CHARLESTON - A group of local steelworkers gathered in Charleston Wednesday to tell lawmakers they want West Virginia's share of the federal stimulus package to be spent on American goods and services whenever possible.
The caravan of steelworkers and concerned citizens left the United Steel Workers of America Local 5668 hall in Ravenswood for the Buy American rally at the Capitol Rotunda.
The $800 million stimulus plan is to foster economic growth. The recession has struck Ravenswood with the February closure of Century Aluminum and 651 jobs lost.
Alcan machinist Anthony Nichols said he is one of a lucky few at the plant to still have a job. He traveled to Charleston with the caravan Wednesday in hopes of keeping it.
"We need to be investing in American families and jobs instead of buying foreign metal. I'm still working, but there's always rumors going around. You try not to worry, but it's hard not to. You just hope and pray that they don't shut our part down, too," he said.
Congress last month passed the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The vote was along party lines with only three Republican senators voting yes despite the party's overwhelming support for Republican President George W. Bush's bailout of the banking industry last year.
West Virginia will receive $1.8 billion.
Several dozen people came from the Northern Panhandle on a second bus and joined their steelworker brethren in Ravenswood. Among them was Weirton Steel worker Brad Battista.
He said the decline of American manufacturing has had severe repercussions throughout the economy.
"People have lost their pensions, health insurance, life insurance, everything. We used to be the auto industry's best customers. Now, we are sitting on the sidelines with high-mileage cars. We are going down to listen and make political contacts and try to get a resolution passed that says our infrastructure money should use American manufacturers and stimulate our economy, not China's," he said.
The group wants the money spent on American goods and services whenever possible and is not opposed to foreign-owned companies that employ American workers, Alan Sampson, a spokesman for the steelworkers union, said.
United Steelworkers spokesman Ike Gittlen said to truly be effective, as much of the stimulus money as possible needs to remain in the United States, although in some cases, foreign products would need to be purchased when there is no viable American-made alternative.
"It is insane to take the money and run it through the economy and then give it to somebody outside by buying foreign products, the same people who loaned us the money in the first place," he said.
However, Delegate Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, doesn't think it's that simple. He said that such protectionist government stances never have the intended result.
"One of the things that exacerbated the 1929 recession and turned it into a depression was the Smoot-Hawley Act that put up protectionist borders around the nation. If we put up a block on our economy and ask other nations to buy our exports and us not buy their imports it just does not work that way," he said.
The act was signed into law the year following the 1929 stock market crash as an effort to protect American industry by placing tariffs on imports, thus making American goods comparatively cheaper for the consumer. America's trading partners passed retaliatory measures of their own against American goods and international trade came to a virtual standstill.
West Virginia's exports in 2008 were $5.6 billion, according to an estimate by the U.S. Census, a 73 percent increase over 2004 exports. Coal comprised about 37 percent of those exports.
That market leaves West Virginia in a vulnerable position to make a wrong impression, Carmichael said.
"West Virginia is an export state. The Ravenswood plant has been a huge exporter, the Toyota plant, we have a lot of good export companies. This is the wrong way to go people need to hear the truth," Carmichael said.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing, however, contends that, unlike tariffs, a buy-American stance would have little or no effect on America's $4 trillion global trade.
Delegate Dan Poling, D-Wood, said the caravan doesn't just send a message to lawmakers, but consumers as well.
"The caravan is an excellent way to get people to stop and think when they go to a store and pick up something made in China. They don't normally stop to think if they could buy the same thing made in America."
Poling said he sees it as a necessary measure to protect the state's interests.
"Anytime we can use our money to buy products made in America, it's a good thing. When the Ravenswood plant shut down, it was a good example of industry leaving this country and going somewhere else. Those jobs lost are good-paying jobs with health insurance, benefits. Those are the people who have the money to buy cars, go on vacation. Without jobs like that, the whole economy shuts down. Those people are taxpayers; they make a significant contribution to the tax base," he said.
The group packed into the Capitol Rotunda to hear lawmakers and Gov. Joe Manchin extoll the virtues of keeping American capital at home.
''All we're saying is, as Americans, let's take care of America,'' Manchin told the cheering crowd, whose members wore baseball caps and union jackets and waved signs with messages like ''Land of the unemployed, home of the hungry,'' according to the Associated Press.
Manchin has been active in pursuing foreign investment in West Virginia, and led a trade delegation to China in 2007, but said he draws the line at making it easier to ship American jobs overseas.
''To subsidize another country that takes our jobs is one thing we can't tolerate anymore,'' he said, according to the AP.
