaign didn’t respond to the Shepherd’s request to comment for this article.
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Losses Hit Close to Home
Those who attended the roundtable discussion told Feingold about their concerns about outsourcing and the lack of job opportunities in Milwaukee—specifically, in the near North Side neighborhood, which had been home to manufacturing giants A.O. Smith and Tower Automotive.
State Rep. David Bowen (D-Milwaukee), who represents the area in the state Assembly, called the site the “epicenter of impact of jobs leaving our community.”
The neighborhood had access to 15,000 family supporting jobs in its manufacturing heyday, Bowen said, but those jobs have vanished and growth is now in the far suburbs away from the city center. Bowen said policies needed to incentivize businesses that invest in their workers and the community and not reward companies that exploit them.
“It’s not that corporations are bad, it’s exploitive practices that are bad,” Bowen said.
Anita Johnson, an organizer with Citizen Action, said she’d grown up in the neighborhood when it was home to a thriving, home-owning middle class and high-quality schools. Now, those jobs are gone and the neighborhood is suffering.
“It will never be the same, that much I know,” Johnson said. “But this whole area is deteriorating. This is the area where I grew up and it was safe. It is no longer safe. You can’t find a job.”
State Rep. Daniel Riemer (D-Milwaukee), whose district includes the former Allis Chalmers site, said he saw the consequences of the shuttering of large manufacturers that had supported the middle class.
“I disagree entirely with Sen. Ron Johnson’s take on this issue,” Riemer said. “We don’t need any more creative destruction. What we need is creative creation.”
Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action, said that outsourcing isn’t a natural consequence of doing business in a global economy. He said the Milwaukee metro area has lost 43,000 net manufacturing jobs since 2000.
“Is it natural that the jobs left?” Kraig asked. “It’s not natural. Trade agreements were written that enabled it.”
