This New York Times article is as good a jumping off point as any for the woes we have in the Great Lakes Region. It is kind of interesting noting where in the country folks who leave comments lauding the joys of free trade are. In the case of this blog, most of the pro-free trade arguments come from Washington, DC. Given the choice between goods from Chicago and goods from China, what difference does it really make. Growing up on the virtues of free trade I was very surprised when my father’s boss, a long time Republican and used car dealership owner, was quite adamant that NAFTA would harm our part of Southwest Wisconsin. Being young at the time, I don’t remember the exact order but a long time employer Advance Transformer, part of the Phillips company, was moving its plant to Mexico. That was over twenty years ago, and the plant remains empty today. This was the plant that employed an uncle and my step-mother.
I know live in northeastern Wisconsin. We live in a home in a quite neighborhood, at least during the winter. During the summer my wife walks the block or so down to the beach on Lake Michigan. It is a beach that draws people from over 40 miles away. We live in a neighborhood constructed a century ago. Our own house like many of the homes hasn’t really seen much in modernization since the 70s. We fell in love with it when we looked inside. Over nine foot ceilings on the main floor and exquisite custom moldings. And yet nearly every house in neighborhood, except for a few of the river front and lake front properties purchased by people from Chicago, could not be traded for a buildable lot in Port Washington, a middle class suburb north of Milwaukee that is of all things home to Screech from Saved By The Bell.
Most of the companies you probably don’t know. Paragon was one of the largest companies to leave the area. Mirro a couple years ago ceased all operations in the area. They had about 3 plants and employed thousands. They are the makers of pots and pans. One of its old plants recently changed hands for $100, its size, a full city block. Fisher Hamilton still maintains operations here, but they are under 400 employees at this point. While foreclosure is a word that is just entering the common lexicon of most folks in the country, it’s nothing unusual here. When I look at the public notices of sheriff’s auctions don’t at the community building, there’s always 5 or 7 places. When we looked at buying our home, half the places were owned by banks or by HUD. Admittedly, we weren’t looking at the nicer and more expensive $175,000 homes. Yes, that’s right. The upper end of housing starts right around there.
Oh but free trade hasn’t been all bad. And no, it really hasn’t. Manitowoc Company has 2 years of orders on file for cranes, which historically is pretty unbelievable. Burger Boat has put a number of hundred foot plus yachts in the water. One Russian gentleman in fact has ordered two of the same yacht, one to sit in the Gulf of Mexico and the other to sit on the Black Sea. There are other companies in the area that sell across the country and throughout the world as well. I must say though I always find it funny that free trade gets the credit for these jobs but never takes the blame for the jobs lost. It’s not as if we lacked companies that exported products through out the nation and world before ‘free trade’. There is also not so insignificant fact that State has financial assistance to keep companies afloat or to get them started in this area. Burger Boat would probably not be building yachts if it wasn’t for State assistance that helped them transform. The State has also given money to try to get tourists into the area.
Today, the area is different. The largest employer in the county is one of the hospitals and its network of clinics. Three other health service providers are in the top 22. Wal-Mart makes the top 22. Two more are utilities, one of which is the nuclear power plant. Another 5 spots are taking up by various forms of government including schools. Government is a good job if you can get it around here. The openings fill rather quickly. Unfortunately all of us can’t work for the government. Of course Madison and every other capital in the Midwest will tell you it is their ingenuity that has created jobs. I’m afraid that isn’t the case. The biotech firms in Madison are for the most part small shops. The big source of growth in Madison and the other state capitals have been government jobs.
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