Since 2001, Japan had levied the highest combined corporate tax rate among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries at 39.5 percent. They recently lowered their rate to 38.01 percent, which according to a study by the Tax Foundation puts Japan’s rate below America’s combined federal and state rate of 39.2 percent — the highest in the world.

What does this mean for America’s job picture? Our job creators have fewer financial resources to work with as they struggle to hire more employees. It also creates new incentives for U.S. companies to outsource more jobs overseas where tax rates are lower and the investment climate more welcoming.

This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy of the bashers of business. They rail as unpatriotic and traitorous those companies that find shelter overseas from excessive taxes and regulations. But at the same time, they create the conditions that make it impossible to successfully invest and grow a business in the United States.

The latest figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce indicate while American multinational employers increased their domestic work force by just 0.1 percent, they expanded their overseas employment by 1.5 percent.

This is a foreboding trend at a time when the private sector decreased the U.S. work force by 0.6 percent.

The Wall Street Journal estimates that U.S.-based multinationals account for about one-fifth of private employment in the U.S., with 23 million U.S. workers and 11 million in majority-owned affiliates overseas. Capital spending overseas by U.S. companies rose 8.6 percent to $173 billion.

Imagine what an additional $173 billion would mean to the U.S. economy.

What’s worse is that since 1999, U.S.-based multinationals have cut U.S. employment by about 1 million, but added 3 million workers overseas.
That’s a 39 percent increase in foreign based employees!

Meanwhile, foreign companies cut their employment in the U.S. by one percent to 5.2 million in 2010, while reducing capital spending in the United States by 1.7 percent.

As long as American companies don’t have confidence to invest in their business because of high taxes, unemployment and underemployment will continue to haunt some 25 million Americans.

One reason for this tax disaster is that the Obama administration continues to castigate business owners as greedy, rich fat cats. Since he has never owned a business, nor have the vast majority of people on his staff, (only 8 percent of the political appointees in the Obama Administration have had any sort of business experience), they simply don’t understand that business owners don’t sit on their cash dreaming about a yacht. Instead, they reinvest their money back into their business.

High corporate taxes kill job creation, kill innovation, and put the American dream out of reach for today’s entrepreneurs and small businesses, which account for over 70 percent of all new jobs created over the last decade.

Lest you think outsourcing jobs is all about wages, it’s not. Hourly rates are creeping up steadily overseas, while productivity and product quality are taking a dive.

As I write this piece, I am presently in South China and was astonished to learn wages are now nearly $3.00 an hour for unskilled workers and growing 20 percent a year. Yet, there is a significant shortage of labor. This is forcing manufacturers to move further inland where there is very little infrastructure.

One local Chinese manufacturer informed me he has to move his production of export goods to Thailand because the quality in his China plant is below international standards. He doesn’t feel conditions will change until he has access to better quality materials.

American wages have been at a virtual standstill for years, yet our productivity is soaring and the quality of American goods has never been higher. The world wants what America produces.

Back-shoring (bringing foreign jobs back to America) has been showing momentum, but it will stop dead in its tracks if our corporate tax rate cannot be brought under control. We should be using our tax code as an incentive to create jobs not as a spoiler.

We want to be number one in job creation, innovation, exports, and support for entrepreneurs and small businesses. We don’t want, and cannot, remain the world’s number one in corporate tax rates.

It puts us at a significant global disadvantage which is bad for all Americans.

That commodity is coal — which is not supported by at least one group: the Obama administration, which has literally declared war on the American coal industry, and the jobs that come with it.

Last week the Obama administration proposed new measures that will force new electricity generation plants to cut CO2 emissions by 50 per cent and also mandate investment in unaffordable technologies to bury carbon emissions underground. The new proposals would also set the stage for existing coal burning plants to come under the same arrogant EPA mandate whereby compliance would effectively shut them down.

Groups like the Edison Electric Institute have previously warned that the new rules eventually will cost utilities up to $129 billion and force them to retire one-fifth of coal capacity, leading to a surge in coal plant shutdowns and loss of jobs. Americans will be hit with substantially more energy rate hikes even as they struggle to pay their energy bills now.

This is yet another example of the Obama administration circumventing Congress, which in 2010 successfully defeated Obama’s disastrous Cap and Trade climate bill that would have imposed similar measures.

