WASHINGTON, DC - Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) today released the following statement after the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) released a report on the economic impact of our nation’s past trade agreements:
“Based on my preliminary review of the report, the ITC fails to adequately and innovatively address the real economic impact of previous U.S. free trade agreements. The ITC claims a small increase in GDP based on traditional economic models. The ITC fails to address the costs associated with workers losing their jobs or factories leaving communities as a result of trade agreements. Those transition costs are largely ignored in this report. They focus on the long-term benefit of lower tariffs in other countries and cheap imports coming into the United States, failing to capture the impact - which they may call short term - which can have a dramatic impact on jobs in America. This impact is indicated in some of the recent research. The ITC also assumes that trade will increase productivity, and that increased productivity will surely increase wages - when there is evidence suggesting otherwise.
“The ITC did not attempt to consider many of the factors I urged them to address when I testified at an ITC hearing last November. For example, the ITC report does not analyze the extent to which trade and trade agreements are contributing to income inequality. There is also a total failure in this report to consider the impact of currency manipulation, including by China.
“All of this indicates the critical need for the United States to take a comprehensive, fresh reexamination of our global economic policies. That need underlines my opposition to TPP as negotiated. We need far better trade policies."
Last November, Rep. Levin testified at an ITC hearing on the economic impact of our nation’s past trade agreements, highlighting issues - including the impact U.S. trade agreements have had on income inequality and the median wage - that the ITC should analyze in its report released today.
