The Obama administration continues to bumble along following in the Bush regime's footsteps offshoring US manufacturing jobs; it's right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

It maintains the ongoing "go along to get along" corporatist policies that pander to unfair trade practices and US companies' globalization machinations that eliminate American jobs, US corporations that instigate and/or are complicit in the unjust exploitation of workers in other countries.

Consider Obama's auto task force and this administration's dismaying contradictory policies.

Roger Bybee writes at In These Times:

"Even as unemployment rates soar in longtime GM-centered communities hit by shutdowns, such as Janesville, Wis. (14.7 percent), and Flint, Mich. (15.3 percent), Obama and his task force pressed GM and Chrysler for more cuts. GM plans to shut down at least 14 factories and discard some 21,000 workers. Chrysler is closing eight U.S. plants, though it claims that somehow its merger with Fiat will result in a new increase of 5,000 jobs. In a telling observation that carried unsettling echoes of Bill Clinton’s push for NAFTA, the New York Times called the job cuts and other worker sacrifices “steps that most analysts thought could never be pushed through by a Democratic president allied with organized labor.”

"The most recent version of GM’s recovery plan—closely tailored to the demands of the task force—calls for a stunning 98 percent increase in autos produced in Mexico, China, South Korea and Japan for the U.S. market.

"Only three of the Auto Task Force’s members were notably pro-labor, despite protests from labor and auto-state lawmakers. “The Auto Task Force members are basically red-pencil types who looked at saving the auto industry on the cheap without much consideration to social costs, let alone generating green alternative jobs for auto,” says economist and author William K. Tabb. “They have the narrowest business criteria for auto, unlike the banks that got capital and loan guarantees worth trillions. So their focus was to save the auto companies but not the auto workers.” Essentially, Obama and the task force wanted a quick and cheap solution to the Big Three’s ailing finances rather than providing an endless flow of resources, as the government did to the “too-big-to-fail” financial sector.

"Bizarrely, the Auto Task Force’s policy direction dramatically undercuts Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus program. “The problem with GM’s new Washington-mandated restructuring plan is that it steps on the gas in the wrong direction,” UC Berkeley professor Harley Shaiken told NPR’s “Marketplace.” “The stimulus package spends $800 billion to create jobs, while billions in loans to GM are conditioned on eliminating them.”

And the Obama administration keeps blathering about "free trade" which is a myth, to the detriment of regular Americans, instead of supporting "fair trade".

Eric Lotke at Campaign for America's Future points out: "While other country governments are taking the side of their people, our government sits on the sideline and cheers free trade — as if the interests of multinational corporations and the nation-states where they [nominally] reside are one and the same.

"The interests of the corporation and the nation's people are not necessarily the same. India appears to be subsidizing its steel industry. Italy bailed out Fiat on the condition that manufacturing remain in Italy — while the U.S. bailed out GM on the basis of survival tactics such as outsourcing production to China and Mexico. U.S. companies lay off skilled workers, then import talent on H-1B visas. We’ve lost one in five manufacturing jobs since 2000."

Robert E. Scott at the Economic Policy Institute writes about the declining status of the US steel industry and US manufacturing

"In testimony to the Congressional Steel Caucus, EPI Senior International Economist, Robert E. Scott, makes the case for increased US attention to and enforcement of trade law. 

“ 'The U.S. steel industry has experienced the largest output decline in decades and is currently operating at capacity utilization levels of well under 50%. The industry has lost over 50,000 jobs since 2000, which is responsible for the displacement of over 500,000 jobs in manufacturing and other sectors of the economy. The unprecedented expansion of the Chinese steel industry represents a grave threat to the future of the domestic steel industry. This expansion has been supported with vast, illegal subsidies for energy and other key inputs. In addition, China recently restored an export rebate program of 9% for many steel products, another direct and unnecessary subsidy to its exports.' "

In addition, Scott writes that the decline in US steel production is also a matter of national security, since the Department of Defense has been purchasing from a global supply chain that not only undermines US production but calls into question the efficacy of such dependence on foreign suppliers, many of whom are subsidized by their respective countries.