So as his custom, Obama has turned to a regulatory body to do his bidding when Congress fails to support his actions. His latest power grab involves the EPA which has declared CO2, the life-giving gas that plants breathe, to be a deadly poison.

Poison? The Earth’s atmosphere contains roughly (by volume) 78.09 percent nitrogen, 20.95 percent oxygen, 0.93 percent argon, 0.039 percent carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. If carbon dioxide was a poison, mankind would have ended with the Neanderthals.

Should we be surprised by his actions? Not if you were paying attention to Obama’s days as a Senator, when during a 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, he is quoted as saying: “If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can, it’s just that it will bankrupt them.”

So it’s OK for Obama to bail out the then bankrupt and dying domestic auto industry while bankrupting a thriving coal industry?

An Associated Press story reported that U.S. coal exports reached their highest level in two decades in 2011 as strong demand from Asia and Europe offered an outlet for a fuel that is now under attack here in America.
U.S. Department of Energy data analyzed by The Associated Press reveal that coal exports topped 107 million tons of fuel worth almost $16 billion in 2011. That’s the highest level since 1991, and more than double the export volume from 2006.

Much of the increase went to satisfy power-hungry markets in Asia, especially South Korea (up 81 percent to 10 million tons); India (up 65 percent to 4.5 million tons); and Japan (up 119 percent to 7 million tons).

Exports also were up in Brazil, China and several European nations seeking high-quality coal for steelmaking, according to the Energy Department data.
Peabody Energy calls this increase a “global coal super cycle” that heralds renewed interest in the fuel.

Companies including Arch Coal Inc. have taken a bullish stand on coal, predicting export capacity could reach 245 million tons by 2015. And even the Energy Department forecasts that while coal exports will drop slightly over the next two years, it will reach about 130 million tons annually by 2030. Countries worldwide consume more than 6 billion tons of coal annually.

But this isn’t going to happen if the EPA beats the coal industry into submission.

The U.S. has an unprecedented opportunity to maintain its position as the worldwide leader in coal exports. Competition is down and demand is up. Rich Roffman, radio commentator and cohost of the nationally syndicated radio show Made In America, characterizes the U.S. as “the Saudi Arabia of coal.”

The American public and Congress should be outraged that this war on coal will cause oil prices to continue to rise as electricity generation from coal diminishes.

We all support the war to create jobs, the war to reduce regulations, and the war to reduce taxes. But no one in good conscience should support the war on coal.

There have been two recent situations where secrets are being compromised — both of which will compromise job creation.

The first surrounds the supposed secret deliberations by the Supreme Court over Obamacare. The cost of implementation and compliance with a government controlled healthcare system will be staggering. The estimates escalate each time another layer of regulation is peeled back. Ultimately, this heavy burden will be passed on to American businesses in the form of higher insurance premiums and taxes.

The consequence is that companies are not hiring new employees and will start reducing staff to afford the mandates. This only prolongs the anxiety, pain and suffering of the 25 million Americans that are unemployed or underemployed.

Two days after the Supreme Court heard arguments on both sides of the issue, as is their custom, the justices convened a secret session of deliberations in their chambers. During this time, the justices take an initial non-binding vote and the writing of opinions is assigned. These meetings are restricted to the nine justices and their clerks, and are at the core of the foundation of the Judicial Branch.

Yet, the week after the deliberations began, President Barack Obama took to the airwaves and seemed to come unglued in an ignorant rant that criticized the justices and cast aspersions on the very process.

I don’t normally subscribe to conspiracy theories, but in this case, one has to wonder whether the president was informed the majority vote was to strike down his signature legislative accomplishment in these supposedly secret meetings. He certainly acted like someone in serious trouble as he went on the offensive for some damage control.

This would make a mockery of the secret deliberations and diminishes the office of the president. There’s a reason the founding fathers separated the Executive Branch from the Judicial Branch to prevent this kind of corruption of the Supreme Court’s role as the defender and ultimate interpreter of our Constitution.

An equally menacing corruption of secrets is taking place in the work force. Unions are trying to push through Card Check, even though it was resoundingly defeated when presented to Congress.

As a reminder, Card Check gets rid of the sanctity of the secret ballot, which is fundamental to American democracy. It forces employees to divulge their vote publicly when union elections are being held in a place of business.

The corruption of the secret vote — a constitutional right — is being promoted so unions can intimidate workers and force them to accept unionization even if they object.

This insidious process forces companies into a game of chance where the game is rigged and the house (unions) has the advantage.

