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America’s “Help Wanted” Signs
While the U.S. House and Senate compete with each other to see who can authorize the longest wall along our border with Mexico, evidence continues to grow that the U.S. economy could use more foreign-born workers. Here are three examples from just the past few days:
The Washington Post reported this morning, in an article headlined, “Visas for skilled workers still frozen,” that the number of H1-B visas available each year remains capped at a number far below the ongoing needs of U.S. employers. As the article explains: “[M]any of the country’s largest technology companies and most prestigious research laboratories have said they are unable to find enough U.S.-born scientists and similar workers to fill their openings. … But only 65,000 H-1B visas are issued each year, and demand has been so high recently that all of them are taken instantaneously.”
Earlier in the week, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Richard Fisher, noted in a speech in Monterrey, Mexico, that the U.S. economy has reached full employment and is beginning to feel the pinch of labor shortages in certain sectors. As Fisher told his audience:
I am hearing more and more reports about the difficulty of finding labor to work our oil fields or run our chemical plants. Bankers complain of a paucity of bank clerks and tellers. Truckers are experiencing a shortage of drivers. In Houston, we are hearing complaints about the difficulty of finding cashiers for retail establishments. A major hotelier told me last week that there is a shortage of housekeeping staff. … companies are now voicing the kinds of complaints about labor shortages most often heard in a full employment economy.
Adding to the evidence, a major report released Wednesday on the need to modernize America’s agricultural policies included a recommendation that Congress enact comprehensive immigration reform. The report, by a task force appointed by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, noted, “Immigrants today play a vital role in nearly every aspect of our agricultural and food processing system, often taking jobs that are low-paying or shunned by native-born workers.” The report cited Hmong poultry producers in the Ozarks and Hispanic workers in the meat processing plants in the Midwest, calling such workers “vital to the [agricultural] sector’s competitiveness.”
As members of Congress seek to reform U.S. immigration law, they should keep in mind that our nation’s economy is made stronger and more dynamic when peaceful, hard-working people are allowed to come here legally to fill jobs that not enough Americans are willing or able to fill.
Tariff Bill Would Punish Millions of American Families
In an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription req.), Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) threaten to demand a vote on their bill that would drastically raise tariffs on imports from China if the Chinese government does not move quickly to strengthen the value of its currency.
The senators claim that China’s currency, the yuan, is 15 to 40 percent undervalued against the dollar, giving Chinese imports an unfair advantage in the U.S. market and discouraging U.S. exports to China. China revalued its currency by 2.1 percent last summer and it has appreciated another 2 percent since then, but the senators say this is not enough. They blame China’s currency for our large bilateral trade deficit with China and the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Their bill would impose a hefty 27.5 percent tariff if China does not sharply revalue its currency within six months after the bill’s passage.
In a Cato Trade Briefing Paper, “Who’s Manipulating Whom?” published in July, I documented the fact that imports from China have not reduced America’s overall manufacturing output. In fact, since China fixed its currency in 1994, real output at U.S. factories has actually increased by 50 percent. The sectors where China is most competitive—lower-end, labor-intensive goods such as shoes, clothing, and toys—have been in decline in the United States for decades. Goods we used to import from other countries anyway are now imported directly from China. U.S. factories employ fewer workers than they did a decade ago not primarily because of imports from China but because remaining workers are so much more productive.
Imposing the steep tariff called for in the senators’ bill would surely hurt workers and producers in China, but it would also victimize millions of American consumers. More than three-quarters of what we imported from China last year were goods Americans use every day in their homes and offices—not only all those shoes, clothing items, and toys, but also sporting goods, bicycles, TVs, radios, stereos, and personal and laptop computers. The Schumer-Graham bill would be a direct, regressive tax on millions of low- and middle-income American families. It would also jeopardize tens of billions of dollars of sales American companies now make in China, our major, growing export market.
Chances are slim that the Schumer-Graham bill will become law anytime soon, but the fact that such a reckless piece of legislation would be considered on the floor of the Senate should be as troubling to Americans as to the Chinese.
