In the 1960s, millions of Americans bought their first homes without subprime lending. Over the last 20 years, that became almost impossible. Why? One factor has been the decline of the much-traveled road from poverty to lower middle class and then higher - to homeownership, college for the children and a funded retirement. That path was a good job in basic manufacturing, making steel, paper, even iPods. Now these things are made abroad. The United States has lost millions of manufacturing jobs.
Maryland is no exception. Sparrows Point just idled its blast furnace, and on the other side of the state, one of the paper-making machines at the NewPage paper facility in Luke remains shut down. (Disclosure: I represented NewPage in a large trade case against China.) We need to get our manufacturing base back, and as one step in that direction, President-elect Barack Obama should propose a new trade round.
Since 2001, trade negotiators have been struggling through the Doha Round, talks that started in Doha, Qatar in 2001. The Doha Round had two main objectives: opening markets ever wider for products from the developing world and ending agricultural subsidies in the United States and the rest of the developed world. These are worthy goals, but they are not central to the trade problems the United States faces. After seven years, the Doha Round has still not come to closure, and the United States should move in a new direction.
