Source: United States Senator for Ohio Sherrod Brown
Brown Authored Legislation to Expand the Child Tax Credit for Working Families
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – In Case You Missed It: Yesterday, during a Senate Finance Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth hearing, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) emphasized how the U.S. government can promote high-quality, long-term American jobs and economic growth, including through domestic investments and international economic policy, and by addressing the consequences of China’s unfair policies and practices.
“U.S. competitiveness is an important issue for Ohio workers, who too often have seen policies put in place by previous administrations that have eroded our manufacturing and industrial base,” said Brown. “Thanks to the extraordinary investments in manufacturing, R&D, and infrastructure that this administration and this Congress are working to finalize, we’re finally going to start to see the kinds of investments that will rebuild our economy from the ground up.”
During the hearing Brown questioned United Steel Worker (USW) legislative director Roy Houseman on how unfair trade practices harm American workers and undermine our global competitiveness.
More from Brown’s hearing exchanges is included below and video is available HERE:
Brown: Mr. Houseman, I’m glad to support the Steelworkers most recent petition for AD/CVD, duties against the dumping in the U.S. Thank you for the work you are doing on that. Can you elaborate on your experience with the tire case, the PVLT tire case?
Mr. Houseman: Yes, senator. The United Steelworkers is the largest union in tire manufacturing representing workers across the country in PVLT tires. These are tires that go on your car and your truck, right. In 2014, 2015 the United Steelworkers filed a petition against China because we had 50 million tires come pumping into the U.S. market, undercutting domestic workers, impacting over 5,000 domestic jobs, and that petition we were successful with getting duties put in place. Now, we’re five years later and we’ve seen strategic investments by China in South Korea, in Thailand, in other countries where we’ve seen significant increases in PVLT tire imports. So much so that in the last year, the United Steelworkers because they have this union density and are able to file trade cases, they’ve filed a new petition against South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. And were successful in that petition and we thank you, Senator, for sending a letter and support of that petition. But this became this whole point of Whack-A-Mole, right. Where we stopped dumping from China, but China is now investing in these third party countries, and now dumping into the U.S. market all over again. So this Whack-A-Mole issue is one of the reasons why we are supportive of your legislation, The Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0, because we have to hold China’s Belt and Road initiative accountable in our trade enforcement laws.
Brown: Let me take that a bit different direction. I was talking to a tire manufacturer last night who said that, and not sure I fully understand and you can expand or any other person on the panel can, apparently he said that the tire retread market production is down and we don’t have the ability, we’ve lost jobs in retreading tires because cheap Chinese tires don’t have the base to be able to retread. While American tires likes Goodyear in Akron for instance and others, Bridgestone and others can actually provide the base tire, the core tire, whatever the term is, I apologize for my ignorance, to do that. Is that generally right? Can you comment on that?
Mr. Houseman: From a top level, yes. Our members make, they call them off the road tires. These are the big tires that go on tractors for example. And from our membership from what we’ve heard, they do some retreading work and what we have heard, these Chinese imports are a lower quality and you can’t actually do this retread work. So ultimately the energy and all the effort that’s expended here, you aren’t able to even able to recycle this product. And I think that’s why.
During the hearing Brown also questioned Dr. William Spriggs – a professor in, and former chair of, the Department of Economics at Howard University and serves as chief economist to the AFL-CIO – about how the erosion of American manufacturing has had a negative impact on our economy.
Brown: Ohio workers have paid the price, as you know, Dr. Spriggs, for previous administration policies that eroded our manufacturing industrial base. This administration has a different approach. I want to work with them to make sure investment in R&D and manufacturing clean energy in particular translate into good paying union jobs for Ohio workers. That means making investments in the first place to undo the decades of harm to these industries. It also means passing the Protect the Right to Organize act to make sure workers have a voice in the work place. Dr. Spriggs, explain what the erosion of American manufacturing has done to our economy and what we do about it moving forward?
Dr. Spriggs: Thank you for the question Senator. It’s created this hollowing of our communities. The impact isn’t just to the immediate workers who lose their jobs to trade – but it’s to the communities. So, if I did the math and colored red where we have an increase in joblessness you would see that map light up very heavily in Ohio. But, in other places where we know this big impact of the loss of jobs because of trade. It means we have to re-envision trade adjustments and assistance to understand we must also help communities. Money needs to factor labor market policies at the worker level so that we can ensure the community can generate enough jobs to make up for the jobs lost and especially target on get young people we need to have an expansion of WIOA (Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act) investments in youth training in youth job opportunities, because that is who gets hurt when we lose these jobs in addition to the workers who are immediately impacted. And this slowdown that took place between 2000 and 2008 with the massive expansion of the China trade implications going even to the recovery that we have in the great recession.
