Obama’s Free-Trade Victory Threatens 2012 Prospects

[brentspeak]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12127/obamas_hollow_victory_on_trade_threatens_loyalty_of_base_2012_prospects/

Monday Oct 17, 2011 12:12 pm
Obama’s Free-Trade Victory Threatens 2012 Prospects
By Roger Bybee

By orchestrating the passage of three NAFTA-style investor-rights agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama, which passed Congress last week, President Barack Obama is promoting the loss of more U.S. jobs to low-wage sites overseas. He's also protecting Panama’s status as a tax haven for U.S. corporations and money-laundering center for drug traffickers, leaving untouched the Colombian elite’s murderous war against unionists and opening up U.S. laws and regulations to challenges from foreign corporations.

Moreover, by successfully pushing for the free-trade deals, President Obama further reinforced the belief of many voters that Democratic leaders cannot be trusted in the fight to protect America’s productive base against the forces of corporate globalization. He says he's focused on combating the flow of U.S. jobs to low-wage, high-repression nations, but the president's reversal in backing the three agreements follows the path trod by previous Democratic presidential candidates Bill Clinton and John Kerry, who both condemned free-trade policies on the campaigns trails and then supported them in practice.

Congressional Democrats overwhelmingly rejected the free trade bills, and Obama relied on Republican support to get them passed:

Over 82 percent of Democrats voted against the Colombia FTA, more than two-thirds stood against the Korea FTA and just over 64 percent opposed the Panama FTA. “Clearly, congresspeople understood what the right position was and where their core constituencies were on these agreements,” Tucker says.

As Bybee and others have noted repeatedly, the free trade agreements are not really "free trade" at all, but either simple Wall St. and corporate http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/trade-policies/panama-free-trade-agreement/">tax-evasion schemes (the Panama treaty) or old-fashioned job-offshoring scams (http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/7377/south_korea_free_trade_deal_opens_wide_funnel_for_more_exploitation/">KORUS). Despite all the White House and US Chamber of Commerce propaganda, there are no meaningful "protections" or "regulations" within any of the agreements, only loopholes written by lobbyists.

Obama's helping the US Chamber of Commerce to permanently shrink the US economy gets even worse: the White House http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/usa-china-idUSN1E7941HC20111005">wants no part of a China currency bill.

[jefferson_dem]

1. Wow! "In These Times" is still publishing...

Who knew?