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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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New Report: Oregon Loses 36,800 Jobs to China

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Wednesday, July 30, 2008   

Portland, OR – Before you put down your money for that new computer or HDTV, you might want to give a thought to where it was made and what that might mean for Oregon. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute says Oregon has lost almost 37,000 jobs in the past six years as a result of the U.S. imbalance in trade with China, which has cost two million jobs nationwide. The volume of Chinese products coming into this country, especially computers and electronic parts, is five times that of U.S. exports to China.

Joy Margheim, policy analyst with the Oregon Center for Public Policy, says it's workers who tend to lose when trade between two countries gets out of balance.

"Growth in exports creates jobs and growth in imports destroys jobs. Imports displace goods that otherwise would have been made in the United States. With China, we are importing, and thus destroying more jobs than we are gaining through exports."

Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO, says trade agreements don't include issues like wages or working conditions that directly affect the people making the goods.

"Multinational corporations are going after the cheapest labor markets possible, labor markets that trade agreements really don't address. It really puts the American work force, and America, at a disadvantage as we try to compete in a global market."

The report from EPI, a Washington, D.C. think tank, also says displaced workers are likely to be paid less when they find new jobs. It suggests that the U.S. should be making China enforce stronger labor laws and pollution standards, as conditions of trade.

Opponents of tougher trade policies say such measures would just raise prices here in America.

To view the report online, visit www.epi.org.


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