Workers that had not previously wanted to be unionized are beset by union representatives that demand that employees vote to unionize. Unions force employers to hand over the names of all employees including home addresses, home and cell phone numbers and personal email addresses.

Then union representatives begin badgering employees at their homes to determine how they will vote. This process strongly portends that reprisals will be waged upon those that don’t fall into line with union demands.

Meanwhile, employers that have been blindsided by the union’s encroachment must scramble to estimate the costs, retain legal counsel, create an alternative plan to unionization and meet with employees to make their case.

This current process calls for union elections to take place within 40 days of contact by the union, even though the NLRB estimates that 90 percent of union elections take at least 56 days. And now unions are trying to impose a policy whereby union elections must take place within 7-10 days, giving employers a distinct disadvantage. It takes employers out of the game.

Ending the secret ballot starts with union elections, but could soon spill over into local or national elections. If history has taught us anything, when the people lose their ability to retain the secret vote, an empire cannot stand.

The historical record for the secret ballot traces back to ancient Rome, where the laws regulating elections were collectively known as Tabellariae Leges, the first of which was introduced in 139 BC. The French Constitution of 1795 states that “All elections are to be held by secret ballot.”

In the United Kingdom, the secret ballot was introduced in the Ballot Act 1872, and the United States adopted the secret ballot in 1891. The first president of the United States elected completely under the secret ballot was President Grover Cleveland in 1892.

James Buchanan, our 15th president once wrote: “The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among free men.”

You would think that after 100 years of presidents respecting secret ballots and judicial deliberations, that our current president, a supposed constitutional lawyer, would have understood the sanctity of this constitutional right.

If we do nothing more than restore the tenets of the constitution in this election by electing a new president, then we will have come a long way toward establishing an environment for vigorous job creation while strengthening our democracy and rule of government.

I coined a version of that term more than three years ago because it aptly describes how the Federal government is handling the economy.

Ben Bernanke, current chairman of the Federal Reserve, is the “morphine dealer” as he continues to promote his “accommodative monetary policies,” which keeps interest rates extremely low. The outcome is that banks, companies, and Wall Street investors can borrow cash at no cost and put it in investment vehicles that return interest. This easy money is addictive and unless Fed policies change, it will be nearly impossible to wean them from this guaranteed pay day. This is the basis of the more serious affliction — morphine economics.

To get to the root of this analogy, one has to travel back to the 18th century when the British tried to negotiate trade agreements with Emperor Qianlong, who ruled China at the height of the Chinese empire.

Low demand for British goods in China and high demand for Chinese goods such as silk and tea in Britain forced the British traders to purchase these products with silver and gold, the only currency accepted by the Chinese.

The British quickly began accumulating a large trade deficit that it could not sustain. They needed to find an economic substitute for the silver and gold, but one that would come with greatly reduced prices.

The solution, although illegal at the time, was to begin smuggling opium into China from the plentiful poppy fields of the Indo-Gangetic plain.

Despite Emperor Qianlong’s prohibition of importing opium to China, it wasn’t long before Chinese society, including government officials, became addicted to the opium, from which morphine is derived.

Raw opium contains some twenty different alkaloids of which morphine is one. It affects the central nervous system. It also impairs mental and physical performance, relieves fear and anxiety, and produces euphoria. Morphine’s euphoric effect is highly addictive.

Tolerance (the need for higher and higher doses to maintain the same effect) and the physical and physiological dependence develop quickly. The malevolent outcome of morphine addiction is that it masks any underlying health problems, so while someone may actually be dying; the euphoria deadens the pain until the person succumbs to the disease.

China’s opium addiction erased centuries of glory and unleashed a thirty year revolution. It allowed for things like the Rape of Nanjing, the communist takeover in 1949 and purges of the Cultural Revolution to take place. By its end, it created the conditions where millions of China’s citizens lived under foreign sovereignty in their own country.

You could say that China’s downfall could be attributed to “Morphine Economics.” If you study China’s sad history throughout the 19th and 20th centuries you can certainly understand their distrust of the West. China has passed through decades that no great nation should ever have to tolerate. China’s addiction should have served as a cold, stark warning.

Yet while Morphine Economics ended in China, another nation fell under its deadly spell: The United States of America. As the economy eroded, the US began accumulating mountains of debt. It has become our morphine.

