While traveling around Ohio, as I am doing this weekend, I hear from constituents on a range of

While traveling around Ohio, as I am doing this weekend, I hear from constituents on a range of issues — from how we should deal with ISIS to the high costs of health care to personal matters with federal agencies, such as the VA or the IRS. But the top concern I hear about is the economy and the need for good-paying jobs. The same is true with our letters, emails and phone calls.

Last month I received an email from Mike, a maintenance foreman at Wheatland Tube in Warren. He wrote about an issue I have focused on in the Senate: enforcing our trade laws to ensure that foreign competitors aren’t cheating American workers. Mike said, “As an individual employed in manufacturing, I understand better than most that trade is a key component for economic growth.”

But then he also said, “However, it’s important for U.S. manufacturers to have the tools to challenge unfair trade.” He said that “it’s essential that provisions to close loopholes in trade laws” are quickly passed through Congress.

He was talking about a bipartisan provision that I sponsored with Sen. Sherrod Brown called the Leveling the Playing Field Act, legislation that improves the way trade cases work to crack down on foreign competitors who manipulate the system and tilt the playing field away from American workers. Because his email echoed concerns I’ve heard throughout Ohio, I got Mike’s permission to share his comments with my colleagues by reading it on the Senate floor.

WHEATLAND TUBE

Wheatland Tube is the nation’s largest producer of steel pipe and tube products with facilities in Warren, Niles, Cambridge and Brookfield. Mike has seen the tactics foreign companies employ to gain an unfair advantage. Wheatland and other Ohio companies have benefited from trade-enforcement cases over the years, including several I strongly supported that we won just last year to stem the flow of illegally imported Chinese pipe and tube products.

Mike indicated that the plant in Warren with 178 workers would probably not exist today if not for these important trade-enforcement victories. But Mike also knows that the way trade laws work, sometimes by the time a company can get the relief it needs, it is too late to save jobs.

Fortunately for Mike and thousands of Ohio workers like him, the Senate passed our common-sense measure to help American manufacturers. Our measure helps ensure that American workers can get help when foreign competitors violate trade laws, instead of the current system that often provides assistance after factories have lost too much market share, and too many jobs are lost.

Holding our competitors’ feet to the fire when they break our trade laws is an absolute necessity. I hear about this issue all over Ohio, and I have been proud to stand side by side with pipe and tube manufacturers throughout the Mahoning Valley who are powering America’s energy renaissance. I have also fought for United Steel Workers manufacturing tires in Findlay and paper in Chillicothe, along with hundreds of Ohio workers manufacturing rebar in Marion and Cincinnati.

Mike concluded by saying, “Without laws to regulate unfair trade, I know my job – and the jobs of thousands of other manufacturing workers – is at risk.” His e-mail says it all.

I believe in Ohio workers, and I believe they can compete with anyone around the world so long as they have a level playing field. I am proud to stand with workers like Mike, and thousands like him who are the backbone of Ohio’s economy.

Rob Portman, a Republican, represents Ohio in the U.S. Senate.