Bernie is right once again: Robert Reich: Trade agreements are simply ravaging the middle class

[UglyGreed]

In the '60s and '70s, these deals increased demand for American products. Now they're designed to keep wages down.

I used to believe in trade agreements. That was before the wages of most Americans stagnated and a relative few at the top captured just about all the economic gains.

The old-style trade agreements of the 1960s and 1970s increased worldwide demand for products made by American workers, and thereby helped push up American wages.

The new-style agreements increase worldwide demand for products made by American corporations all over the world, enhancing corporate and financial profits but keeping American wages down.

The fact is, recent trade deals are less about trade and more about global investment.

Big American corporations no longer make many products in the United States for export abroad. Most of what they sell abroad they make abroad.


http://www.salon.com/2016/03/16/robert_reich_trade_deals_are_gutting_the_middle_class_partner/?

[AZ Progressive]

1. Supporting modern trade deals is treachery

[cosmicone]

2. Robert Reich ... Meh n/t

[UglyGreed]

3. Hillary's NAFTA support

[vintx]

5. But she said she didn't support that, didn't she?

She wouldn't straight up fucking LIE just to stab us all in the back to serve her corporatist owners, would she?

[UglyGreed]

7. Some would say

[vintx]

4. Butbutbut.. Hill said she'd 'tweak' it!

Surely that's not just a comforting, condescending lie by a REAL DEMOCRAT! She has so much more integrity than that revolutionary Castro-complimenting non-real-democrat?

[ibegurpard]

8. Who gives a shit about actual people?

Their glorious leader has won a stunning VICTORY!

[vintx]

12. No shit. Shamelessly on display in this subthread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511505507#post14

[Lizzie Poppet]

6. Exactly. These deals benefit the few at the expense of the many.

They are fundamentally anti-progressive.

[Jefferson23]

10. Yes, at the expense of millions of people world wide..when you take that into account it becomes

unconscionable.

[MaggieD]

9. Reich hasn't been right about anything in decades

He is not an economist (he's a lawyer) and gets schooled by economists all the time. He is legend in that regard.

Automation is what killed jobs here, not trade. Jobs increased massively after NAFTA, and it wasn't until the productivity gains related to automation that we saw so many manufacturing jobs disappear.

By the way, Reich is a giant hypocrite. As he criticizes Hillary he gets paid $100K per speech and makes $250K per year to teach one class at a publically funded university.

[Hoyt]

11. Reich must have evolved. Just a few years ago, he was saying the only problem with NAFTA was

that he would have included tougher environmental and labor rights provisions. Interestingly, TPP does just that, although not to some folks satisfaction.

Now, all the sudden, Reich is slamming NAFTA. Without Reich, NAFTA would likely have never passed in the first place.

Truthfully, I think Sanders bought Reich's support on this by promising him a job in his admin were Sanders to win. I guess Reich is a little tired of being a college professor.

[Starry Messenger]

13. ROBERT REICH ON NAFTA

In 2008 he was still defending it.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/03/robert-reich-on.html
He writes:

Robert Reich's Blog: Hillary and Barack, Afta Nafta: It’s a shame the Democratic candidates for president feel they have to make trade – specifically NAFTA – the enemy of blue-collar workers.... NAFTA is not to blame.... When NAFTA took effect, Ohio had 990,000 manufacturing jobs. Two years later, in 1996, it had 1,300,000 manufacturing jobs. The number stayed above a million for the rest of the 1990s. Today, though, there are about 775,000 manufacturing jobs in Ohio.

What happened? The economy... crashed in late 2000, and the manufacturing jobs lost in that last recession never came back... employers automated the jobs out of existence, using robots and computers... [and] shipped the jobs abroad, mostly to China – not to Mexico.

NAFTA has become a symbol for the mounting insecurities felt by blue-collar Americans. While the overall benefits from free trade far exceed the costs, and the winners from trade (including all of us consumers who get cheaper goods and services because of it) far exceed the losers, there’s a big problem: The costs fall disproportionately on the losers -- mostly blue-collar workers who get dumped because their jobs can be done more cheaply by someone abroad who’ll do it for a fraction of the American wage.... Even though the winners from free trade could theoretically compensate the losers and still come out ahead, they don’t. America doesn’t have a system for helping job losers find new jobs that pay about the same as the ones they’ve lost – regardless of whether the loss was because of trade or automation. There’s no national retraining system. Unemployment insurance reaches fewer than 40 percent of people who lose their jobs.... There's no wage insurance. Nothing....

Get me? The Dems shouldn't be redebating NAFTA. They should be debating how to help Americans adapt to a new economy in which no job is safe. Okay, so back to my initial question. The answer is HRC didn't want the Administration to move forward with NAFTA... because of its timing. She wanted her health-care plan to be voted on first...

[Hoyt]

15. Good find.

[Starry Messenger]

16. This thread got quiet, didn't it?

[pampango]

14. "I used to believe in trade agreements. That was before the wages of most Americans stagnated and a

relative few at the top captured just about all the economic gains.

The old-style trade agreements of the 1960s and 1970s increased worldwide demand for products made by American workers, and thereby helped push up American wages."

I suppose that's an argument to go back to the GATT/WTO model and away from the trade agreements that have been made since then.

I am glad he supports good trade agreements/organizations and opposes bad ones.

Krugman: "The case for TPP is very, very weak. ... if a progressive makes it to the White House, he or she should devote no political capital whatsoever to such things."

A Protectionist Moment?

Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes, the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone wins — but we now have an ideology utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one party, and with blocking power against anything but a minor move in that direction by the other.

The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard to do anything much about globalization — not because it’s technically or economically impossible, but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic, foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. ... Trump might actually do it, but only as part of a reign of destruction on many fronts.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/09/a-protectionist-moment/?_r=0