Urge Congress to Renew Trade Adjustment Assistance for Displaced Workers

From the Citizens Trade Campaign (http://www.citizenstrade.org):

For workers whose livelihoods are destroyed by offshoring, the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program is often a lifeline — benefiting not only the individuals who directly qualify for it, but also their families and broader communities.

For more than four decades, TAA has provided workers whose livelihoods are shipped overseas or displaced by imports with job retraining assistance and related benefits. Shamefully, this vital program has been allowed to expire.

More shameful still, Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) has been holding TAA renewal hostage — demanding that it only move forward if attached to new Fast Track legislation, which would allow future job-killing trade deals to circumvent ordinary congressional review, amendment and debate procedures.

TAKE ACTION at https://citizenstrade.salsalabs.org/CTC091622TAArenewal/index.html: Please urge Congress to reauthorize the TAA program that helps trade-displaced workers — and to only couple it with legislation that prevents additional job offshoring. 

Over the years, the TAA program has helped individuals harmed by bad trade deals to continue being good providers for their families, customers at local businesses, donors to religious institutions and other charities, taxpayers and to otherwise remain fully-active members of their communities.

While manufacturing workers continue to be among those the hardest hit by offshoring and need a renewed TAA program, we’ve seen first-hand how a significant portion of the jobs offshored these days are in service sectors of the economy, including call centers, computer programming and other service-oriented professions.

For this reason, we back TAA reauthorization proposals that cover all workers whose jobs are destroyed by unfair trade — regardless of sector.  And we also want a real reduction in the number of jobs offshored in the first place, which would be possible with better trade enforcement policies like those in the Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0 (S.1187).

While TAA was never meant to be a cure-all, the program holds real value for American workers, their families and communities and is deserving of policymakers’ support.  Please write Congress now.