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Producers have urged Biden to keep the steel tariff, and they found a new point of argument in a recent study. Left-leaning think tank the Economic Policy Institute found in a March 24 analysis that the steel tariffs delivered benefits in the near term, including drastic cuts to steel imports. The study was promoted after its release by the American Iron and Steel Institute, a nonprofit that represents U.S. steelmakers and iron producers.
The Section 232 actions had “no meaningful real-world impact” on the prices of steel-consuming products such as cars, and exclusions to the actions such as those instituted under Trump “mitigate positive economic impact,” according to the study. After the measures were implemented in 2018 and prior to the widespread downturn in 2020, steel producers in the U.S. outlined plans to invest more than $15.76 billion in new or upgraded steel facilities and to create more than 3,200 new jobs in the country.
There is “no doubt” the trade actions boosted profitability in the U.S. steel sector, increased long-term investment within the space and led to some form of a recovery, according to Robert Scott, an economist who worked on the study. However, the tariffs alone were unable to stop the issue of excess steel production abroad.
“Until we get that problem under control, I don’t think the need for the tariffs is going to go away,” Scott said in an interview. “Other countries aren’t going to be willing to make concessions without really tough international bargaining.”
S&P Global April 16, 2021 -
Since 1938, the minimum wage has been raised more than twenty times, in administrations of both parties. But its purchasing power has meant different things depending on the year. When adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage hit its peak in 1968 at $12.30 an hour in today’s dollars.
“Obviously, since that time, increases in the federal minimum wage have been either less frequent or just smaller, just inadequate to keep up with the rise in prices,” David Cooper, a senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute told Spectrum News.
That’s led to calls for a $15/hour minimum wage, dubbed the “Fight for $15.” It has unleashed strikes and drawn the support of President Biden.
Spectrum News NY 1 April 16, 2021 -
Both sides turn to the economic and social consequences of COVID-19 to bolster their cases. Proponents say about a fifth of the workforce would get a raise, which would boost their annual pay, on average, more than $3,300.
That hike would particularly benefit Black and Latino workers, who make disproportionately less than others. In all, the legislation would lift 900,000 people out of poverty, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“I take that as a pretty positive outcome – if you’re going to be lifting nearly a million people out of poverty and raising pay for twenty seven million, even if there is some negative impact on jobs in some places,” David Cooper, a senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, said in an interview with Spectrum News.
Spectrum News NY 1 April 16, 2021 -
For instance, the average white family is more than 10 times wealthier than an average Black family, and white non-college graduates have more wealth than Black college graduates, according an April 2020 report from the Brookings Institution on the need for reparations. As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, there is a similar gap between the wages of Black and white workers — making it extremely difficult for labor alone to close that wealth gap.
VOX April 16, 2021 -
Declining unionization translates to a loss of $1.56 per hour worked, the equivalent of $3,250 for a full-time, full-year worker, according to an estimate by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Celine McNicholas, EPI’s director of government affairs and labor counsel, said that tying federal contract dollars to union jobs wouldn’t be sufficient for creating a workforce with strong union density.
“It will make a difference, but you absolutely need meaningful labor-law reform, not nibbling around the edges and offering piecemeal” measures, she said. “The system is fundamentally broken and requires fundamental reform.”
Bloomberg April 16, 2021 -
The depth and speed of the current economic downturn was unprecedented, but the longstanding gaps in wealth and wages indicate that Black and brown households will take longer to bounce back, according to Kyle Moore, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race and ethnicity.
“In periods of general economic growth, racial disparities in a wide range of poverty indicators have remained constant, suggesting a lack of political will over decades to tackle the root causes. Black and brown households have been hardest hit in every economic crisis, and taken the longest to recover,” said Moore.
The Guardian April 16, 2021 -
A September 2020 study by the progressive Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found that Southern states are more likely than states in other regions to use preemption to stop local governments from implementing worker protections such as raising the minimum wage or guaranteeing paid sick leave.
That stance, the institute wrote, is rooted “in a long history of events and actions that have sought to promote the interests of historically privileged property owners and perpetuate the South’s racist past.”
Julia Wolfe, one of the study’s authors and a state economic analyst at the institute, said these preemption laws seem to be “targeted at preventing action in more progressive cities.”
Stateline April 16, 2021 -
Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the pro-union Economic Policy Institute, noted that the National Labor Relations Act requires employers to bargain in good faith. But she said only “really egregious conduct” violates that rule.
“That’s why you so often see companies dragging their feet at the bargaining table,” she said. “They don’t really face any penalties. And there are no tight time structures within the law as it exists now, so workers can end up bargaining for years.”
But legislation proposed in Congress known as the PRO Act would expand worker rights, McNicholas said, in part by requiring employers to negotiate first contracts in a timely manner.
The U.S. House passed the PRO Act last month, but its chances in the closely divided Senate are less certain.
Under the measure, companies would, for the first time, face financial penalties for violating federal labor law. They could also be considered “joint employers” even when they contract out work to another firm. Google, therefore, could be forced to come to the negotiating table rather than leave matters entirely in the hands of a contractor.
McNicholas couldn’t say what the PRO Act would mean specifically for the HCL employees in Pittsburgh, but she said it would give more leverage to workers overall.
“If you have any kind of influence over the way in which this workforce operates, you’re going to be compelled to bargain with them, so that workers are not trying to chase down different employers in a complicated contracting system,” she said.
90.5 WESA April 16, 2021 -
Strong national employment numbers from March are a reason for optimism, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. But the country is still down 8.4 million jobs or as many as 11 million when considering what the job growth might have been without the pandemic, she said.
“Going into this, on average we were creating about 200,000 jobs a month,” Gould said. “We still have more than 4 million people that have been unemployed for at least six months.”
The Black unemployment rate, historically about twice the rate of whites, is 9.6%, compared to 6% for white workers, Gould said. The Hispanic unemployment rate soared to nearly 19% and was even higher for Hispanic women at 20.5%. It’s now close to 8%.
Denver Post April 16, 2021 -
A new study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released last week affirms that these Section 232 steel tariffs are effective. Following their implementation, U.S. steel producers made new investments, upgrades, plant expansions and reopened idled facilities in at least 15 states. American steel producers created thousands of jobs and plan to invest more than $15.7 billion in new and upgraded facilities.
Critics of the Section 232 on steel like to claim it increased prices for downstream products. But don’t buy it. The new EPI study data show prices were unaffected across the broad array of industries that account for the vast majority of steel consumption and that steel tariffs had no measurable impact on downstream steel-consuming industries or material effects on consumer prices.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette April 16, 2021