The United States of Agriculture?
Every year, Congress spends nearly $20 billion and maintains steep trade barriers to benefit a small group of farmers growing one of about half a dozen “program crops.” A hearing on U.S. farm policy before the full House Agricultural Committee today illustrates the problem beautifully.
All farmers together make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, and those receiving federal production subsidies or trade protection are less than 1 percent of the population. Yet our farm programs are designed not to serve the interests of the 99+ percent of us who pay the taxes and consume the food, but the small fraction who grow certain favored crops. In fact, U.S. farm programs benefit a small number of producers at the expense the majority and the nation as a whole.
[In a major Cato study last year, we documented six ways that current U.S. farm programs hurt the average American—through higher food prices, lost jobs, more government spending, environmental damage, stifling of rural development, and the undermining of America’s image abroad. We also hosted a policy forum last month featuring the pro-reform Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns.]
So why do these programs persist despite their cost to the general public? Classic interest group politics. Agricultural producers, although small in number, are concentrated, well organized, and highly motivated to save programs that can mean big bucks to their bottom line. Meanwhile the mass of consumers and taxpayers, although an overwhelming majority, are diffused, disorganized and mostly unaware of the cost they pay as individuals for those same programs.
Which brings us to today’s hearing in the House. Who do you think Congress will be hearing from as it begins to rewrite the farm bill? Of the 17 witnesses, not a single one will represent taxpayers, consumers, or non-farm businesses that use those commodities to make their final products. Every witness represents a sector of farm producers. No wonder Congress routinely ignores the interest of the vast majority of its constituents when it writes farm legislation.
Here is the witness list:
Bob Stallman – president, American Farm Bureau Federation
Tom Buis – president, National Farmers Union
Allen B. Helms Jr. – chairman, National Cotton Council, Clarkedale, Ark.
Paul T. Combs – chairman, USA Rice Producers’ Group, Kennett, Mo.
Dale Schuler – president, National Association of Wheat Growers, Carter, Mont.
Gerald Tumbleson – president, National Corn Growers Association, Sherburn, Minn.
John R. Hoffman – first vice president, American Soybean Association, Waterloo, Iowa, also representing National Sunflower Association and U.S. Canola Association
Greg Shelo – president, National Grain Sorghum Producers Association, Minneola, Kan.
Jim Wysocki – president, National Potato Council, Bandcroft, Wis., representing Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance and National Potato Council
Jack Roney – director of economics and policy analysis, American Sugar Alliance
Mark Kaiser – board member, Alabama Peanut Producers Association, Seminole, Ala., representing Alabama Peanut Producers Association, Florida Peanut Producers Association, Georgia Peanut Commission and Mississippi Peanut Growers Association
Richard Groven – vice president, National Barley Growers Association, Northwood, N.D.
Jim Evans – chairman, USA Dry Pea and Lentil Council Inc., Genesee, Idaho
Mike John – president, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Huntsville, Mo.
Joy Philippi – president, National Pork Producers Council, Bruning, Neb.
Ron Truex – president and general manager, Creighton Brothers, Atwood, Ind., representing United Egg Producers
Paul R. Frischknecht – president, American Sheep Industry, Manti, Utah.
Middle Class Squeeze?
New Census Bureau numbers released today on income, poverty and health coverage in 2005 are bound to fuel charges that the poor are getting poorer while the middle class continues to be squeezed. See what 25 years of tax cuts for the rich, globalization, and declining union membership have caused? But a look at the numbers inside the report tells a different story.
If we define the middle class as households earning between $35,000 and $75,000 a year, the middle class in America remains a huge demographic group. According to the Census report, Table A-1, the middle class made up 33.3 percent of U.S. households in 2005. That share is indeed somewhat smaller than in 1980, when 38.2 percent of households earned between $35,000 and $75,000 a year in real (inflation-adjusted) 2005 dollars.