We borrow money to pay debts today, unfazed by the legacy of the debt that we will face down the road. The euphoria of appearing to have the economy under control masks the worthless “vapor paper” currency that is being printed to stave off an economic collapse. Even as we watch our economy suffer, we cannot turn away, dooming the U.S. to succumb to its addictive lure.

The ultimate irony of course, is that while the U.S. is being crushed by its runaway debt, it is being bought up by China — a nation that innately understands the perils of Morphine Economics. The world has come full circle.

I think Emperor Qianlong, from wherever he rests with his ancestors, gets no satisfaction from seeing Bernanke make the same mistakes he did.

It is up to us to learn the lesson and reverse our dependence on Morphine Economics before it causes irreparable damage to the economic health of our country and that of our future generations.

Small and medium-sized American companies generate the overwhelming percentage of this creativity, filing 13 more patents per employee than large corporations do.

Meanwhile, the core copyright industries alone (not including the broader sector) lead all major industry sectors in U.S. exports and have grown three times faster than the overall economy in the past 20 years. Core copyright industries are those that create copyrighted works as their primary product, including motion pictures, music, software and publishing.

Our intellectual property (IP) is in demand everywhere around the globe.

Unfortunately, not everyone who demands our IP cares to pay for it.

Shutting down the theft of this property – especially if we were able contain one particular country — would have an overwhelmingly positive impact on job creation and the American economy.

The country most notoriously connected to IP theft is China, which according to a 2009 report issued by the U.S. International Trade Commission, found:

“Chinese IPR infringement and indigenous innovation policies largely block U.S. firms from China’s enormous government procurement market. These policies cost the U.S. IP-intensive economy that conducted business in China in 2009 an estimated $48.2 billion in sales, royalties, or license fees. Moreover, the Commission found that if China raised its IPR protection and enforcement efforts to comparable U.S. levels, this would translate into approximately 923,000 new jobs for U.S. IP-intensive firms.”

Now comes word of another country condoning IP theft, this time from India. India effectively ended Bayer Corp.’s monopoly on a patented cancer drug, licensing a much cheaper generic under a unique law aimed at keeping costs affordable. Bayer Corp., a subsidiary of the German pharma giant, is located in Pittsburgh, Pa.

According to the AP, “In a decision likely to upset Western pharmaceuticals, India’s patent office approved Natco Pharma Ltd.’s application to produce soreinib, a kidney and liver cancer treatment.”

The Indian ministry has decided that a right cannot be absolute and the Indian patent office can force companies to grant licenses to generics in cases of public emergency or where they can show patented products are priced out of reach.

The AP notes that this is the first case of compulsory licensing under India’s unique patent laws passed in 2005 and only one other nation (Thailand) has ever issued such a compulsory ruling.

It also reported that Western pharmaceutical companies have been pushing for stronger patent protections and rules to clamp down on a $26 billion Indian generics industry they say is overstepping intellectual property rights.

This is all the more troublesome because we already have a U.S. goods trade deficit with India of $4.7 billion in 2009. U.S goods exports in 2009 were $16.5 billion, down 6.9 percent from the previous year. Corresponding U.S. imports from India were $21.2 billion, down 17.6 percent. India is currently the 17th largest export market for U.S. goods.

We have a trade deficit with India and they reward our loyalty by trashing our patents and intellectual property? That’s not fair play and that’s not how America should conduct business.

To get a feel for how duplicitous this Indian IP grab is, according to the Business in India website: “The importance of intellectual property in India is well established at all levels — statutory, administrative and judicial. India ratified the agreement with the World Trade Organization (WTO). This Agreement, inter-alia, contains an Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) which came into force from 1st January 1995.”

This agreement specifically covers copyrights and related rights and trade marks.

If other nations around the world see this ruling by India as a license to follow suit, we could see U.S. IP and patents under attack in other countries.

The United States must fight back. It starts with the Import Administration and the Patent and Trademark Office, divisions of the U.S. Department of Commerce, who are dedicated to enforcing our international commerce agreements. But they are woefully understaffed.

We need to invest in a dramatic increase in the legal personnel in these trade-enforcement groups and we must give them the resources they need to deal with the enormity of the problem.

When nations such as India and China steal our intellectual property, they are stealing from American companies, their employees, and from the American people.

This should become an issue vital to every American. Our economy suffers, our employment picture suffers, and our prestige suffers when our patents are ignored.

