Fight job losses now or pay benefits later

The Department of Labor confirmed the other day what everyone in the Mahoning Valley already knew: Foreign competition is cutting the legs out from under domestic automobile parts suppliers.
Labor announced that some 3,000 employees at Delphi Packard Electric in Warren would be eligible to apply for benefits under the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act.
There is some irony in the fact that the TAAA was passed in 1974, when the then Packard Electric Division of General Motors had its world headquarters in Warren. A year later, a small number of Packard workers were among the first to apply for Trade Assistance benefits, at a time when the U.S. auto industry was being hurt by low-mileage imports in the wake of the early-1970s' energy crisis. Even so, Packard still employed more than 10,000 workers in and around Warren and its first plants in Mexico were years in the future.
The Labor Department's investigation of recent job losses, launched at the request of unions at Delphi Packard Electric, found that Delphi lost business, in part, because of increased imports of connections and wiring systems products.
Costs raise questions
So the federal government will now spend money helping displaced workers get retraining, search for jobs or even relocate -- which is as it should be. That such assistance is recognized as a duty of the government should cause people in Washington, D.C., to ask themselves if government should be doing more to protect the jobs that we have.
There is no doubt the United States must compete in the world market place, but it can only do so if the field of competition is close to level.
At a time when China is gearing up to export not only auto parts, but entire automobiles, Congress and the White House should begin asking just how much Trade Adjustment Assistance Washington can afford.
Among our various trading partners, China in particular is not only taking advantage of a huge and underpaid work force, but continues to keep prices low with an artificially devalued currency.
American workers in Ohio and Michigan and other states that once made the United States the premier automaker in the world would rather build their own parts and cars than collect a few thousand dollars that Washington doles out as a penance for not having protected its own.