Post by Sagan on Feb 9, 2004 17:51:06 GMT -5
Lost American jobs = Good!
Chimpy is as out of touch as his Daddy was, and not half as smart.
2:09 PM PST, February 9, 2004 E-mail story Print
White House: Exporting Jobs Overseas Will Help U.S. Eventually
By Warren Vieth and Edwin Chen, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said today.
The embrace of foreign "outsourcing," an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the health of the U.S. economy.
"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."
The report, which predicts that the nation will reverse a three-year employment slide by creating 2.6 million jobs in 2004, is part of a weeklong effort by the administration to highlight signs that the recovery is picking up speed. Bush's economic stewardship has become a central issue in the presidential campaign, and the White House is eager to demonstrate that his policies are producing positive results.
In his message to Congress, Bush said the economy "was strong and getting stronger," thanks in part to the administration's tax cuts and other economic policies. He said the nation had survived a stock market meltdown, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and a global economic slump, and was finally beginning to enjoy "a mounting prosperity that will reach every corner of America."
The president repeated that message during a "conversation" on the economy with workers at SRC Automotive in Springfield, Mo., an employee-owned firm that rebuilds car engines. In one of his most fervent appeals yet to make his tax cuts permanent, he said congressional opponents are seeking to impose a broad new tax hike. "Make no mistake about it," he said.
The president's 411-page report contains a detailed diagnosis of the forces contributing to the economic slowdown that began about the time Bush occupied the White House, and a wide-ranging defense of the policies he has pursued to combat it.
It asserts that the last recession actually began in late 2000, before Bush took office, instead of in March, 2001, as certified by the official recession dating panel of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Much of the report repeats the administration's previous economic prescriptions. The Bush tax cuts must be made permanent, it says, to have their full beneficial effect on the economy. Social Security must be restructured to let workers put part of their retirement funds in private accounts, it argues, to address a long-term funding shortfall.
But the report devotes considerable attention to an issue that has become increasingly troublesome for the administration: the loss of 2.8 million manufacturing jobs since Bush took office, and critics' claims that the administration's trade policies are partly to blame.
The report acknowledges that international trade and foreign outsourcing have contributed to the job slump. But it argues that technological progress and rising productivity — the ability to produce more goods with fewer workers — have played a bigger role than trade.
Although trade expansion inevitably hurts some workers, it says, the benefits will eventually outweigh the costs as Americans are able to buy goods and services at lower costs and as jobs are created in growing sectors of the economy.
The report endorses the relatively new phenomenon of outsourcing high-end white-collar work to India and other countries, a trend that has created concern within affected professions such as computer programming and medical diagnostics.
"The gains from trade that take place over the Internet or telephone lines are no different then the gains from trade in physical goods transported by ship or plane," it says. "When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it rather than to produce it domestically."
Bush's quick visit to Missouri — his 15th to what is considered a critical election battleground — was the first of several events intended to underscore recent economic improvements. Although job creation remains relatively sluggish, the nation's unemployment rate has fallen from 6.3% in June to 5.6% in January, and the economy grew at the fastest pace in 20 years during the last half of 2003.
The format, a Bush favorite, involved five SRC Automotive employees sharing a stage with the president to discuss their personal perspectives on the economy, with Bush often elaborating on their stories to tout various aspects of his economic agenda.
On Tuesday, Bush is scheduled to meet with economic leaders at the White House. On Thursday, he goes to Harrisburg, Pa., another key swing state that he has visited more than two dozen times.
Vieth reported from Washington and Chen from Springfield, Mo.