LITTLE ROCK — Three members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation told city leaders from across the state Friday that they support free trade but want to make sure that free-trade agreements are not simply a gateway to sending jobs to other countries.
The subject came up during the winter conference of the Arkansas Municipal League, where Friday’s speakers included U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and U.S. Reps. Mike Ross, D-Prescott and Tim Griffin, R-Little Rock.
After Pryor mentioned that he voted for free-trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Columbia to create new markets for American agricultural products, Morrilton Mayor Stewart Nelson told the senator there is another side to free trade.
“I just lost 200 jobs in Morrilton because jobs went to Mexico, and before that I lost 1,800 jobs in Morrilton because jobs went to Mexico,” Nelson said.
“When you think about making opportunities for farmers in Columbia, in Korea and all those others, remember that my $10-an-hour worker is having to compete with a $1 worker in another country and those jobs are leaving us. I know Fort Smith just lost some jobs. We’re desperate and we need some help,” he said.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Bosch and Whirlpool have announced that they will shut down plants in Morrilton and Fort Smith, respectively, later this year.
Pryor said he agreed with Nelson.
“Free trade has to also be fair, and some of the so-called free-trade agreements have not been that fair,” Pryor said.
The senator said he believes American workers can compete with any workers in the world if the playing field is level.
“It is hard to compete sometimes against countries where their wage scale is totally, totally out of line with ours or they don’t have any environmental regs or some of the other stuff, the safety regs and safety laws that we do in this country,” he said.
Ross told reporters that “we need to rethink some of these trade agreements.”
“We can’t build a wall around America in terms of trade,” he said. “We want to trade. But we want the kind of trade agreements that allow us to ship our products overseas rather than simply shipping our jobs overseas.”
Toward that end, Ross said, “you’ve got to look at who you’re trading with. Obviously if you’re trading with an economy where people are working for 25 cents or 50 cents an hour, they’re not likely to be buying our products. It’s more about shipping our jobs to them.”
Griffin told the Municipal League he asked Caterpillar why it has not moved jobs from its North Little Rock plant to Mexico. He said company officials told him they stayed for the infrastructure, access to skilled and educated workers, and partnership with Pulaski Technical College that they enjoy in Arkansas.
“It’s going to be hard to compete on just labor costs alone, but there are advantages that we have in international trade and we need to make sure that we maintain those,” he said.
Griffin told reporters he voted for the same free-trade agreements that Pryor voted for. He said that even with those agreements, the U.S. is at a disadvantage because those countries have been trading with European countries much longer and have built up relationships with them.
“(Free-trade agreements) are never perfect, but they’re better than the alternative,” he said.
Griffin also told reporters he supports the concept behind President Obama’s proposal, announced Friday, to obtain authority to merge several government agencies dealing with commerce into a single agency.
“I want to look at the details and see how long he wants this power, what the specifics are for, but the general concept? Fabulous. We ought to be doing that throughout government. In fact, that ought to be done at both the state and federal level,” Griffin said.