Brown: Thank you. When you say, using the term ‘hollowing out’ is a tragic sort of term when you look how it applies in real life. I know that people on this panel and people watching will know intuitively understand what’s happening to Cleveland, Dayton, Youngstown, and Toledo – and really Cincinnati and Columbus perhaps a bit less so. But they won’t have heard of so many of the mid-size towns in my state where I grew up in Mansfield, Lima, Chillicothe, Springfield, Ravenna, then smaller times like Defiance, Freemont, Canton a little larger city, that have lost so many good industrial jobs. Where I grew up was a union town a working class city where a lot of kids I went to high school with had future and had opportunities because they could get good paying union jobs. WestingHouse at one point had 8,000 manufacturing jobs. General Motors had 5000. Mansfield tire had 2000. Company after company after company – so you are exactly right when you talk about the ‘hollowing out.’
Brown then questioned Dr. Spriggs about the positive impact the CTC will have on Ohio families with children:
Brown: You spoke in your testimony about the importance of family policy as infrastructure. Not the narrow definition – as important as it is – of water, sewer, bridges, highways. But a broader definition of housing and education and broadband and childcare and the child tax credit and all. Tell me what the expanded Child Tax Credit – which the checks will go out this week, people will see it in their mailboxes this week probably tomorrow or direct deposit – what is that going to mean to working families?
Dr. Spriggs: It is going to be very important to working families on both sides of the equations when it comes to childcare. So, we can make childcare affordable to all families and affordable so that the workers in the industry can finally get the kind of wages they need to help their families. And so that’s why it is so important. We need to increase the labor force participation of American women. We cannot go forward with our population growing older and the population in the United States shrinking without increase in the labor force participation of women to respond to that. We rank 6th among the G7 nations when it comes women labor force participation and as a result of this pandemic we were pushed back to 1985 for women’s labor force participation. We’ve only made it back to 1988. We cannot continue without having paid leave, without having childcare and without helping families pay for child care so the workers in the industry can get decent wages.
Additional Background on Brown’s Efforts to Invest in U.S. Manufacturing and Defend Competitiveness:
Earlier this week, Brown took to the Senate floor to applaud President Biden’s Executive Order to promote competition in the American economy, which will lower prices for families, increase wages for workers, and promote innovation and even faster economic growth. Production quality video of Brown’s speech is available HERE.
Earlier this month, Brown and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) applauded the ruling from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and the U.S. Department of Commerce for taking action on antidumping following investigations into mattresses imported from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Serbia, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam, and the subsidy investigation regarding mattresses imported from China. The ruling follows a letter the senators sent to ITC Chairman Jason Kearns urging the Commission to make a thorough examination of the facts and evidence pertaining to the antidumping investigations.
In June, Brown hosted a virtual roundtable with Ambassador Katherine Tai, the 19th United States Trade Representative, and Ohio workers, farmers, and manufacturers to discuss the impact of trade policy on Ohio communities. During a Senate Committee on Finance hearing in May, Ambassador Tai committed to Brown that she would visit Ohio to meet with local workers and hear how unfair trade policies have impacted their lives. Brown, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, a leader on trade policy and a vocal champion of American workers, was a strong supporter of Ambassador Tai’s nomination.
In May, Brown and Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) introduced an amendment, the Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0, to legislation the Senate is currently considering called the Endless Frontier Act. This amendment is identical to legislation Brown and Portman introduced earlier in the year to strengthen U.S. trade remedy laws and ensure they remain effective tools to fight back against unfair trade practices and protect American workers. The Endless Frontier Act is a bipartisan bill aimed at advancing U.S. technology research, creating jobs, and improving economic and national security in order to counter China’s economic and political ambitions.
Sens. Brown and Portman initially introduced the Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0 in April as a stand-alone piece of legislation. This legislation builds upon the Leveling the Playing Field Act, a bill signed into law by former President Obama in 2015, that gives U.S. companies new tools to fight against unfair trade practices.
Additional Background on Brown’s Efforts to Implement CTC and Make the Expansion Permanent:
Starting today, July 15, 92 percent of Ohio’s kids will receive monthly CTC payments of $250 to $300 per child. In June, Brown hosted a virtual roundtable, as well as in-person roundtables in Columbus and Cincinnati, to speak with Ohio parents who will benefit from the CTC, as well as CTC advocates, to discuss the credit and its impact in Ohio. During the roundtable discussions, Brown highlighted why all working families should visit childtaxcredit.gov to learn more about how they can put more money in their pockets.
Brown is now working to build on this success by urging President Biden to make these critical tax credit expansions permanent in the next recovery plan he sends to Congress.
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