A “level playing field” sounds inherently fair, so why should domestic solar manufacturing have to suffer for the sins of legacy energy production?

One intriguing item that Obama announced in his State of the Union was on a Trade Enforcement Unit. I I tend to be skeptical about these enforcement agencies. But if you follow the facts, the President is correct that his Administration has been solid on bringing trade cases against China, on tires, on steel, on solar products, on rare earth minerals, and he’s gotten results.

Manufacturing has been a bright spot over the past year in terms of jobs gained. Activity has picked up, and factories are coming back on-line. The problem is that this has come at a cost. Specifically, the US manufacturing jobs of the future feature lower pay and benefits.

In 2010, over 350 members of the House agreed to a bill designed to punish China for their currency manipulation. In 2011, 68 members of the Senate agreed to a similar bill. But in a year-end report to Congress, the Treasury Department voiced their disagreement, refusing to label China a currency manipulator, instead opting for softer language around their failing to “reform” currency operations.

Kalleberg’s solution requires rethinking the social contract, a tough sell in individualistic America. He refers to the European concept of “flexicurity,” which seeks to combine employer flexibility with worker security. Doing so requires rethinking the relationship between public and private. The essential elements of such a model require universal, affordable, portable health insurance which ideally should be separated from employment. It also requires a more secure and portable pension system, more generous unemployment insurance, and greater opportunities to acquire new skills and education over the course of a lifetime. If employment is more transient and employers invest little in their workers, then a revitalized social safety net needs to fill in the gaps.

John Boehner has declared the China currency bill, which passed the Senate with rare bipartisan support and 63 votes, “dead on arrival” in the House. So Sen. Sherrod Brown has an op ed in Boehner’s home town paper pressuring Boehner to support the bill and explaining how exchange rates are causing Ohio to lose jobs.

The Senate will vote on a motion to proceed on a bill addressing currency manipulators, targeted mainly at China. Supporters believe the bill would save money, create millions of jobs over time, and has bipartisan support.

Though the recent deals on freezing discretionary non-security spending and 2011 appropriations and the debt limit didn’t reduce spending by a tremendous amount in the short-term, the accumulation of all of these deals, along with the fading out of stimulus measures from 2009 and 2010, has made fiscal policy contractionary, despite 9% unemployment.

What are we going to do about this? We need jobs and we need lots of them. We need jobs and we need training to make sure that the people out there can do the work that needs doing.

Sure seems like we need a whole heckuva lot of investment to make that happen. Ideas, people?

In this country, we have a choice. We can move forward on a broadly popular manufacturing agenda, including many items that could be put in place without Congressional support. In particular, enforcing Buy American provisions on federal procurement would really help out the domestic manufacturing sector.