grahamhgreen's Journal - Should We Flex Some Progressive Muscle and Kill Obama’s Job Killing Trade Deal?

Obama has been on a bus tour touting his plan to create jobs: BUT IT’S JUST ANOTHER JOB KILLING TRADE DEAL.

Progressives were almost able to kill Obama’s cuts-only deal on the debt ceiling, we can kill this. (The debt bill passed only with overwhelming Republican support, the fact is half the Dems in the house voted against it. He actually passed a Republican plan. Two thirds of Americans simply want to raise taxes on the wealthy, and do not want cuts to social programs.)

I'm calling my congress person to nip his new series of "trade deals" in the bud at 1-202-224-3121.

I’m telling them we don’t want more jobs off-shored, we want to end NAFTA and the WTO, and return to the trade policies and tariffs of the greatest generation - trade policies that actually create jobs.

The simple fact is that there is no evidence that the trade deals we’ve been engaged in since the mid 90’s have increased jobs - the opposite is true, they are costing us jobs.

When he signed NAFTA on September 14, 1993, Bill Clinton Said, "I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its impact. And I believe that that is many more than will be lost..."

Since that time, this is what has happened to US employment:

From the Economic Policy Institute:

"Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1993, the rise in the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico through 2002 has caused the displacement of production that supported 879,280 U.S. jobs. Most of those lost jobs were high-wage positions in manufacturing industries.

"The loss of these jobs is just the most visible tip of NAFTA's impact on the U.S. economy. In fact, NAFTA has also contributed to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened workers' collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits." (http://usliberals.about.com/od/theeconomyj... )

And since China joined the WTO, this is what’s happened:

U.S. International Trade Commission has admitted that KORUS-FTA will cost US jobs: the ITC sees the electronic equipment manufacturing industry, with average wages of $30.38 in 2008, as a major victim. The AFLCIO says it will cost more auto-workers their livelihoods.

Even our trading partners don’t want the deals, concerning the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement):

A free trade deal with the US would be catastrophic for any remaining economic sovereignty that New Zealand has. CAFCA says this not because we are “anti-American”. All such FTAs – such as with the existing P4 partners, or the more recent ones with Malaysia, the Gulf States and Hong Kong - pose the same threat to a greater or lesser degree. And our opposition to them is not because of “xenophobia” but for well founded grounds that they simply enmesh NZ more and more tightly in a cobweb of transnational corporate control.

So it’s a recipe for disaster to enter into an FTA with the biggest economy in the world, headed by a Government that aggressively pushes the interests of American Big Business (there is a seamless flow between the US Government and US Big Business, as is evidenced by the trillion dollar bailout of the mega-greedy financial sector, a textbook example of socialism for the rich). (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1003/S002... )

Obama’s new trade deals will only benefit large multi-national corporations, they will not increase American jobs.

Please call - we can win this one: 1-202-224-3121.

And while we’re killing his new trade deal, let’s ask to kill the other part of his plan, the one that damages the long term outlook of Social Security, the extension of the FICA tax holiday, another bad idea.