Consultant warns Chinese influence in US freight industry could displace middle-income jobs

Economics consultant and researcher Hamilton Galloway warned in an interview that aired Monday on “Rising” that Chinese manufacturing penetrating the U.S. transit car market could lead to the displacement of middle-income American jobs. 

“The fear isn’t just the privacy side, it’s actually the displacement of a lot of good, middle-income and family-sustaining jobs,” Galloway, the head of Consultancy, Americas at Oxford Economics, told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton last week. 

“It’s all those other market displacing effects, and actually going back through those supply chains, and displacing a lot of middle-income jobs here in the U.S. where you have the U.S. economy for freight rail car manufacturing is 64,000 jobs here in the U.S., and that’s over $4 billion of actual labor income people getting paid in order to support this as a specific industry,” he continued. 

The state-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corp. has made inroads in the U.S. freight rail industry in recent years through producing rail cars for transit systems in major cities like Los Angeles and Chicago. 

The company is also pursuing a contract with Washington, D.C.’s Metro system. 

Members of Congress have raised concerns about the Chinese company, saying China could gain a dominant position within the U.S. transit car industry. 

— Julia Manchester


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