Re-Employ America was founded in January 2011 on promoting the proven concept that with more consumer products manufactured in the United States, more middle-class Americans will become more self-reliant which will lead to less use of social economic assistance and more taxes being paid thereby taking financial pressures from local to federal governments. This will then lead to better and balanced budgets.
Our organization founder researched the economic effects of the Free Trade Agreements; this research has taken a few years and continues. The results exposed the economic devastation created by these agreements. The negative impact on the U.S. economy was shown to be prevalent in all sectors; manufacturing, financial, medical, retail, government and even the service sector.
In 1994 one of the first causes of our decimated economy was put into place; the North American Free Trade Agreement. The
economists said it would become an economic failure; they were right. Since then, the United States has entered into free
trade agreements with 18 more countries. These have been touted as the best economic growth incentive for manufacturers which
would then create more jobs. In fact, more jobs were created, but not in the United States.
The agreements eased manufacturing restrictions that other countries had in place. With these restrictions lifted more
American manufacturers moved to these common market countries. With those movements came lobbying efforts to ease the tax
requirements on imported products. With relatively tax free income for moving offshore, most non-food consumer products
started entering the United States with almost no real production cost. It was the combination of these two factors that
created some of the most successful multi-national corporations in the world. These same factors also created the largest unemployed and underemployed population of all of the industrialized nations in the world.
American manufacturing jobs were replaced with service sector employment opportunities which paid as much as one-third of the
manufacturing jobs. These low paying entry level jobs created more economic problems in local communities and spread like a
plague to the nation within a few years.
As large manufacturing was lost in communities across the country other businesses were effected through the loss of consumer
patronage. This led to small businesses closing almost as fast as they during the Great Depression. This domino effect spread
fast to other businesses and then to government. The lost institutional tax base was the first to go and created shortfalls
in local government funding which led to greater state and federal help. The personal tax base followed and had the greatest
impact. The first budget cuts came in form of reduced services such as law enforcement and other emergency services. Public
education was next, not just schools but public libraries and museums. Infrastructure was next, with less growth and
maintenance came more job losses.
Communities started to look to state governments for help, these were also suffering, which led to federal assistance for
non-federal obligations. As Americans had less personal income, social service assistance grew. Social welfare use has almost
quadrupled since 1994 to almost $65 billion in 2011, inflation considered. With less middle-class Americans paying income
taxes, use and excise taxes contributing to local public services to federal obligations and more of these same middle-class
Americans needing social assistance, the national budget cannot get balanced which has led to a national debt that may take
20 years or more to recover.