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Marco Rubio: Cancel trade benefits for offshoring | Opinion

Marco Rubio: Cancel trade benefits for offshoring | Opinion

Last month, President Donald Trump made waves by threatening to impose a tariff on John Deere for moving production to Mexico. Some reactions bordered on hysterical. But as I said in my own letter to John Deere last August, companies have a duty to their employees and their country, not just to their shareholders. CEOs are free to outsource American jobs, but policymakers are free not to reward them for doing so.

To understand the debate, you have to understand the history. America became an industrial juggernaut, thanks in no small part to common-sense tariffs and trade protections. This kept our country resilient and provided good-paying jobs for millions of people. After the world wars, however, a coalition of Washington insiders and industry elites began to abandon our protection. They cut tariffs across the board and created trade agreements and programs that offered duty-free treatment to imports from dozens of countries.

Lowering trade barriers makes sense under certain circumstances, namely when the countries in question play by our rules and share our values. But the goal of any U.S. trade deal should be to strengthen the U.S. economy and make the United States a more attractive place to locate – not to encourage offshoring.

Unfortunately, abandoning our trade defense heritage has done just that.

Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) speaks on stage during the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 16, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Leon Neal/Getty Images

Today, America moves or outsources about 300,000 jobs per year. This allows companies to avoid their obligations to their workers and the country – decent wages, decent working conditions, investments in productivity – and instead benefit from the lower labor costs of other countries.

Meanwhile, according to ForbesThe corresponding “loss of (American) employment contributes to economic uncertainty, while downward pressure on wages forces workers into lower-income positions.” This hits vulnerable populations the hardest, a dynamic that has been playing out in African American communities for decades. It’s true that many prices have fallen, but access to cheap goods on Amazon is a bitter comfort for families who can no longer afford necessities like food, housing and health care.

Which brings us back to where we started. Pundits with knee-jerk reactions to President Trump’s proposal must ask why should Does John Deere get special treatment for outsourcing production? The U.S. trade deal with Mexico is intended to attract more business to America. If an American company does the opposite, why shouldn’t it be subject to the normal tariff for World Trade Organization members when it sells its products back to the communities it left behind?

That rate is already the lowest in the world – by a considerable margin. CEOs who shudder at the prospect of having to pay this show only indifference to the nation that made them great, and a blind devotion to shareholder demands for short-term returns over sustainable long-term investments.

In the coming weeks, I will introduce a bill to eliminate trade benefits for companies that offshore their production. The message will be simple: America is done pandering to multinational corporations that value profits over people.

This is how we make sure our trade deals work for the citizens who elected us to fight for them on the national stage – and it’s how we ensure the American economy stays strong for years and decades to come.

Marco Rubio is a United States Senator representing Florida.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author.