Job Loss
The US National Association of Manufacturers is predicting
a $US 1.8 billion a year gain for United States manufacturing
under a USFTA. Some of the biggest gains for the United
States will be made in the automotive industry - an
industry that provides tens of thousands of jobs all
over Australia. A USFTA together with our rising dollar
will directly threaten those jobs. The combination of
our rising dollar, loss of government industry support
mechanisms, and tariffs through a Free Trade Agreement
will also mean reduced investment in Australian manufacturing.
Between 1989 and 1997 free trade agreements with
the United States and Mexico cost the Canadians 270,000
jobs - the majority of them in manufacturing - what
can Australian manufacturing workers and their communities
expect?
There are a lot more issues to cover - the things we are being asked to give up; lack of parliamentary oversight of treaties - but we can talk about those later in the week. Over to you Alan.
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Doug
From: Alan Oxley
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2003 16:00
Subject: Re: Australia should not become the 51st state
of America
Doug,
Free trade promotes open societies. Australia is
a successful society because it has always been open:
open to trade (it could not have developed without imports
or creating export industries); open to investment (foreign
investment funded our first export industries: wool
and wheat), and above all open to people. Australia
is a migrant society.
Being open has not undermined Australia's culture. When most contact
(trade, migration, investment) was with Britain, we remained firmly
Australian. Today cultural exposure to the US is great (but less
than it was with Britain for a century) as well as to many other
cultures and Australia's sense of cultural independence has never
been stronger.
Openness does not suit all societies. But Australia
has grown and thrives on it. An FTA with the US will
not significantly magnify Australian exposure to US
culture any more than this process will continue as
the global influence of the US grows. Some Australians
may dislike this, but it is a reality and most Australians
seem comfortable with it.
Openness has been fundamental to Australia's success.
Only when we closed ourselves off to the world, as we
did when we increased protection of manufacturing in
the seventies, did we get into trouble. Protection saps
national wealth, and kills industries. We nearly lost
our automobile and steel industries in the eighties
because we sheltered them too long from world markets.
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We are now a successful exporter of manufactures.
One quarter of all exports are manufactures. Many said
this was never possible. We export Magnas (and soon
Monaros) to the US, steel to Asia and fast ferries and
scientific instruments to Europe.
There are fewer workers today in manufacturing, but
that is the impact of technology - a worldwide phenomenon.
The services sector is now the big employer in industrialized
economies. Even so, exporting creates well-paid jobs
in manufacturing. Analyses by the Australian Bureau
of Statistics show Australian workers in businesses
that export are paid more and have more security.
Australia's trade barriers are low, so we have few
barriers to remove if US companies are to operate in
Australia on the same terms as Australian companies.
That is the basic point of a Free Trade Agreement.
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