The decline of glassmaking in America started gradually in the 1990s and accelerated during the Great Recession. What’s more, the big companies, like Corning and Guardian Industries, say that even as the economy improves, they are unlikely to bring domestic employment and production back to prerecession levels. Imports, for one thing, inhibit sales. And bigger profits lie abroad, so they are channeling investment and expansion to their overseas factories.
“Those who are looking through the rearview mirror, waiting for the glass industry in this country to come back, should know it isn’t going to come back, not the way it was,” Russell J. Ebeid, Guardian’s chairman, said in an interview.
3 comments:
I found this article to be really interesting. I wonder if the reason for the decline of the glassmaking industry is more than just for bigger profits. I agree with Tim Tuttle from the article, I think it would be a good idea to put tariffs on some of the glass the U.S. imports from China. As the article says, imported glass now accounts for nearly 24 percent of domestic consumption, up 21 percent from four years ago. The United States is already loosing enough jobs to other countries, and the glass making industry is no exception.
I found this article interesting also. Obviously the US needs help with its historically high unemployment rate, it seems necessary to place tariffs on the importing from China and make it easier for our own glassmaking industry to have a comeback.
"Overall industry employment has declined 30 percent over the last nine years, to fewer than 95,000 workers, 15,000 of them unionized."This should not be happening with the loss going to China.
Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio (yes!) states that this is a blow to national pride, which is something we should be in the process of mending, not tearing apart. (Ohio is one of the biggest glassmaking states, which I found interesting because I was not aware of this!)
Tuttle’s suggestion to put tariffs on imported Chinese glass seems to be well-conceived. The tariff would likely serve two purposes. First, it is highly probable that the tariff would discourage the Chinese from importing at the high rate at which they are currently operating. Second, due to the decreased supply from abroad, a tariff would, in a way, stimulate the need for glass production in the domestic market, and consequentially would increase the availability of new jobs to US workers.
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