Flawed free-trade deals will cost American jobs


Stand with working families and oppose these three proposals.

By Linda Chavez-Thompson

Published 09:04 p.m., Friday, August 12, 2011


The only thing Texas needs more than rain is jobs. But instead of focusing on job creation, Congress is poised to consider three NAFTA–style trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia that will kill more Texas jobs.

We were promised Texas would be a NAFTA winner, but the Economic Policy Institute reported the United States has lost more than 682,000 jobs to NAFTA. About 55,600 jobs were lost in Texas. Additionally, the U.S. trade surplus with Mexico became a $97.2 billion deficit.

Now, the same multi-national corporations that have moved so many jobs offshore want Congress to stick Americans with three more job-killing trade deals.

EPI predicts the Korea trade deal would kill 159,000 jobs in its first seven years. Even the official U.S. government studies show that this deal would increase our trade deficit.

The hardest hit sectors would include Texas industries like motor vehicles, transportation equipment, electronics, metals, textiles and apparel. These sectors provide more than 233,500 jobs to Texans. More than 12,000 of these jobs are in the San Antonio metro area.

The Korea trade agreement jeopardizes jobs by allowing certain goods with up to 65 percent foreign content to count as “made in Americaâ€