Potential Rep VP welcomes free trade despite job loss concerns

Washington, Aug 7 (PTI) A potential running mate to the
Republican presidential nominee John McCain has said that the
the U.S. should should welcome "free and fair trade" and
compete with leading players to control loss of manufacturing
jobs.

"The Republican Party should be for free and fair trade.
It is not in our best interests to retreat in terms of trade.
The United States and our employees should be able to compete
with the best around the world, if the rules are fair," the
Governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty said.

"But as it relates to manufacturing jobs in particular,
there's a number of things happening. One is a new phenomenon
called near-sourcing because energy has become so expensive.
Some of the activities are now starting to relocate closer to
where the markets are," he said.

He was asked as to what the next President should do to
combat the loss of manufacturing jobs in America in the
context of globalisation.

"That's an enormous opportunity for manufacturing and a
whole new economic development sector to emerge. There's an
entire industry that is going to emerge, much like the I.T.
industry did in the late 1990s, and that's now going to be
around clean energy and next-generation energy."

Pawlenty is increasingly being mentioned as a possible
running mate to Senator McCain but has not given the slightest
indication if he has been "vetted" for the post by the closest
advisers of Senator McCain.

"U.S. manufacturers can compete -- it's not so much with
commoditizable lower end products, but it is the value-added
products that relate to things like medical devices or
value-added manufacturing. And our manufacturing sector in
Minnesota has experienced a nice uptick in exports," he said.