Trans-Pacific Partnership: The Fast Track to Poverty

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/trans-pacific-partnership-fast-track-poverty

That giant sucking sound predicted by Ross Perot commenced 20 years ago last week. It is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) vacuuming up U.S. jobs and depositing them in Mexico.

Independent presidential candidate Perot was right. NAFTA swept U.S. industry south of the border. It made Wall Street happy. It made multi-national corporations obscenely profitable. But it destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of American workers.

NAFTA’s backers promised it would create American jobs, just as promoters of the Korean and Chinese trade arrangements said they would and advocates of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal contend it will. They were – and still are – brutally wrong. NAFTA, the Korean deal and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization killed American jobs. They lowered wages. They diminished what America cherishes: opportunity. They contributed to the very ill that President Obama is crusading against: income inequality. There is no evidence the TPP would be any different. American workers need a new trade philosophy, one that protects them and puts people first, not corporations.

After 20 years, Americans know in their guts the damage NAFTA did to them, the destruction it caused to American manufacturing. There’s also concrete proof. In a study titled “NAFTA at 20,” released this month, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch concludes:

“After two decades of NAFTA, the evidence is clear: the vaunted deal failed at its promises of job creation and better living standards while contributing to mass job losses, soaring income inequality, agricultural instability, corporate attacks on domestic health and environmental safeguards, and mass displacement and volatility in Mexico.”

[Fumesucker]

1. Not a fast track to poverty for the 1% and their bought and paid for representatives in Washington

Therefore none of the Very Serious People are going to give one ten thousandth of a shit.

[xchrom]

2. +1

[WinkyDink]

18. X a billion.

[KG]

3. oh c'mon. nobody even knoooows what's in TPP! anyway, it's all about soybeeaaaans!

[solarhydrocan]

4. Sir James Goldsmith warned

no match for the vibrant young Al Gore. But Goldsmith had what Gore and D'Andrea Tyson will never have.

Watch as Sir Goldsmith dukes it out with Laura D'Andrea Tyson-
former Chair of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration (end of part 2).

D'Andrea Tyson tries to bully a man who had more sophistication and smarts in his little finger than ever existed in D'Andrea's entire life.

[Enthusiast]

5. By now it should be obvious to all that Goldsmith was exactly correct.

Yet there are "Democrats" that are still promoting new trade agreements.

As if the previous trade agreements didn't do enough damage.

This is a crisis.

We cannot allow another of these goddamned trade deals that sell American workers down the river.

Charlie was already a mouthpiece of the .01%.

[Enthusiast]

6. This should have HUNDREDS of recommendations. Come on people.

[pampango]

7. As is typical, Perot was a republican politician who used existing trends to appeal to fear-monger.

That hardly makes him a genius. It certainly does make him a republican.

Manufacturing jobs have been declining in the US (and in every other developed country) since about 1955. Predicting that an existing trend will continue does not require a PHD in economics. Blaming that trend and its continuation on a policy that happened 40 years later is more fear-mongering than science.

Ross had also correctly predicted the return of manufacturing to the US AFTER Wages and Benefits for Americans had dropped to 3rd World Levels.

Our average manufacturing wage now is $19.60 an hour. I had no idea that workers in the 3rd World were doing that well in 2013 but, if Ross is "right", they must be.

The upturn in manufacturing wages looks like in started in about 1995. Hmmmm.

Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial received harassment from Perot after her race was revealed: he was known to have called her an "egg roll" after it was revealed that she was Asian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot#Early_political_activities

Apparently not a big fan of non-whites. I am not aware that he opposed the US-Canada free trade agreement which had been in existence for many years when NAFTA was proposed.

[Recursion]

9. Don't bother. DU is convinced US manufacturing doesn't exist

Rather than, you know, producing more than at any point in US history.

[pampango]

11. I had fact-free beliefs. I always think of that as a republican mentality. "Repeat a lie often enoug

and people come to believe it is true" is also a republican tactic.

[Octafish]

8. Look, if we don't give the rich everything they want, they won't let us eat the crumbs...

...and from the horse trough outside the casino. Get with the program, people! It's your new job! Unpaid, but at least you've got something to do besides complain! What do you think this is, a democracy?

[Recursion]

10. Wages went up after NAFTA. Up.

The only time in the past 30-40 years that they've done that. We keep pointing that out: wages didn't rise under Reagan, or Poppy. They rose under Clinton, after NAFTA was enacted. Even W's two recessions didn't get rid of all of those wage increases (though it kept them treading water since 2000 or so).

[Octafish]

12. What do the numbers show without CEO compensation?

Seems like they and their corporate owners are the recipients of the lions share of wealth created since NAFTA.

[Recursion]

13. Median wages. Median. Not average.

The only time the median wage has gone up more than inflation since the 70s was the mid to late 90s.

[pampango]

15. Here's a graph of the wages of nonsupervisory workers from Paul Krugman.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/13/youre-all-losers/?_r=0

And US manufacturing wages are now average $19.60 an hour and has been rising since 1995 or so.

But the vast majority of wealth has been going to the 1% due to our regressive tax policy and labor laws along with lax corporate regulation.

[cali]

14. and can that be attributed in large to NAFTA?

In any case, the TPP and TTIP are far less about trade than NAFTA- and NAFTA certainly was about corporate boons as a much as real trade issues.

there's just so much wrong with what we know about the TPP, One of the things I find shocking regarding the environment chapter is that NO environmental groups were in an advisory capacity to the USTR. NONE. Not, the Sierra Club or NRDC or any of the groups with solid expertise. But corporate advisors? Yep. Lots of those.

That's just the tip of this very ugly iceberg.

[pampango]

17. Probably not but it is inconsistent with a narrative that NAFTA lowered American wages which is what

Perot predicted. The narrative that trade is bad for wages (disproven many time in Europe, Canada and elsewhere) never seems to die.

There were undoubtedly many factors (mainly getting a republican out of the White House) that led to the increase in wages after NAFTA.

You are right that the TPP is about much more than trade - which makes the moniker of "NAFTA on steroids" somewhat laughable since NAFTA was all about trade. I suppose that guilt by association is always an effective tactic and not just on the right.

The idea of a international agreement that imposed environmental and labor standards on trade partners was (or would have been) a great idea. It's what was missing from many pervious agreements. Unfortunately, the TPP as it has evolved has not done anything of the sort.

[MisterP]

19. "how can you feed sparrows without a horse?"

[marmar]

16. k/r