President needs steely resolve

President needs steely resolve

Even though the steel in- dustry has begun to see signs of economic recovery, Ohio’s unemployment still hovers around 11 percent. We support the Obama Administration’s goal of doubling U.S. exports in the next five years to increase employment. But to do so, President Obama must address one of the biggest barriers to that goal: China’s undervalued currency. China undervalues the yuan by as much as 40 percent, giving its exports an unfair advantage over U.S. products in markets around the world.

In addition, the administration cannot keep imposing new regulations that stifle U.S. competitiveness and cost valuable jobs, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to regulate emissions from industrial sources under the Clean Air Act. New regulations like these continue to cripple our manufacturing base by discouraging new investment just as we are trying to come out of this recession.

Ohio is the heartland of U.S. manufacturing, including being the second highest state in steel production, generating $5.15 billion in value-added output. Let’s work together to increase exports by minimizing costly new regulations and taking action against governments, such as China, who don’t play by the rules.

Thomas J. Gibson, Washington, D.C.

The writer is president and CEO American Iron and Steel Institute.

How about helping hospitals?

Bertram de Souza’s sugges- tion that President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius be alerted to the Forum bankruptcy is right on target. While the potential purchase of Forum by Ardent Health Services appears encouraging, President Obama and Secretary Sebelius, whose father is former Ohio Gov. John Gilligan, ought to consider the formation of a medical and surgical asset recovery program (MASARP), modeled on the bailout program for banks, insurance companies, and the auto industry.

In addition to the reasons that were offered for TARP, MASARP ought to be motivated by three additional considerations. First, Obamacare is likely to prod an unknown number of American employers to curtail their domestic operations to avoid the additional burdens that will be placed on them by 2014. Those displaced workers will be uninsured. Second, there are some well-intended but misguided academics and entrepreneurs who are promoting unusual ideas in health care that ultimately rely on the medical abandonment of large numbers of medically uninsured folks. MASARP will protect them. Third, it’s not clear that Obamacare will survive the legal and political challenges that opponents will offer. MASARP would offer additional safeguards.

Jack Labusch, Niles