Why is Rep. Franks supporting Clinton’s tax agenda?

Rep. Bob Franks (R-NJ) has joined the leading Democrat Rep.John Dingell (D-MI) to co-sponsor President’s Clinton’s proposed $187 million per year tariff on textiles and apparel products shipped to the mainland U.S. from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), the Tribune has learned.

Tariffs are taxes and they are bad enough in any form. They are paid by American consumers in higher prices. But the tariff Franks is supporting is particularly egregious because CNMI is part of the United States. It is an official territory of the U.S., like the western area of the U.S. was before it was divided into states.
The 28,000 permanent residents of CNMI are full citizens of the U.S., and the Constitution rules there as ultimate law.

So the Franks tariff is like imposing a tariff on goods madein New Jersey and shipped to New York. What will Clinton think ofnext, a tariff on states with two Republican Senators?

American soldiers shed much blood in World War II freeing the main CNMI Island, Saipan, from the Japanese. The people of the islands believe in America and its ideals so much that they asked to become part of the United States, in a public referendum winning overwhelming support. These islands are an increasingly valuable strategic base for the U.S., just 600 miles off the coast of China.

The Marianas have prospered greatly as part of the USA. The local authorities have adopted a general free market economic policy, with low taxes and regulation, and minimum government burdens. Naturally, the economy boomed as a result. Wages and incomes have soared, unemployment and poverty have plummeted.

The islands are the most successful economic force in the local area, with tens of thousands of workers coming from as far away as China and the Philippines to take jobs paying 5 times what they can get at home. The booming economy is producing so many jobs the locals couldn’t possibly fill them all.

From just 1990 to 1995, the economic boom increased real wages on the islands by almost 50%. The poverty rate was cut almost in half, falling from 59% to 33%. Almost 80% of the population over age 25 has a high school degree, almost twice as many as a decade ago.

But one group is unhappy about this American success story – U.S. labor unions. They have virtually no presence among the CNMI work force, and so view it as a non-union competitor they want to shut down. So they are carrying on an international smear campaign to justify initiatives that will destroy the CNMI economy.

Clinton’s confused tariff gambit is just one ploy. Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative David Bonior have introduced bills that would apply the mainland Federal minimum wage, which would increase to $6.15, to CNMI, where the local minimum wage is now $3.05.

In addition, a left-wing law firm in Manhattan has filed a class action law suit in Federal court against many CNMI businesses and their customers in the U.S. The suit alleges worker exploitation on the islands violating Federal law.

To support all of these attacks, the unions have trumped up the most amazing fairy tales. They allege that the guest workers from foreign countries are told they are coming to the U.S. Then they are dumped in the Marianas and held against their will in prison camp conditions. Then they are forced to work in a dangerous and dirty slave labor environment.

But when the liberal New York Times sent a reporter to Saipan, he found something quite different. His February 22 story reported, “But interviews with dozens of Chinese workers here tell a story that is not so stark. Chatting easily as they stroll freely in the evening after work, they describe orderly factories and clean dormitories, a view borne out in visits. They say they come to Saipan voluntarily to earn about 5 times what they made in China, heading home after 2 years with $6,000 to $10,000 saved.”

The only significant export from the Marianas to the mainland is clothing, which accounts for only one half of 1% of all the clothing manufactured in the U.S. If the unions are successful in shutting down the island’s economy, this work will go to foreign countries with low tariff or tariff free trade preferences, such as Mexico under NAFTA, or the islands favored under the Caribbean Basin Initiative. It will not produce garment jobs, low-paying in any event, for U.S. workers.

Republicans should not be jumping on this bandwagon in the false hope of buying labor peace for next year’s elections. The unions are going all out to win back Democrat control of the House. Despite Franks’ cynical ploy, they will be doing all they can to defeat him and every other Republican next year. Republicans like Franks need to focus on rallying their own Republican base, not carrying water for enemies who alienate that base and will just double cross them later.