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Obama: Looking for Jobs in All the Wrong Places
By Alan Tonelson
Thursday, November 26, 2009
U.S. EMPLOYMENT TRENDS
Obama -- How to Improve the Bleak US Jobs Picture? Multiply!
“I just came back from a trip to Asia in which one of my highest priorities was discussing how we can increase exports into that region. If we could just increase our exports by 5 percent into that region, that would mean hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs.”
–President Obama, November 23, 2009
U.S. goods exports to Pacific Rim countries, year-to-date, 2009: $168.885 billion
Five percent of that total: $8.44 billion
U.S. goods imports from Pacific Rim countries, year-to-date, 2009: $406.93 billion
Five percent of that total: $20.34 billion
trade barriers faced by U.S. exports to Pacific Rim markets: fill 173 pages in latest U.S. government report on foreign trade barriers
trade barriers faced by U.S. exports to U.S. markets: 0
Sources: “Remarks by the President after Meeting with his Cabinet,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, November 23, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-after-meeting-with-his-cabinet-0; calculated from Trade Dataweb, U.S. International Trade Commission, http://dataweb.usitc.gov/; and calculated from 2009 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/reports/2009/NTE/asset_upload_file405_15451.pdf
Alan Tonelson is a Research Fellow at the U.S. Business & Industry Educational Foundation and the author of The Race to the Bottom: Why a Worldwide Worker Surplus and Uncontrolled Free Trade are Sinking American Living Standards (Westview Press).
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