Reinsch Calls on Representatives to Support Both TAA and TPA on House Floor
Washington DC – Today, National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) President Bill Reinsch urged members of the House of Representatives to vote in support of both the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) provisions included in H.R. 1314, the Trade Act of 2015.
In a letter sent to all representatives this morning, Reinsch emphasized the importance of TAA, writing:
“Trade adjustment assistance began in the Kennedy Administration as part of an implicit bargain with organized labor –they would acquiesce in what was at the time modest trade liberalization, and workers who were adversely affected would receive assistance in retraining and finding new work. The program has not always been as comprehensive or as successful as some would like, but its underlying principle remains intact and valid: if workers lose their jobs because of trade, the government has some responsibility to help them transition to new careers.
“… TAA is designed to address those problems by giving unemployed workers the opportunity to acquire new skills and identify new job opportunities, and then help with relocation if necessary. In the process, it provides hope for workers who want to rejoin the workforce but are not adequately prepared to do so, and it repairs the holes in our social fabric that are caused by rapid economic change. Its program for small businesses does the same for companies that find themselves unable to cope with the changes they are experiencing, and by doing so, saves thousands of jobs that would otherwise have been lost.
“TAA is one of the few programs we have that is intended to help our population cope with our transition to a world of globally integrated supply chains.”
Read the full letter here.
