Former congressman foresaw havoc of trade deals
One day in 1993, dozens of House members crowded into the Capitol Hill office of David Bonior, a liberal Democrat from Michigan who was then serving as party whip.
The lawmakers, including congressman Ron Klink of Westmoreland County, had gathered to plot the defeat of NAFTA — the North America Free Trade Agreement — between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
Initiated by the administration of George H.W. Bush and embraced by the new Clinton administration, NAFTA was anathema to America’s unions and many environmentalists as well as to a small number of Republicans and a larger number of independents following the lead of Ross Perot.
It was the Texan Perot, after all, who coined the phrase “giant sucking sound” to describe the exodus of American manufacturing jobs to Mexico, lured there by the mouth-watering prospect (for profit-mad companies) of low wages and lax environmental and labor standards.
Klink had invited me, a reporter, to the meeting. This extraordinary access afforded me the opportunity to discover that these freely-chosen representatives of the American people had no idea what they were doing: I was witness to one big gripe session. The meeting was as disorganized as a fourth-grade basketball game. It all seemed pretty sophomoric.
In the end, NAFTA cleared the House by a fairly slim margin; a majority of House Democrats deserted the administration. The dissenters included Klink, Austin Murphy, and John Murtha. Another objector was Bud Shuster, a Republican. Shuster’s son Bill now represents Fayette and a portion of Greene and Washington counties in Washington.
Bill Shuster has indicated support for the latest son of NAFTA — the Obama-backed, tariff-busting, Asia-centric Trans-Pacific Partnership, now being debated in Congress. He stated that “trade … supports over 1.5 million jobs” in the state. At the same time, he says he’s withholding a full TPP embrace, for the moment at least, owing to his distrust of President Obama.)
In the Senate, NAFTA had an easier time, with the state’s two senators split down the middle: Democrat Harris Wofford opposed the measure, Republican Arlen Specter was in favor.
It is probable TPP will produce the same sort of outcome, with Bob Casey, a Democrat, in opposition, and Republican Pat Toomey voting yes, all of this based on the predictive quality of votes already cast on some preliminary TPP measures, including a vote to end debate on fast-track trade authority for the president.
But that’s for the future. Our concern today is the past, though as that renowned political scientist William Faulkner once observed, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
John Dent was a trade hawk. In the 20th century, the protective tariff never had a better friend.
Dent of Jeannette served in Congress for 20 years, retiring in 1978. In all that time, from Republican Dwight Eisenhower to Democrat Jimmy Carter, he never warmed to the idea of lowered trade barriers.
Chairman of the House Select Committee on Trade, Dent was forever launching hearings and writing memos to the presidents and their trade negotiators complaining that they were ruining the country with their push for “free” trade.
Mostly, Dent had in mind his beloved hometown. In the early days of Dent’s time in Congress, Jeannette was a manufacturing hub, a regular miniature Pittsburgh. Jeannette was home to plants that produced nearly everything — from steel and glass to tennis balls. At one time, Jeannette was just about the premier tennis ball manufacturer in the world.
Then along came the Japanese, who flooded the world with tennis balls. Dent complained, but he was powerless to stop the deluge. In time, Jeannette was no longer in the tennis ball business.
Today, Jeannette has several excellent restaurants and any number of fine people. But it no longer bulges with jobs. What it used to manufacture is now manufactured in lands far from the United States.
Dent knew the day was coming when Jeannette would be a world- class nothing. He told administration after administration that this was where things were headed. American manufacturing needed friends in Washington. It had one big friend, in the person of John Dent. But it needed more.
In 1972, the president of the glassworkers local in Jeannette wrote the congressman to plead to “please do all you can for us.”
The union chief, Ed Pilla, said, “I know you are a pioneer in limiting imports. … You were once a voice in the wilderness, but now so many jobs are being affected by imports, people can hear you loud and clear.”
That was 43 years ago, at a time when American manufacturing was still robust, before the loss of an estimated 700,000 manufacturing jobs under NAFTA and hundreds of thousands of other jobs under succeeding free trade agreements. Imagine Dent’s dismay if he were alive. Dismay, yes. Surprise, no. He saw it coming.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.