Neutex Advanced Energy Group, a Houston-based maker of LED lights, light bulbs and fixtures, brought its core manufacturing operation from China back to the United States last year and turned to the Electrical Workers (IBEW) to staff its facility.

Middle-class wages have been stagnant for more than 30 years. Stagnant wages are due to many factors, including the decline in unionism, the decline in the value of the minimum wage, rising health care costs and the need to cut non-fixed cost, i.e., labor, because of global competition.

China has long been known as the globe’s biggest currency manipulator. China undervalues its currency—the yuan or the renminbi— and that raises the price of U.S. exports and suppresses the price of Chinese imports into the United States. This artificial price advantage is a major factor that encourages U.S. businesses to shut down operations here and manufacture in China instead, costing the U.S. millions of manufacturing jobs and is a major reason for the massive U.S. trade deficit.

The conduct of the New York State Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) in rehabilitating the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge can only be described as anti-American.

The MTA plans to send $235.7 million of Americans' hard-earned toll dollars to China for foreign steel and foreign fabrication to renovate a bridge over the Hudson River that Americans built with American steel and American fabrication 50 years ago.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released a statement today announcing support for the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2013 and its companion legislation in the House, the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act of 2013. Trumka warned that currency manipulation by foreign governments leads to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Apple (like many giant, multinational corporations) has been avoiding paying the taxes they owe to the country by setting up foreign “subsidiaries” in tax-haven countries and moving jobs and profit centers out of the country. They have accumulated billions upon billions of dollars in these tax havens. Now they want a special tax break to reward them for doing that.

The Washington Post today published a special section—in print and on the Web—about what some say is a resurgence of “Made in America” manufacturing.

In the section’s anchor piece, Brad Plumer writes that some U.S. firms have “reshored” their manufacturing operations in the United States and that even some Chinese companies have located new plants here. He cites a narrowing wage gap between U.S. workers and their foreign counterparts, lower energy and transportation costs and automation as key drivers in moving manufacturing to the United States.

The United States and 10 other countries are negotiating our next big trade agreement, called Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. It's time to re-examine what works and what doesn't work.

Imagine a thought experiment, where we put environmentalists in each country in charge of negotiating the next trade agreement. Preposterous! I know. Stick with me. This is a thought experiment.

If the United States implemented trade policies to end currency manipulation—especially by China—not only would that reduce the U.S. trade deficit by $190 billion to $400 billion over three years, it would be a major first step in reviving the nation’s manufacturing sector and creating up to 4.7 million jobs, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).  

Freshman Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) says one of his top priorities in the Senate is advancing a “Make It in America” jobs agenda. Murphy, who founded the House “Buy American” Caucus, outlined that agenda in a conference call Wednesday sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future and the Alliance for American Manufacturing.