As a result, the American consumer pays more for just about everything as nations around the world get a free ride on everything from pharmaceuticals to software.

Don’t ignore this issue.

While the AFL-CIO will certainly support Obama and Democrats, they are not generating the kind of money that Democratic presidential candidates are used to receiving. And they certainly are not as enthusiastic as they were in 2008, when unions gave $400 million to Obama and congressional Democrats.

Last year, labor political action committees gave federal Democratic candidates and committees $21 million. But this was 20 percent from the same period in the 2008 election cycle, according to a Chicago Tribune story

Consider the irony that Obama faces. He has given labor unions everything they have asked for, and more, particularly in Detroit, and they still want more.

In the 2009 bailout, Chrysler and GM received about $60 billion between them. Besides preventing the auto companies from going into organized bankruptcy, Obama essentially gave control of the companies to the trade unions. The foxes guarding the hen house analogy comes quickly to mind.

Now they are withholding their financial support until they can squeeze out more concessions from the Obama administration. Unions are demanding that America get into a trade war with China over the price of imported auto parts.

Do you want to know why the U.S. can’t compete with China over auto parts pricing? Yep, you guessed it. Because trade union salaries and benefits which are not in line with other U.S. industries are driving up the costs of production.

Unions also are angry at Obama for passing the South Korea, Colombia and Panama free trade agreements, which are expected to increase U.S. exports by at least $13 billion and add at least $10 billion to U.S. Gross Domestic Product per year. Most importantly, these trade agreements could create 250,000 U.S. jobs.

This also does not take into account the impact it will have on the more than 80 percent of U.S. exporters to South Korea, Colombia, and Panama who are small and medium-sized enterprises that exported $12 billion to those countries in 2008.

Here again, the duplicity of unions comes into play. They seem to ignore the U.S. jobs that will be created because of these agreements since they won’t all be union jobs. In this economy, with some 25 million Americans unemployed and underemployed, can we afford to turn our backs on the creation of good paying jobs? That seems selfish and self-serving to me.

So Obama has found out what other presidents have found out: if you play with unions, they will burn you.

The word is that unions are not writing large checks to the Democratic Party. Instead, they are seeking more independence and leverage, by financing their own initiatives, such as beating back candidates that they believe don’t support their agenda. They are also starting their own Super PACS. Before the advent of Super PACS in 2008, Union PACS gave $73 million directly to candidates, 92 percent of which went to Democrats.

Yes, unions will support Obama this year, but the Democratic Party is not likely to see the full court press they saw in 2008. That’s good news for Republicans who are amassing unprecedented contributions in their Super PACS.

How successful are Republican Super PACS? Democrats are trying to end them because they can’t keep up with the numbers. Yet, Democrats have no concerns about the millions they get from labor unions who want to make it easier to unionize by scrapping the secret ballot.

And Democrats aren’t likely to eliminate the contributions from trial lawyers, who overwhelmingly support their candidates, which want to make it easier to win huge settlements for frivolous lawsuits therefore driving up insurance premiums.

After all, both of these special interests hurt our job creators in serious and significant ways.

If Republicans are looking for more good news, it’s that the traditional liberal Democratic base in Hollywood is sitting on the sidelines. Unlike the Republicans, the Hollywood crowd isn’t enamored with Super PACs, and are not donating big money to the Obama Super PAC and to the Democratic Party.

That’s not to say that Obama won’t receive their support. Hollywood celebs will give individual donations, but the limit is controlled by election laws, unlike Super PACS.

The loss of financial support among two traditional Democratic power bases should embolden Republicans and their donors. Republicans are finding renewed fundraising success through Super PACS and other means, and when the Republican nominee is ultimately selected (which will be Mitt Romney), he will need the financial power to get the Republican message out to defeat Obama.

The Democratic Party is vulnerable this election. Americans need to seize the initiative and get this ship of state headed in the right direction. We need a President who is more concerned about job creation and the plight of the common man than about job preservation of a Democratic administration.

Gasoline prices are rapidly rising attributed to uncertainty about Iran and the loss of Iranian oil supplies to the world market or a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 17 million barrels of oil, or about 20 percent of total world production, flow each day.

Already, the national average price of regular unleaded gasoline today is $3.76, an 8-cent increase from last week. According to AAA, Florida’s average of $3.79 and Georgia’s average of $3.70 both increased 5 cents from last week. Tennessee’s average price of $3.59 rose 3 cents from last week.

