SHARON Group wants to put a stop to free-trade agreements

Twenty people attended a town meeting Wednesday.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- Pennsylvania has lost 123,800 manufacturing jobs since January 2001, and at that rate, all manufacturing in the state will be gone by mid-February 2024, the Steel Valley Authority said.
Tom Croft, the authority's executive director, said Mercer County has been particularly hard hit, losing just more than 25 percent of its manufacturing jobs since 1998.
That's higher than the 16 percent loss on both the state and national levels, he said.
"Pennsylvania manufacturing is in a crisis that hurts workers, firms and communities," Croft said, adding that current trade rules are a significant cause of that crisis and new trade policies are needed.
Croft was in Sharon to participate in a Coalition for Trade Sanity town meeting Wednesday at the Penn State Shenango campus. The event attracted about 20 people, far fewer than organizers had hoped, but that didn't stop participants from putting out their message.
"This is a crisis of great magnitude," said Jim Panyard, president and chief executive officer of the Pennsylvania Manufacturer's Association.
Pennsylvania has been losing 140 manufacturing jobs a day over the last 21/2 years as the trade deficit with foreign nations rose, Panyard said.
"The job losses are gutting the American middle class," he said, adding, "We're becoming the victims of economic terrorism."
Unfair trade is to blame, Panyard said, urging people to force their federal elected representatives to act.
Wants moratorium
The coalition is asking for a moratorium on any future free trade agreements, a complete review of both the North American Free Trade Agreement and U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization, and a continuation of protective steel tariffs, he said.
"It's the American worker that's paying the price for this," said Kyle Klaric, owner of Premier Hydraulics Inc. of Farrell, a manufacturer of engine components for the heavy- equipment industry.
Klaric said he is being pressured by his customers to move his production offshore so they can get a price cut on the components they buy from him.
They ask for cost reductions every year and are telling him to stop producing at his plant in Farrell and move production overseas where labor costs are much lower, he said, adding that they don't care about jobs here, only about making the product cheaper.
"My job is already gone," said Renee Ashman of Brentwood Drive, Transfer, a former employee of the Werner Co. of Greenville -- which cut 500 jobs when it decided to move its ladder-making operations to less expensive locations to compete with foreign producers in China and Mexico.
The Trade Sanity effort could help prevent others from going through what she's had to deal with over the past year, Ashman said.
The American steel industry lost 350,000 jobs in the 1980s and 1990s but became technologically advanced and more productive, said Ike Gittlen, coordinator of Pennsylvania Stand UP for Steel. It can't compete, however, on an uneven trading field that has foreign competitors subsidized by their governments and paying their workers only 61 cents an hour, he said.
There are 39 steel companies in bankruptcy right now in this country and the industry is on the verge of collapse, Gittlen said, adding that the United States is the only country in the world that has allowed foreign competitors to dump steel on a domestic market.
America needs fair trade, he said.
"The communities must get involved," said Dr. Thomas Hawkins, president of Shenango Valley Initiative, a community based activist group.
He called for the formation of a "Sustaining Mercer County" organization dedicated to rebuilding the county's economy.
Dom Vadala, a former local steel union president, was in the audience and offered this advice: "Buy American."
gwin@vindy.com