The U.S. trade deficit with China has cost the U.S. 2.4 million jobs since 2001, the Economic Policy Institute in Washington estimates. The EPI cites China's refusal to let its currency float freely, subsidies of certain industries and the suppression of labor rights as giving the country an unfair advantage. 'Unless China raises the real value of the yuan by at least 40 percent and eliminates these other trade distortions, the U.S. trade deficit and job losses will continue to grow rapidly in the future,' study author Robert Scott warns. The losses are calculated from 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, to 2008. The EPI estimates the U.S. has seen 2.4 million jobs lost or displaced during that period. Labor and manufacturing groups said the study vindicated their call for a tougher stance with China on trade. 'China is cleaning our clock and they do so by cheating at the rules of world trade,' said Steven Capozzola, spokesman for the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a coalition of labor groups and manufacturers. He said the Chinese aren't just exporting T-shirts and pencils, but taking over high-end electronic goods, like printed circuit boards. By contrast, the largest U.S. export category to China are scrap items -- metal and paper, Capozzola said. The computer, electronic equipment and parts industries lost 627,700 jobs or 26 percent of the total because of the growing trade deficits, the EPI study estimates. The report estimates that Colorado lost 45,000 jobs during the study period, with a sharp drop-off last decade in overseas sales of storage devices and semiconductors as production shifted to Asia. But Jim Reis, president and CEO of the Denver World Trade Center, faults the EPI and similar studies for viewing job losses as a one-way street. Several foreign countries, even China, have located jobs in this country. A study from the U.S.-China Business Council said that the U.S. share of total global manufacturing output has increased from 21.2 percent in 2000 to 24.7 percent in 2007. 'If China is taking a bite out of any country's manufacturing hide, it is Japan's,' the group notes in its study. Chinese officials also expect to report the country's first trade deficit in March in more than six years. 