The U.S. Department of the Treasury released its semiannual report to Congress on international economic and exchange rate policies last week.

And it was not a pretty picture.

China continues to engage in unfair currency manipulation in a manner that has a devastating impact on American manufacturing and American workers.

The impact of this manipulation is especially devastating for Wisconsin, a state that has historically had a stronger manufacturing base than most in the U.S. - but that in recent years has suffered setback after setback because of bad trade policies.

As U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who has been a leader in fighting for a new approach on trade and currency policy, notes: "For the better part of this decade, the federal government has ignored this unfair advantage while our trade deficit with China has grown from $85 billion in 1999 to $268 billion in 2008. As a result, we have lost more than 4 million manufacturing jobs. Best estimates show that currency manipulation amounts to a 40 percent subsidy for Chinese products."

The Obama administration has taken some steps to hold China to account.

But they are minor steps, at best.

Brown's right when he says: "While I applaud President Obama's recent call to rebalance the global economy, I would like to see a more aggressive approach to correcting this unfair trade advantage that is widely acknowledged by almost everyone but the U.S. Treasury Department. American manufacturers can and will compete - but we need a trade policy that invests in their ingenuity and cracks down on currency manipulation."

That's the right message - one that is embraced by Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold as well as a number of members of the state's congressional delegation, including Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison; Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee; and Steve Kagen, D-Appleton. Even the senior Republican in the delegation, Jim Sensenbrenner, frequently takes the right side on trade votes.

Unfortunately, two key members of the state's delegation, La Crosse Democrat Ron Kind and Janesville Republican Paul Ryan, still tend to follow the dictates of the lobbyists for multinational corporations when it comes to trade policy. As such, Kind and Ryan encourage the sort of manipulation that undermines Wisconsin manufacturing and Wisconsin workers.

Kind and Ryan should take their jobs more seriously, study up on trade deficits and start voting like representatives of La Crosse and Janesville, not Wall Street and Beijing.

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