Obama "looking forward" to shipping American jobs overseas with "free trade" bill signing [View All]

[brentspeak]

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/10/12/general-us-congress-trade_8731984.html

Associated Press
Congress passes 3 free trade agreements
By JIM ABRAMS , 10.12.11, 08:57 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- Congress approved free trade agreements Wednesday with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, ending a four-year drought in the forming of new trade partnerships and giving the White House and Capitol Hill the opportunity to show they can work together to stimulate the economy and put people back to work.

In rapid succession, the House and Senate voted on the three trade pacts, which the administration says could boost exports by $13 billion and support tens of thousands of American jobs. None of the votes were close, despite opposition from labor groups and other critics of free trade agreements who say they result in job losses and ignore labor rights problems in the partner countries.

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President Barack Obama said passage of the agreements was "a major win for American workers and businesses."

"Tonight's vote, with bipartisan support, will significantly boost exports that bear the proud label `Made in America,' support tens of thousands of good-paying American jobs and protect labor rights, the environment and intellectual property. ... I look forward to signing these agreements."

What Obama dishonestly leaves out is that, with the South Korean pact alone, imports will significantly outweigh exports, http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/south-korea-free-trade-agreement-will-cause-159000-americans-lose-their-jobs">costing at least 159,000 American jobs. Not only are these lost jobs http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/business/global/foes-of-south-korea-free-trade-deal-struggle-to-be-heard.html">not Wal-Mart minimum-wage McJobs, but under the terms of the deal, Korean goods that are http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/vote-no-south-korea-colombia-panama-trade-agreements">65% Chinese-made can be legally categorized as "made in Korea", effectively giving China a back-door duty-free way to dump even more goods into the U.S.

Obama's own support for the trade deals is especially bizarre, as Public Citizen's Lori Wallach notes:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/obama-free-trade_b_945388.html

If Obama's underlying trade goal is to double exports, as announced in his State of the Union speech, then why is he pushing Bush's old NAFTA-style trade deals -- given the data http://bit.ly/bx3JJn">is conclusive that U.S. export growth to countries with which we have such FTAs is half of that to countries with which we have no FTA? If the difference between the U.S. FTA partner and non-FTA export growth rates for goods for each year were to be put in dollar terms, the total U.S. FTA export "penalty" would be $72 billion over the past decade.

And, if the goal is to double exports, why is the first and only major trade deal being negotiated by the Obama administration the Trans-Pacific FTA? This is a prospective deal with eight countries, except the U.S. already has FTAs with the four countries (Singapore, Australia, Chile and Peru) that comprise 80 percent of the combined $2.3 trillion GDP of the participating nations. Hardly seems Vietnam (per capita annual income $1,168), Brunei (population 417,000), or New Zealand (annual GDP $139 billion -- less than half of Maryland) are worth receiving priority in U.S. trade agency resources. Yet, while Obama was giving his Detroit Labor Day speech, trade negotiators from nine Pacific Rim nations descended on Chicago to start a Trans-Pacific FTA summit -- and were greeted by labor and other activists at a protest demanding a fair new deal or no deal.

What about the majorities of GOP, Independent and Democratic voters who, according to numerous polls, oppose more NAFTA-style deals and think current U.S. trade policy is a jobs killer? Why has Obama decided to flip-flop on http://bit.ly/9GsKtV">his campaign promises for trade policy reform and take ownership of Bush's NAFTA-style deal rather than creating a new American trade agreement model that might actually create jobs here?

Obama's trumpeting of the Trade Adjustment Assistance for some of the treaty's displaced workers ("Displaced workers??" you might ask. "Weren't these free trade treaties were supposed to create jobs, not destroy them? Something's wrong here..." ) is really just a feel-good fig leaf for the sordid trade treaties: Since the economy has mostly been offshored as a result of 20 years of these trade deals, job retraining has proven to be http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/us/06retrain.html">mostly useless.

Occupy White House movement in the making?