The BlueGreen Alliance and Apollo Alliance today announced a merger to strengthen and unify the movement to build a clean energy, good jobs economy to fuel U.S. job creation. The newly unified organization will call on Washington to focus anew on creating good jobs, securing America’s energy future and preserving the environment for future generations.

The nation “must dig in and redouble our efforts to ‘Make It In America‘,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) at Senate hearing this afternoon on reviving the nation’s  manufacturing base.

China’s currency manipulation should be the main focus of talks this week between high level U.S. and Chinese government officials, says Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM).

Unlike our competitors, the United States does not have a national manufacturing strategy.  The “Make It in America” agenda, proposed by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), is a step toward pursuing policies that will support and create manufacturing jobs, says Machinists (IAM) President Tom Buffenbarger. He urged support for the agenda and praised parts of it as critical to restoring the nation’s economic and national security.

To date, 682,900 U.S. jobs have been lost or displaced since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994, a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study finds. The main reason for the job loss is a $97.2 billion trade deficit with Mexico. In 1993, one year before NAFTA was implemented, the United States had a $1.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico that supported nearly 30,000 U.S.  jobs.  

Over the past decade, the United States has lost nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs and 57,000 factories. Along with good, family-sustaining jobs, we are losing valuable technical know-how that could create future prosperity, says a new report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

The erosion of the nation’s manufacturing base, especially over the past decade, has not only cost millions of jobs and devastated working families across the country, it has also put the nation’s security at risk, a report released this morning reveals.

During the past decade, 5.5 million American manufacturing jobs have disappeared, mostly due to bad trade and tax policies that encourage U.S. companies to move jobs overseas. Further fueling job loss has been the global economic crisis and lack of a comprehensive national manufacturing strategy.

Steve Cappozola of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), reports on what happens when manufacturing jobs disappear. This is a cross post from the AAM website.

Last week, Manufacture Thispublished a chart showing how lost manufacturing jobs correspond with lower state revenues and higher state budget deficits.

U.S. economic and trade policies over the past three decades have led to jobs lost offshore and a shrinking middle class, and the United States must address this economic bleed through trade policies and investment in infrastructure and manufacturing, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today.