North America is the world’s richest industrial economy, with the most productive workforce on earth. But for how much longer? Corporate greed and bad trade deals have sent so many jobs offshore that 50 percent of a G.E. or P & W jet engine is now produced overseas. What will be left if we continue selling off our best jobs?

Revitalizing  North America's Might

Our governments conspired with corporations to move our manufacturing jobs to low wage countries.

With each tax bill and every trade deal, they shipped away the finest machinery ever made. With each IMF bailout and every interest rate hike, they pulled the plug on assembly lines. With each wink at off-shore bookkeeping and every nod to domestic content laws or off sets, they ended our jobs.

Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives and Liberals alike bought into globalization big time. With lace curtain speeches about free trade, politicians justified decisions that sent our jobs to the shanty towns of Mexico, China and Brazil.

Now those politicians claim nothing should be done. Bullfeathers!

If they can dismantle our industrial heartland one drill press at a time, grease the sleds that move entire industries down south, pump billions of dollars into failed economies across Asia and turn a trickle of lost jobs into a deluge of the unemployed, they can reverse that process.

If they cannot revitalize North America’s might, we must find ones who will.

The unemployed whose stories appear in this IAM Journal represent more than two million laid off workers across North America.

They need help now! They need to put food on their table today! They need to pay the mortgage tonight!

Their anger mounts each day. And it will find an outlet: incumbent politicians.

Only by pushing new  policy to revitalize North America’s might –– its tough, highly skilled and tenacious workers –– can those incumbents keep from losing it all.