Yes, Iran poses a problem for the U.S. on many fronts, but the U.S. doesn’t import any oil from Iran, and hasn’t for some time. In fact, about half of U.S. petroleum imports come from the Western Hemisphere, not from the Middle East, where we only import about 16 percent of our crude oil and petroleum products.

So why hasn’t President Barack Obama done anything to increase oil supplies to alleviate the pressure of escalading gas prices? Because he is willing to give American consumers a painful lesson on why they need to support his Green energy program.

He has said: “As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs — but only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment.”

Well, he seized the moment – to generate some good press coverage. He vowed that the goal of his green energy program was to train 124,893 people and place them in new green jobs. But according to Climate Depot, “After 17 months, the results of the green jobs program indicate that only 52,762 were trained, and only 8,035 got green jobs – each job costs tax payers about $62,000…the Administration’s reliance upon green jobs was just another failed progressive dream and pandering to the eco-vote.”

A Washington Post analysis has found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.

Have we forgotten about the Solyndra debacle when the Obama administration authorized a $535 million loan guarantee only to see the company go belly up?

Or how about Beacon Power Corp., an energy-storage company that filed for bankruptcy after receiving $43 million in backing from the same U.S. program that funded Solyndra?

More recently, Ener1, which makes electric car batteries, filed for bankruptcy protection after receiving a $118 million grant from the federal government in 2009.

Then there’s the president’s goal of putting 1 million advanced vehicles on the road by 2015. How’s that working out? General Motors has instituted a five-week production suspension of the Chevrolet Volt because of oversupply.

The analysts at Edmonds indicated that “The price premium on the Volt just doesn’t make economic sense for the average consumer when there are so many fuel-efficient gasoline cars available, typically for thousands of dollars less.”

So the question becomes: If the American people aren’t ready to dive into Green energy, why isn’t the administration willing to do more to reduce gas prices at the pump for current car owners?

The answer is that Obama and his staff are just plain defiant when it comes to supporting their policies. The American people didn’t want Obamacare but it was shoved down their throats anyway.

The American people aren’t embracing his Green energy program either. But that hasn’t stopped his relentless drumbeat for green energy support.

Don’t get me wrong, an alternative energy program is a good idea because it reduces our reliance on foreign oil, but it has to be combined with a domestic energy program that includes clean coal, domestic drilling, and natural gas.

If the American people aren’t yet ready for his green policy, why does he not listen to them and move on to something they do passionately care about: gas prices.

Rising oil prices put increased pressure on household budgets that have already been stretched to the limit. Any relief they received from the extension of the payroll tax reduction has been more than offset by raising energy costs.

Raising energy costs also impacts the cost to run a business. That reduces job creation when we can least afford it.

Mr. President, for a change, give the American people what they need, not what you want.

The survey found 5 percent of current manufacturing jobs are unfilled due to lack of qualified candidates, 67 percent of manufacturers have a moderate to severe shortage of qualified workers, and 56 percent expect the shortage to increase in the next three to five years as older workers retire.

Most of these unfilled jobs are in the skilled production category — positions such as machinists, operators, craft workers, logistics managers and technicians.

How did the U.S. manufacturing industry – historically and currently the worldwide leader in manufacturing — lose its mojo? (Yes, the United States is the largest manufacturing country in the world and until recently the largest exporter). There are 14 million unemployed U.S. workers while there are more than a half –million job vacancies.

How did we get into this situation?

It comes down to two largely preventable trends.

The first is that the U.S. manufacturing industry has done a lousy PR job to attract today’s work force. Most people still envision workers bathed in sweat manually hauling raw materials to create appliances, cars, steel and other durable goods. But that no longer represents today’s manufacturing.

Advanced Manufacturing is the buzzword today. The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration’s definition is as follows: “Advanced Manufacturing is the accelerated use of high-tech processes in the manufacturing plant.”

That means manufacturing workers today are relying on computerization, robotics and emerging technologies. This requires brain power, not brawn. This is the stuff that workers in the 20th century could never even imagine.

This is a story about innovation and creativity that isn’t being told to today’s younger workforce. It’s time that U.S. manufacturers sponsor road shows across the country to excite young people about manufacturing. They have a good story to tell: great jobs, great compensation and benefits, and great opportunities. And this must begin today if we are to catch up to the needs we face in filling high tech manufacturing jobs.

