The AFL-CIO and its unions argued long and hard against the present 24-year-old NAFTA, pushed through by Democratic President Bill Clinton. They forecast, accurately, that it would cost U.S. jobs. The Economic Policy Institute puts the job losses at 700,000-1 million.
Press Associates Inc.
March 12, 2018
“Today’s job report shows the economy has built on the progress of the previous administration by adding almost as many jobs in 13 months as the number of jobs added in the last 13 months of the Obama administration. However, even though the economy is generating new jobs, workers are still struggling to find economic security. Compounding this instability is the Trump administration’s proposed rule that would allow employers to confiscate workers’ hard-earned tips. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that tipped workers could lose $5.8 billion dollars a year.
Rep. Bobby Scott
March 12, 2018
“We urge Congress to pass this important legislation,” said Celine McNicholas, Labor Counsel at the Economic Policy Institute. “The Department of Labor has proposed a rule that would abolish the current regulation that prohibits employers from taking workers’ tips. We estimate that if DOL finalizes its proposal, workers will lose $5.8 billion in tips every year as tips are shifted from workers to employers, and of the $5.8 billion, nearly 80 percent—$4.6 billion—would be taken from women who are working in tipped jobs.”
Patch.com
March 12, 2018
The industry has long complained that it’s been undermined by overproduction of steel in China, which the Commerce Department says is “by far” the largest contributor toward 700 million tons of excess steel capacity worldwide. While China represents only a small fraction of steel imports to America, critics say it and other countries distort the global market by subsidizing cheap steel in order to build up their industry at home and muscle out rivals abroad. “We put those duties in place and we can help industries recover,” Robert Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute who is broadly supportive of the tariffs, told NBC News. “It leads to more investment, it leads to increasing employment.”
NBC News
March 8, 2018
But the MAGA crowd isn’t the only place where you’ll find support for Trump’s anti-trade actions. Glance to the left, and you’ll see that some progressives kind of like them, too — although they typically couch their approval in an “even a racist, sexist, broken clock is right twice a day” tone. For instance: In a New York Times op-ed, Josh Bivens, research director of the lefty Economic Policy Institute, said concern about trade wars and global instability “were overblown” and represented “reflexive anti-Trump sentiment rather than careful economic reasoning” about actions that “may do some good.” (Of course, the piece included a boilerplate sentence about Trump’s “xenophobia” and “bigotry.”)
The Week
March 8, 2018
Joining DiMicco on the call was Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers, Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, Josh Bivens, director of research at the economic policy institute, and retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. John Adams.
Business Journal Daily
March 8, 2018
While the media call addressed both steel and aluminum, steel garnered the lion’s share of attention, and China was identified as the biggest violator of trade. Joining Paul on the call were Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers; Dan DiMicco, chairman emeritus of Nucor Corp., retired Brig. Gen. John Adams; and Josh Bivens, director research for the Economic Policy Institute.
Industry Week
March 8, 2018
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the main area of improvement is in education. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that 92.3% of young black people (aged 25 to 29) at least completed high school in 2017, effectively closing the gap with white people of the same age (92.5%). In 1968, just 54.4% of young black people finished high school, compared with 75% for whites, according to the EPI.
Quartz
March 8, 2018
Inadequate housing? As a “snapshot” from the Economic Policy Institute noted in 2013, “Residential segregation and ongoing poverty has left African Americans in some of the least desirable housing in some of the lowest-resourced communities in America.” The proportion of the poor population living in high-poverty neighborhoods rose from 43 percent to 54 percent between 2000 and 2015, according to a report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and the number of high-poverty neighborhoods around the country rose from 13,4000 to more than 21,300. Inadequate education? “Schools remain segregated today because neighborhoods in which they are located are segregated,” Richard Rothstein wrote in a 2013 report for the Economic Policy Institute. Rothstein adds that “raising (the educational) achievement of low-income black children requires residential integration, from which school integration can follow.”
Nation of Change
March 8, 2018