By the numbers
8: Where Ohio ranks nationally for the value of its exports.
215: Number of countries and territories that receive exports from Ohio.
9: Number of countries that receive $1B or more in exports from Ohio.
$50.7 billion: The dollar value of goods exported from Ohio in 2015.
311,000: The number of manufacturing jobs that disappeared from Ohio between 2000 and 2014.
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The U.S. Senate election in Ohio this fall will mark the clearest electoral choice on international trade in a decade as the candidates spar over whether free trade has created higher paying jobs or devastated Ohio’s manufacturing base.
“It will be the defining issue,” said former Gov. Ted Strickland, who will face Republican Sen. Rob Portman in the November election. “None will be more important than this difference that Senator Portman and I have over the issue of trade.”
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In some ways, their debate will mirror the presidential campaign, where Republican Donald Trump has demanded high tariffs on imported goods from Mexico and China.
While Strickland opposes Trump’s call for “outrageous levels of tariffs,” he said the New York billionaire has correctly pointed out “we have been snookered in past trade deals and we have suffered as a result.”
Free trade has been deeply polarizing for the past 30 years in Ohio and much of the Midwest. Millions of factory jobs have disappeared throughout those years, angering organized labor and others who say the government has accelerated the decline of American manufacturing jobs with trade deals that enable an unfair playing field.
Yet trade and exports cut both ways. Some 260,000 jobs in Ohio depend on exports, according to state government estimates, and last year Ohio companies and farmers exported $50.7 billion worth of goods to other countries and territories.
“Ohio is an international state,” said Edward Hill, an Ohio State University professor of public policy.
Polar opposites
Strickland and Portman are polar opposites when it comes to their voting records on trade. As a member of the U.S. House from 1993 through 2005, Portman voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, and supported expanding China’s trade relation designation to permanent status.
Moreover, when he was U.S. trade representative under President George W. Bush in 2005, Portman helped guide the Central American Free Trade Agreement through Congress.
By contrast, Strickland opposed NAFTA, permanent trade relations with China and the Central American pact while a member of the House.
Portman firmly believes more exports are good for Ohio. In a conference call with reporters last week, the senator said, “If you are against exports, which Ted Strickland is, then you are not helping Ohio’s workers and farmers.”
Strickland, he said, “has not been for any agreements that open up foreign markets for our products.”
But Strickland said he is “as much for trade as Senator Portman. But I am not for the job-killing trade deals he has supported,” he added.
“He can say I am against trade, but he’s not being truthful or accurate,” Strickland said. “I am for fair trade that is conducted in a way that does not penalize American workers and domestic companies, and that’s why I have called him the best senator China has ever had.”
Voter concerns
A majority of Republicans and Democrats in Ohio believe trade costs jobs, according to network exit polls in last week’s Ohio presidential primary.
But that concern didn’t necessarily translate into votes, or at least not enough to sway the outcome. The two candidates who launched the most anti-trade themes — Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders — both were defeated.
Trump did beat Gov. John Kasich among the 54 percent of Republican voters who say trade costs jobs, but it was by a narrow margin, 44-to-42 percent. Among the 33 percent of Republicans who believe trade creates jobs, Kasich swamped Trump by 53 percent to 28 percent, the exit polls showed.
In the Democratic primary, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton beat Sanders both among Democrats who believe trade creates jobs and among those who believe it costs jobs. Sanders beat Clinton the week before in Michigan, and exit polls there show trade was a factor in the race.
“I think Ohioans get it,” Portman said. “I think they want more exports.”
Trade has become a potent issue on both sides of the aisle. Earlier this year, Portman said he would vote against a trade agreement as currently written with 11 Pacific-rim countries, yet last year he supported a bill that gave President Barack Obama the authority to finish the pact.
“We need to make sure that trade is fair,” he explained.
Trade has been a big part of Trump’s appeal. He says he would tear up NAFTA, back out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and threaten high tariffs against countries that take American jobs if he is elected president. His oft-repeated line “We don’t win anymore” is a reference to what he says are the “terrible” trade deals the U.S. has made with other countries.
Hill isn’t surprised trade has become such a big part of the presidential discussion. It’s the “perfect thing to demagogue on,” he said. “The benefits are abstract and the perceived loss is real.”
Manufacturing losses
The impact of trade is visible to anyone who looks, says Adam Sharp, vice president of public policy at the Ohio Farm Bureau.
“As you drive down a road in rural Ohio, one of every three rows of corn or soybeans gets exported,” he said.
Last year, Ohio farmers exported $1.4 billion worth of soybeans and $300 million in corn. The state’s total exports leaped from $24.8 billion in sales value in 1999 to $52.2 billion in 2014, before declining slightly last year — in large part because of reduced demand from China’s sluggish economy.
China is also responsible for many of the manufacturing job losses that have had such a crippling impact on states such as Ohio, according to a report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
More than 310,000 manufacturing jobs in Ohio vanished between 2000 and 2014, according to the report, which pins the blame on unfair trade practices that made it easier for foreign nations to export goods to American consumers.
“That was the era when China trade was decimating manufacturing,” said Robert E. Scott, senior economist at the institute and author of the report. Saying that productivity growth has slowed massively in the past seven years, Scott said, “Trade is responsible for essentially all of the manufacturing job losses.”
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