TOLEDO, OH – Following the passage of the biggest bipartisan jobs bill to clear the Senate this year, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) visited Quality Tool and Metal Stamping in Toledo today to urge House action on legislation to create and protect jobs by cracking down on Chinese currency manipulation. Brown called for the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011—which he authored and led to passage in the Senate—to be brought for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives and sent to the President’s desk to be signed into law.

“Many of my colleagues say that standing up for Ohio manufacturers would start a trade war with China. But we’re already in a trade war. This is about fighting back with one of the biggest bipartisan jobs bill the Senate has seen this year. We’ve lost millions of American jobs to China—including more than 100,000 Ohio jobs—due in no small part to that country’s illegal currency manipulation,” Brown said. “It’s time to put American workers first. We cannot stand by and watch any longer as our factories close down and entire communities undergo total devastation. Rhetoric has done little to solve the problem, and Ohio manufacturers and workers have paid the price. We must equip the Obama Administration with the tools it needs to crack down on China’s currency manipulation and help level the playing field for American businesses.”

“Even though the China currency legislation passed with strong bipartisan support in the Senate, House leaders have refused to even bring this bill to the floor for a vote,” Brown added. “Our manufacturers can’t wait for more excuses or delays when it comes to dealing with China’s unfair trade practices—and that’s why the House should pass this legislation and send it to the President to be signed into law.”

“We are in an industry that is rapidly changing and evolving, if we aren’t working on a daily basis to improve our efficiency and operations, to produce a high quality product at a lower cost, we will not survive,” said Michael Pasch of Quality Tool and Metal Stamping. “We have to invest in employee training, state of the art equipment, and more in order to continue to compete, but we cannot do that if we are 20 percent behind the competition before we have even put a pencil to paper because of the currency manipulation and government subsidizing.”

Brown’s bill cleared the Senate on October 11 by a vote of 63-35, and a previous version of Brown’s bill passed overwhelmingly in the U.S. House of Representatives last year. Legislation cracking down on Chinese currency manipulation currently enjoys wide bipartisan support in this Congress, but House leadership has refused to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

Currency manipulation is an illegal trade practice in which the Chinese government intentionally devalues its own currency against the United States dollar. This results in artificially expensive American imports to China, and artificially cheap Chinese imports to the United States. This puts Ohio and American manufacturers at a serious disadvantage, and makes it more difficult for American companies to compete against Chinese companies. Brown joined Mike Pasch of Quality Tool and Metal Stamping and Devin Denner, CEO of Chase Brass in Toledo to outline how his legislation will help level the playing field for Ohio manufacturers while helping create and protect millions of American jobs.

Quality Tool and Metal Stamping is a family-owned manufacturer of highly specialized metal stampings.

Recently, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the Alliance for American Manufacturing released a new report showing that that the growing trade deficit with China, caused in large part by China’s illegal currency manipulation, has cost the United States more than 2.8 million jobs since 2001, including more than 1.9 million manufacturing jobs. In June, EPI released a report showing that addressing Chinese currency manipulation could support the creation of 2.25 million American jobs.

A summary of the bill can be found here.

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