Aha, so the middle class really is shrinking if not exactly disappearing, the alarmists might respond. But the Census numbers also show that over the past 25 years, the share of U.S. households earning less than $35,000 a year has also shrunk, from 44.5 percent in 1980 to 38.4 percent in 2005. Meanwhile, the share of households earning more than $75,000 a year has jumped from 17.4 percent to 28.3 percent.
In other words, if the middle class in America has shrunk, it is only because so many formerly middle-class households have moved to the upper-income brackets, while a significant number of households previously in the lower brackets have moved up to the middle class and beyond.
The solid economic growth of the past two decades has indeed lifted all kinds of household boats. By the most basic measure of real household income, a broad swathe of Americans are better off than they were 25 years ago—thanks to growth fueled in good measure by lower marginal tax rates, expanding trade, and a more flexible domestic economy.
Bashing Wal-Mart (and Millions of Shoppers)
Can Democrats ride what they see as a populist wave of anger against Wal-Mart to success in the 2006 elections and beyond? According to a New York Times story this morning:
Across Iowa this week and across much of the country this month, Democratic leaders have found a new rallying cry that many of them say could prove powerful in the midterm elections and into 2008: denouncing Wal-Mart for what they say are substandard wages and health care benefits …
The focus on Wal-Mart is part of a broader strategy of addressing what Democrats say is general economic anxiety and a growing sense that economic gains of recent years have not benefited the middle class or the working poor.
This new strategy tells us much more about the lingering anti-business, anti-market and, yes, elitist mindset of the Democratic Party’s national leaders than it does about Wal-Mart itself.
Wal-Mart and other price-conscious discount retailers are really a working family’s best friend. They operate in the marketplace as representatives for millions of consumers, ensuring that they get the best and lowest prices possible from wholesalers and producers. Tens of millions of American shoppers vote with their feet every week by visiting their local Wal-Mart.
If Wal-Mart offers wages and benefits that are below the national average, it is not because of company policy but because of the realities of the marketplace. Retail jobs in general offer below-average compensation because the jobs tend to be lower-skilled and less productive than most other jobs. Even so, Wal-Mart’s wages within the retail sector are competitive. A worker at Wal-Mart is more likely to have health insurance and be paid more than a worker with similar skills at a small, “mom and pop” retailer.
The denunciation of Wal-Mart is largely driven by politics. Labor unions, a key Democratic Party constituency, see non-unionized Wal-Mart stores as a threat to their efforts to organize retail workers, especially those in the grocery sector.
Democrats will need to decide who they want to represent: Tens of millions of cost-conscious, lower- and middle-income shoppers, or noisy but far less numerous union members who do not like competition.
Mercantilist Logic Flounders at Sea
The good news from the listing cargo ship near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands is that all 23 crew members were plucked safely from the ship by helicopter last night. (See news story.) The bad news is that the 5,000 cars aboard the ship bound from Japan to Canada may not survive the mishap.
Come to think of it, would it be such bad news if those 5,000 cars sank to the bottom of the ocean? According to the mercantilist mindset that seems to dominate Washington’s discussion of trade policy, the loss of merchandise in transit from one country to another may be the best of all possible worlds.
Mercantilism is a centuries-old approach to trade that believes that exports are the big payoff from trade and imports a burden. By definition, then, a trade surplus signals success for trade policy and a trade deficit failure.
From a mercantilist point of view, then, the loss of those 5,000 cars at sea should be a blessing to the global economy. The people of Japan would have occupied themselves producing those 5,000 cars for export, while the people of Canada would not have shoulder the “burden” of accepting them as imports. Japan can add to its trade surplus without Canada being forced to suffer a deficit.
The great French economist Frederic Bastiat exposed this fallacy more than 150 years ago in an essay, “The Balance of Trade” (Chapter 6 of his Economic Sophisms). If the mercantilists are right, we should all be praying for bad weather in the sea lanes carrying all those cars, shoes, shirts, and laptop computers to our showrooms and store shelves.
