Reposted from the Campaign for America’s Future blog

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Republicans Should Pretend It’s Romney’s First Day And Act On China

Dave Johnson  |  November 7, 2012  |  Campaign for America’s Future

Romney promised that he would act on China’s currency manipulation “on his first day.” So Republicans can pretend Romney won, and actually act on China’s currency manipulation! If they would actually do what theypromised to do we could get a lot a lot of “job creation” going on. Or will they continue to obstruct?

China continues to manipulate its currency. It has been getting better but not fast enough. This manipulation keeps the prices of things made in China lower than they should be — even before taking into account all of the other trade cheating China has been doing. And that means that jobs, factories, industries and big chunks of our economy continue to move to China. Look at what happened with Sensata the day before the election.

For various non-trade reasons — Obama needs China’s help with Korea, etc. — the President has resisted declaring China to be a currency manipulator. Action by Congress to push this forward strengthens the President’s hand in getting something done on this, and in the end could just get it done outside of the administration. So to accomplish this there is a bill to act on China’s currency manipulation.

The “China Currency Bill” has passed the Senate but is stalled in the House by Republican leadership. Speaker Boehner is keeping the bill from coming up for a vote. It could come to the floor and pass if just a few of the 60+ Republican cosponsors would actually cosponsor the bill be signing a “discharge petition” to bring it up for a vote.

The people want this. Polls overwhelmingly showed that the public “gets it” about China and trade and what is happening to all the jobs and factories and industries. This polling was why Romney campaigned for this. And this was a democracy election — the people made it very clear what they want to happen.

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio recently pushed to have this bill revived and voted on in the House, and now the voters have given their stamp of approval by reelecting Brown. Across the board the public has made it clear that it is time to act. Republicans should pretend it is Romney’s “first day” and act on Chinese currency manipulation — like he promised they would do.

The election is over, it is time for action, not more obstruction.