Editor's Note: The following article is the fourth installment in an expository series which outlines important issues facing the U.S. economy and reveals your elected officials voting records. Please write to your elected officials and demand that they represent their constituents, instead of succumbing to the whims of big business.

In the not-so-distant past, Ohio was a manufacturing powerhouse, churning out massive amounts of steel and iron, plastic and rubber products, cars, trucks and auto parts that fueled the national economy. 

Just 14 years ago - in 1995 - General Motors was Ohio’s largest private employer.  By 2007, Wal-Mart had earned that distinction.   

It is no coincidence that this dramatic transformation occurred during the height of globalization which featured the creation of the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement.   

And, although he was not in Congress to vote on those issues, Republican Pat Tiberi, representing Ohio’s 12th congressional district, is part of the problem and not the solution.   

Since winning his congressional seat in 2001, Tiberi has voted against imposing trade barriers to protect domestic manufacturers 67 percent of the time.  During that same period, he voted against subsidies for domestic industries 67 percent of the time.   

“Increasing open but fair trade can provide a timely and meaningful boost to our nation's economy and foster job creation here at home,� he wrote in a 2008 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) urging her to support “free trade� agreements with Panama and Columbia.  “Tens of millions of jobs across every sector of our economy are supported by trade.�   

That mystifying belief in job proliferation and “free trade� has allowed Tiberi to vote for each and every “free trade� agreement brought before the Congress since 2001 including deals with Singapore, Chile, Australia, Morocco, Bahrain, Oman and Peru.  In addition, he voted in favor of the Central American Free Trade Agreement and an agreement with the Andean nations of South America.   

It is policies such as those that Tiberi has supported which have brought Ohio’s once proud economy to its knees.  In the period between 1993 and 2004, Ohio lost roughly 50,000 jobs - the fifth highest total in the nation - due to increasing trade deficits as a result of NAFTA, according to the Economic Policy Institute.  Between 1993 and 2002, the U.S. Labor Department found that 75 Ohio plants, employing a total of 12,000, relocated to Canada or Mexico.  And Ohio’s largest manufacturing industry has been virtually dismantled due to NAFTA.  Prior to NAFTA, Ohio held a $7.4 billion trade surplus with Mexico in auto parts.  By 2007, that surplus had turned into a deficit of $12 billion, according to the EPI.   

Despite the ample evidence that “free trade,� and especially NAFTA, has hurt Ohio’s economy and its workers, Tiberi still holds to his discredited beliefs.   

“NAFTA wasn't primarily to blame for job losses in Ohio, Michigan and other industrial states,’ he wrote in a 2008 Columbus Dispatch editorial.  “The trend toward cutting costs by shipping jobs overseas was well under way before NAFTA took effect on Jan. 1, 1994. Many of the jobs transferring to Mexico would have been outsourced to factories in Asia or elsewhere even if the free-trade pact had died on the drawing board.� 

Apparently, Tiberi doesn’t realize that he is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and could have taken action to prevent those jobs from being outsourced.  But, that just wouldn’t be Tiberi’s style.  On nearly every chance Tiberi has had to protect American workers, he has utterly failed.   

He voted against banning Mexican truckers from having free rein on U.S. roadways.  He supported an expansion of visas for foreign-born doctors.  He voted against restricting the awarding of federal contracts to companies with subsidiaries in tax havens.   He voted to allow Dubai Ports World to acquire ownership of a company that manages the operations of several U.S. ports although there was concern over the national security implications.  He opposed providing assistance to America’s struggling automakers despite the fact that they employ tens of thousands in the state.  He voted no on assisting workers displaced by globalization and the failed policies he has supported.   

Basically, if it has benefited big business to the detriment of Ohio and American workers, Tiberi has fully supported it.   

“While free trade entails pain for workers whose industries cannot keep pace with international competition, in the long run, free trade produces net benefits for the nations that participate in it,�   Tiberi said.

He must be talking a 26.2-mile marathon-style long run, because 16 years after NAFTA, Ohio is still shedding manufacturing jobs at a rapid pace.   

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