U.S. Manufacturing Expands along with China’s Economy
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) renewed his threat this week to demand a vote in the Senate on legislation that would impose steep tariffs on imports from China if the Chinese government does not move promptly to strengthen its currency.
Like many other members of Congress, Schumer believes that China has “manipulated” the value of its currency in a way that makes Chinese goods artificially cheap in the U.S. market while discouraging U.S. exports to China. One result, according to Schumer, has been serious damage to America’s manufacturing base.
Three news items this week, though, should give Congress pause before it slaps tariffs on imports from China:
- The latest reports from Beijing confirmed that China’s economy continues to grow rapidly. China’s economy reached an annualized growth rate of 11 percent in the second quarter and more than 10 percent for the first half of 2006.
- But China’s growth is not coming at the expense of the U.S. economy or U.S. manufacturing. The U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors reported this week that U.S. manufacturing output is up 5.7 percent so far in 2006 compared to a year ago. Indeed, according to a recent Cato study, U.S. manufacturing output is up 50 percent in the past 12 years along with our expanding trade with China.
- The number of Internet users in China has reached 123 million. That gives China the second largest group of users in the world, behind the 200 million users in the United States.
Rapid economic growth in China is not coming at the expense of the U.S. manufacturing sector. But that growth is creating a growing middle class in China that is increasingly engaged not only in the global economy but in the global sharing of ideas.America’s economic relationship with China was the topic of a lively discussion at a Cato policy forum this week. You can view or listen to the event here.
A Surplus of Benefits from Trade with China
The Chinese government reported on Monday that China’s trade surplus with the rest of the world hit a new monthly record in June [see story] and is on pace to reach $130 billion to $150 billion for all of 2006. The news will fuel demands that China allow the value of its currency to rise in international foreign exchange markets, making exports from China more expensive and imports to China more attractive. China’s currency, the yuan, has only appreciated about 3 percent since July 21, 2005, when its central bank announced that the currency would no longer be tightly pegged to the U.S. dollar.
Unfortunately, the news may also stoke support in Congress for imposing tariffs on imports from China if its government does not move soon to revalue its currency upward by 15 to 40 percent. As I explain in a Cato Trade Briefing Paper ["Who's Manipulating Whom? China's Currency and the U.S. Economy"] released today, imposing trade sanctions on China would be a colossal policy blunder.
Imposing tariffs on Chinese imports would be a direct consumer tax on tens of millions of American families. Of the $243 billion in goods we bought from China in 2005, about 80 percent were the type of products we use everyday in our homes and office—shoes, clothing, toys, sporting goods, bicycles, TVs, consumer electronics, and personal and laptop computers. In fact, shipments from China tend to bump up every fall as retailers stock up for the Christmas shopping season. The Grinch who stole Christmas would be delighted if Congress were to impose punitive tariffs on all those Chinese goods entering our country!
The study found no support for arguments that China’s currency regime and trade with China in general are somehow hurting the U.S. economy or U.S. manufacturing. Rising imports from China have not primarily replaced domestic U.S. production, but rather they have replaced imports from other low-wage countries or from other East Asian countries that have relocated production to China. With the exception of apparel, few U.S. manufacturers compete head to head with products made in China. Overall U.S. manufacturing output is 50 percent higher today than in 1994 when China first pegged its currency to the dollar.
Focusing on the bilateral trade balance with China obscures the very tangible benefits Americans enjoy from our growing commercial ties with the people of China.
To explore the issue further on the one-year anniversary of China’s currency reforms, Cato will be hosting a Policy Forum on July 19 titled, “U.S.-China Trade, Exchange Rates, and the U.S. Economy.” You can register for the event here.
Our “Pig in a Poke” Farm Subsidies
Not content to lavish federal subsidies on farmers and landowners just because they grow certain agricultural crops, Congress is also in the business of subsidizing them even when they do NOT grow those crops. In a major expose, the Washington Post reports that the federal government pays out billions of dollars in subsidies to landowners based on past production of certain program crops, such as rice, even when the land is no longer used to grow the crops. As a result, federal farm subsidies are being paid to landowners who have no interest in farming. As the Post reported yesterday:
Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.
Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.
Other federal farm programs offer “loan deficiency payments” to corn growers in Iowa and elsewhere when the price of corn falls below a certain minimum. Farmers collect the payments even if they eventually sell their corn at a higher, profitable price. According to a Post story today, the program has cost American taxpayers $4.8 billion in the current fiscal year, and $29 billion since 1998.
Federal farm subsidies are not only costly to the U.S. Treasury but they also distort global agricultural markets by encouraging overproduction. Those subsidies contributed to the demise of the current round of trade negotiations in the World Trade Organization. A Cato Institute study last year, titled “Ripe for Reform,” documented the many ways Americans are hurt by our own farm programs.
Of course, members of Congress from farm states refuse to give up these costly programs unless other countries agree to reform their own farm programs. As today’s Post story concludes: “Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has warned U.S. trade negotiators not to bow to foreign pressure unless they win major concessions for U.S. agriculture. ‘We’re not going to buy a pig in a poke,’ he said.”
“Pig in a poke” sounds like a fitting description of our own farm programs.
A Flood of Immigrants?
In the midst of the Senate debate on an immigration bill this month, the Heritage Foundation published a report claiming that legalization of undocumented workers already here and creation of a temporary-worker program would unleash a flood of more than 100 million new immigrants in the next 20 years. The headline-catching number turned heads on Capitol Hill, provided grist for talk radio, and hardened the opposition to immigration reform.
In hindsight, however, the number looks less and less plausible. Consider: If immigrants did come in such numbers, the average would be 5 million a year. That compares to an average immigration inflow, legal and illegal, of about 1.5 million during the past decade. The U.S. economy simply could not produce enough jobs each year during the next two decades to attract and employ that many immigrants. We also know from experience that previous attempts at legalization did not unleash a flood of so-called chain migration, in which newly legalized and naturalized workers sponsor spouses, children, parents and siblings. Check out an op-ed article posted today on the Cato web site that spells out in detail why the 103 million figure is a gross exaggeration.
The Congressional Budget Office, in its own study [.pdf] released May 16, calculates that immigration reform along the lines of what the Senate passed last week would increase immigration over the next decade by less than 8 million. And an analysis by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers found numerous methodological faults with the Heritage study, including double counting and failure to account for emigration.
The Heritage study generated a lot of heat in an already over-heated immigration debate. Unfortunately, it failed to provide any real light.
Border Enforcement without Reform is Doomed to Fail
The news media are playing up President Bush’s proposal, to be unveiled in an Oval Office speech tonight, to send National Guard troops to stop illegal immigration across our 2,000-mile border with Mexico. The real news is that the president and the Senate are about to work together to pass real immigration reform, including a new temporary worker program and a path to legalization for the millions of undocumented workers already here. The Cato Institute laid out the intellectual argument for such an approach in two major studies, Willing Workers and Backfire at the Border.
The large majority of workers here illegally have come for the same reasons immigrants have come to our shores throughout our history, to build a better future for themselves and their families–and to help us build a stronger U.S. economy in the process. Our economy continues to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs each year for low-skilled workers, while the supply of native-born Americans willing to fill those jobs continues to shrink. The American workforce is getting older and better educated. Yet our immigration system has no legal channel for a peaceful, hardworking person from Mexico or other countries to enter our country legally to fill those jobs.
Two decades of ramped-up enforcement have failed to fix the problem. We’ve increased spending on border enforcement 10-fold, we’ve built walls for miles into the desert, and we’ve raided hundreds of U.S. business from coast to coast. Yet the number and inflow of illegal workers just keeps growing. We need an immigration system that reflects the realities of American society and the American economy. A program to legalize millions of workers would allow the U.S. government to concentrate its enforcement on the real criminals and terrorists trying to sneak into our country.
It’s good news that President Bush and a majority of Senators seem to understand that enforcement without reform is doomed to fail.
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