This takes us to the second preventable trend: taking the onus off of trade and technical schools. At one time, the U.S. had apprentice programs where workers trained to become craftsmen and skilled artisans. Yesterday’s apprentice programs are today’s trade and technical schools.

Unlike traditional colleges, where students must complete a wide variety of courses, many of which are unrelated to their desired jobs, a trade school offers a highly focused curriculum devoted exclusively to preparing a student for their job of choice. A trade school student will generally earn their degree in a shorter amount of time than in a traditional college and at a much lower cost.

Yet, even as enrollment in trade schools is increasing, the Obama administration seeks to reduce funding for vocational training by 20 percent, while concentrating primarily on the Pell Grant program that offers financial aid for college and university attendance. If you look at the millions of college graduates that are unemployed or under employed, why wouldn’t the government want to put more emphasis on trade school students, who tend to be from lower income backgrounds and thus more dependent, directly or indirectly, on government assistance?

According to data, England, Germany, Japan and Sweden invest as heavily in the education and training of work-bound youth as they do for each college-bound youth. This puts the U.S. at a disadvantage when it comes to filling and creating today’s manufacturing jobs.

When 600,000 jobs are unfilled and 14 million unemployed, this nation must re-evaluate its commitment to manufacturing. It has been the backbone of this country from its very founding and to allow the U.S. to slip behind other countries in manufacturing superiority is unconscionable.

The United States must re-claim its manufacturing leadership. We have the smarts, we have the workers, and we have the resources. What we lack is the will.

And again, nothing has happened, or will happen.

From the very beginning of his administration, he has failed to grasp the realities of America’s 21st century energy requirements and their relationship to jobs and the economy.

Now rising oil prices (the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline has jumped 13.1 cents to $3.518 in the past month, according to auto club AAA) comes at a bad time – just when companies are starting to hire.

Manufacturers face lower profit margins as they pay more to get their products to market and face higher costs for plastics and other petroleum-based materials. And higher prices at the pump force consumers to cut spending on discretionary items like dining out, home improvements and family vacations, hurting those industries. Dwindling profits mean dwindling hiring opportunities.

For the oil industry, Obama offered new leases in the Gulf of Mexico and promised to open 75 percent of the country’s resources for drilling. This was exactly what he proposed in 2007, but not much has happened since.

Why is a sound energy policy so linked to jobs?

According to a study by Wood Mackenzie (an energy consulting firm), the development of new and existing resources could, by 2018, increase domestic oil and gas production by millions of barrels a day and support a million new jobs.

Another study, by IHS Global Insight, estimates that returning permitting approvals to their historic levels before the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico would generate 230,000 jobs in 2012. And these are mainly high paying, blue-collar jobs that would immediately make a huge difference for millions of American households.

House Republicans agree and have proposed an active jobs plan to significantly expand American energy production offshore, onshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. With bipartisan support, their plan would create more than 1 million American jobs, generate billions of dollars in revenue and reduce America’s reliance on increasingly unstable Middle Eastern oil.

It would make energy more affordable for our manufacturers and for our consumers. Energy prices heading downwards would help relieve anxiety and hopelessness over our economic future.

Let’s not forget Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have created 20,000 jobs during the pipeline’s initial construction phase and up to a half-million more over time. The Keystone XL would play a major part in full utilization of Canada’s oil sands that would be refined and distributed in the United States.

But Obama isn’t the only Democrat who doesn’t grasp the relationship between domestic oil production and jobs. New Jersey’s Senator Robert Menendez, who has submitted a new amendment in the Senate Finance Committee that would impose over $43 billion in new tax hikes on the oil and natural gas industry, is clearly out of step with even his own party. Such a policy would punish the very oil and natural gas industries that could create millions of employment opportunities. Is anyone awake in Washington?

According to a report in Forbes, oil and gas companies directly employ more than 2 million Americans, from blue-collar workers to well-trained scientists and engineers. In addition, the industry supports millions of manufacturing, construction, mining and other indirect jobs — about 9 million of them in all.

“To the extent the industry is allowed to drill here, it creates and keeps jobs here. If oil and gas companies were allowed to explore in more domestic areas currently off limits, it would create an estimated 1 million more jobs — and those jobs wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a dime. Indeed, those companies would be paying millions of dollars in taxes.”

