Thread: Want to create jobs? Pass long-stalled trade pacts DEBATE

Our view on free trade: Want to create jobs? Pass long-stalled trade pacts

Organized labor thwarts deals with Panama, Colombia, South Korea.

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama appealed to Republicans to stop opposing him at every turn. Less noticed was a swipe at an obstructionist faction within his own party: organized labor and its congressional allies.

The relationship between Democrats and labor has always been complicated. Labor puts money and muscle behind Democratic campaigns. But it opposes key parts of the Democratic agenda on health care, and it blocks bipartisan consensus on trade.

At a time when exports provide a key avenue for U.S. job growth, trade pacts with three nations — Panama, Colombia and South Korea — have been languishing in Congress for years. These deals would cut tariffs, grant American companies greater access to service industries such as telecommunications and banking, and protect U.S. patents and trademarks. They are conspicuously absent from Congress' latest efforts to jump-start job growth.

The omission is not only bad for jobs but also is emblematic of the sorry state of U.S. politics, where any special interest can seemingly block whatever it wants, as a way to gain advantage at the expense of others or merely to demonstrate its power.

The agreements with Panama and Colombia, reached in 2007 and 2006 respectively, are no-brainersthat would almost surely pass with bipartisan support if Democratic leaders in Congress would allow a vote. Both nations have better access to U.S. markets than the United States has to theirs.

And both could be big outlets for U.S. manufactured goods — to expand the Panama Canal, and to feed Colombia's hunger for heavy equipment needed to exploit its resources-rich economy.

The South Korean pact would take more presidential salesmanship because it would be the biggest commerce deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed in 1993. But it, too, makes good sense to give American companies greater access to the part of the world where consumer demand and economic growth are likely to grow the fastest.

All three deals have significant geopolitical dimensions as well. Greater ties with the two Latin American countries would help develop vibrant economies not related to drug trafficking and would impede extremist and anti-American movements in the region. Stronger economic ties with South Korea could help thwart the North Koreans and serve as a countervailing force to China in the region.

Precisely how many jobs these deals would create is hard to say.

Technological change, advances in productivity, and business booms and busts are all intermeshed with trade in the employment picture. But until the recent recession, which slashed 8 million jobs, the U.S. economy had one of its best runs ever, adding more than 25 million jobs during 15 years of expanding exports and an unusual number of trade deals, including the much-maligned NAFTA.

In his speech, Obama said he wants to create 2 million export-related jobs in five years. That is a highly optimistic — some would say unrealistic — goal, given the state of the economies in many of the countries that U.S. employers would export to. If the president is going to succeed, he had better get to work convincing his fellow Democrats that it is in nobody's interest to be held hostage by labor.

Posted at 12:22 AM/ET, February 17, 2010 in USA TODAY editorial

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/02/ ... pacts.html
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Opposing view: Don't buy 'free-trade hype'

Korea deal could put thousands of manufacturing jobs at risk.

By Richard Trumka

Our country is mired in a deep recession and a jobs crisis of historic proportions. This is a moment for our policymakers to take bold action to create millions of good jobs to put hardworking Americans back to work.

This is not the moment to dust off George W. Bush's failed trade agreements and ram them through Congress — certainly not under the false premise that they will help solve our jobs problem.

The trade agreements that President Bush negotiated with Colombia, South Korea and Panama are unlikely to generate significant jobs in the United States. Nor will they promote democratic and broadly shared economic development abroad, or deepen our friendships with those countries.

Haven't we learned yet to distinguish between the "free-trade hype" of Econ 101 — and the hard, cold reality that our current trade policy has become a vehicle for offshoring and outsourcing good jobs?

Even the U.S. International Trade Commission has concluded that the likely economic impact of the Colombia and Panama deals is no more than a rounding error in the U.S. economy. The ongoing threats against, and murders of, trade unionists in Colombia should also place this agreement out of consideration any time soon.

The Korea deal could be more economically significant — but in the wrong direction — potentially putting thousands of auto and other industrial sector jobs at risk. That is the last thing we need at a time like this, when our manufacturing sector has been badly battered.

We need a new trade policy — one that is an integral part of our broader economic strategy. Increasing our net exports could help spur economic growth and job creation, but bilateral trade agreements based on the failed NAFTA template won't get us there.

Instead, we need to support high-value and high-tech manufacturing in the USA. The single most important thing our government can do to help is to challenge other countries' currency manipulation — especially the Chinese government's. The U.S. cannot successfully export to countries that intervene systematically to keep their goods artificially cheap relative to ours. We also need to effectively enforce our trade laws; invest in research, development, modern infrastructure and skills; and end tax practices that disadvantage our own producers.

Then we can begin to talk about a pro-jobs, pro-worker trade policy for the 21st century.

Richard Trumka is president of the AFL-CIO.

Posted at 12:21 AM/ET, February 17, 2010 in USA TODAY editorial

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/02/ ... .html#more

Free Trade is a Fraud and a Fallacy. The more free trade agreements we sign the more manufacturing jobs we lose, the more money supply that escapes our pockets, the more unemployment we suffer, the more debt we carry, the more insolvency we experience, and the more of a Banana Republic we become.

The foreign trade statistics of the United States expose the free trade fallacy clearly and the fraud distinctly for those without the math and common sense to already know the truth about free trade that isn't free at all, because free trade isn't free when it bankrupted your nation.

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/sta ... /gands.txt

And Americans should boycott any newspaper with editors who support free trade and by so doing are supporting the destruction of the US economy.

The fraud of free trade proponents lies herein:

They argue for the agreements and the elimination of the tariffs that protect our economy on the basis of "we're going to increase our exports", when the reality and truth is, once the free trade agreement is signed they will close their plants here, relocate the facilities to those countries to serve those markets as domestic producers at their production costs and then with no tariffs in place for entry of these products into the US, back-haul those products into our markets. It's the same fraud as NAFTA and CAFTA and many others. The proponents of free trade have absolutely NO INTENTION of increasing job growth in the US, because their sole purpose is to use the free trade agreements to leave the US with the right to back-haul their foreign-produced products into the US and sell them for the same price they were selling them for when they produced here.

There is no comparative advantage for the United States, the American Worker or the American Consumer from free trade. It is a 100% comparative disadvantage that has bankrupted our nation.