Bipartisan unity seen in Wisconsin factory against CCP’s threat to US manufacturing.
In a Cozy Town, Industry and Labor Unite Against a Common Threat
In a cozy, Upper Midwestern industrial town, something a little unusual happened on Aug. 30 when industry, labor, and representatives from both major parties came together to recognize a common threat.
“China has a plan to replace the United States, and they’re working on it every single day,” Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) told The Epoch Times on the factory floor at Stoughton Trailers, a manufacturer of dry vans, grain trailers, and similar products.
He and two colleagues from Congress’s Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), had come to a company whose recent history has been shaped by aggressive Chinese competition and America’s sometimes lackluster response.
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china/china-extends-anti-dumping-tariffs-on-eu-uk-steel-fasteners-imports-4563030″>China Extends Anti-Dumping Tariffs on EU, UK Steel Fasteners Imports6/29/2022
“Back in the nineties, we built a plant that was making chassis and intermodal containers. All that business went away as the Chinese were subsidizing their market,” Ron Jake of Stoughton Trailers told The Epoch Times.
They blamed large subsidies to a Chinese state-owned enterprise—China International Marine Containers (Group) Co. Ltd. (CIMC).
“Our companies are competing against Chinese firms that literally cannot go bankrupt or be underpriced. In the case of Stoughton Trailers, their Chinese competitors were selling products into the U.S. for less than the cost of the raw materials used to produce them. That’s not competition. That is a disease,” Mr. Gallagher testified.
Since Tariff, ‘It’s Been Gangbusters’
The Department of Commerce found in Stoughton Trailers’ favor in 2015, determining that certain dry containers from China were being sold at less than fair value. Yet, Stoughton Trailers lost a 2015 case against CIMC with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).
“We were forced to shut down our container manufacturing operations,” Mr. Wahlin testified.
Stoughton Trailers pursued a second case with a coalition of other U.S. chassis manufacturers. In 2021 decisions, both the Department of Commerce and the ITC found in favor of U.S. industry. That meant the Department of Commerce could direct U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to enforce a tariff, anti-dumping countervailing duty, on Chinese manufacturers still dumping or unfairly subsidizing those products.
The upshot: On the afternoon of Aug. 23, Mr. Jake led reporters to a full chassis assembly line that, in his words, “did not exist three years ago.”
‘Learn to Code’ Not Enough
Multiple panelists emphasized the need for better and more targeted vocational training in the domestic manufacturing sector.
“Congress should support collective bargaining agreements which have job training language—what we call internal apprenticeships,” Mr. Kramer said.
One common refrain to American workers—”learn to code,” as President Joe Biden famously told coal miners in 2019—may not resonate as strongly in the country’s industrial heartland, where brains and brawn both matter.
At Stoughton Trailers, a highly automated bending machine made by the German firm Trumpf shared a factory floor with workers pushing a partly completed chassis further down the production line.
“The students that we have coming from school today, in high school, are often trained more in coding, which is useful to us, but a majority of those students don’t have the combination of the physical skills and the mental skills to really take on the positions and grow our business, grow our workforce,” Jim Myers, technical director at MetalTek International, told the panel.
Mr. Myers, who testified that his company provides specialized components to the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, and “other challenging industries,” told The Epoch Times
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