The question then becomes: Why doesn’t Congress put more urgency behind an energy policy to create jobs? It looks like there is significant bi-partisan support for more domestic drilling. So what’s the hang up?

Congress is too busy fighting to get things done. For example, putting money behind infrastructure has merit to repair crumbling bridges and roads. But why spend billions of Federal dollars on “shovel ready” jobs when a stroke of the pen would put millions of Americans back to work on domestic energy programs? This work would be done by private energy companies without the Federal government having to spend its own money.

Oil is a precious commodity. But so are American jobs. There must be a way to put these on equal footing. It is this simple: by supporting domestic energy production, we support domestic job creation.

President Barack Obama’s pledge to double exports in five years is off to a rocky start. Tax relief and support for U.S. exporters has failed to materialize. The result is the U.S. trade imbalance continues to grow.

The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services increased to $558 billion in 2011 from $500 billion in 2010. That’s up 11.6 percent from 2010 as imports continue to rise much faster than exports.

As a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product the goods and services deficit was 3.7 percent in 2011, up from 3.4 percent in 2010. For December 2011, the trade deficit increased to $48.8 billion from $47.1 billion in November. Every indicator is going in the wrong direction despite the emphasis placed on exports by the administration.

As expected, it is hard to ignore China’s impact on the trade deficit. The goods deficit with China increased from $273.1 billion in 2010 to $295.5 billion in 2011. Exports increased $12.0 billion (primarily passenger cars and copper) to $103.9 billion, while imports increased $34.4 billion (primarily computers, household goods and apparel) to $399.3 billion.

Our imports from China are increasing nearly three times faster than our exports to China despite all the tough talk and saber rattling by Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. It doesn’t seem the Chinese are taking their lectures on fair trade, equal access and currency manipulation too seriously.

But China isn’t alone in running whopping surpluses with the U.S. We ran $119 billion and $63 billion trade deficits with Europe and Japan, respectively, last year. We also had large deficits with India and Brazil.

This growing trade imbalance is one of the major causes for the stubborn U.S. unemployment rate remaining above 8 percent and impacting 14 million Americans who can’t find a job. When exports rise, employment rises. Small businesses, the spark plug for exports and job creation, are simply not getting the support they need to open foreign markets to their products and services.

But all is not doom and gloom. The U.S. continues to reap the benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has created important trade opportunities with Canada and Mexico.

The goods deficit with Mexico decreased from $66.4 billion in 2010 to $65.6 billion in 2011. Exports increased $34.1 billion (primarily petroleum products and computer accessories) to $197.5 billion, while imports increased $33.2 billion (primarily crude oil and automotive, parts, and accessories) to $263.1 billion.

Mexico buys more American products than China and Japan combined and if we removed our imports of crude oil from the trade figures our trade deficit with Mexico would be negligible.

This should spur the administration and Congress to expand our free trade agreements with other nations. When the U.S. trades on a level playing field, we do amazingly well. We have nothing to fear from global competition.

Perhaps the most important reason for expanding U.S. trade is that China makes no secret that they want to see the Yuan replace the dollar as the world’s currency. There is no current danger yet since U.S. Treasurys continue to dominate and show strength worldwide.

But while the euro is in peril, the Yuan has gained prominence as the only possible alternative to the dollar.

There are five steps to get our exports moving.

Step One has already started. We are moving to disassemble the U.S. government’s archaic and ineffectual trade structure. Eliminate the current multi-organizational structure and replace it with one entity with the authority to make decisions and get things done.

Step Two is to aggressively go after countries that steal our intellectual property with impunity. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that China alone is responsible for over $300 billion in U.S. intellectual property theft, which coincidentally, is the size of our trade deficit with China.

Step Three is to systematically promote “back shoring” by incentivizing companies that moved operation overseas to come back home. We must turn this trickle into a flood.

Step Four is to reward U.S. companies that export by providing them incentives and loan guarantees so they have access to working capital. Our small businesses and entrepreneurs, whom are the backbone of our export community, are not asking for anything for free –they just want to be able to compete. We must fully recognize we live in a world where our foreign competitors are being heavily subsidized by their governments.

Step Five is to hold this administration and the congress accountable for our growing trade imbalance. If they aren’t willing to support trade, it is our duty to export them out of office.

The bottom line is that a robust export program is essential to American growth and prosperity. We must create an environment that gives people around the world the opportunity to purchase U.S. goods at fair prices while exposing them to U.S. fair play and freedom.