As Mike Elk points out today at In These Times, the "top concerns of all Americans, including Tea Party supporters, is not the federal budget deficit but that we are too deep of debt to China in terms of our trade imbalance." Simply put, the trade deficit trumps our budget deficit.  Or, more succinctly, shipping jobs overseas is problem #1. Elk grew up in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania and has watched the ongoing loss of manufacturing jobs take a heavy toll on his home.  In sizing up the Tea Party movement in Pennsylvania, he believes that "Tea Party supporters are very much in favor of government action to revitalize America's manufacturing base":

The Tea Party get its momentum not from an overall hatred of government, but from a hatred of government doing things that so often hurt people like unfair trade deals.

Elk cites AAM's new manufacturing poll:

Seventy-four percent of self-described Tea Party Supporters would support a "national manufacturing strategy to make sure that economic, tax, labor, and trade policies in this country work together to help support manufacturing in the United States"...Likewise, 56 percent of self-described Tea Party Supporters "favor a tariff on products imported from other countries that are cheaper because they came from a country that does not have to comply with any climate change regulations in the country where the products were made."

What the poll really shows is that the American people get it.  They understand that continued outsourcing has taken a heavy toll on the nation's manufacturing base, and on good-paying jobs.  And they understand it regardless of political party or affiliation. The bigger problem is that Congress doesn't get it, yet...  But as the poll shows, they'll hear it loudly in November. Read more.