Detroit news: Michigan pays high price for free trade agreements

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070413/OPINION03/704130316


Michigan pays high price for free trade agreements

Stop president from putting U.S. on fast track to despair

As a proud Michigan native, I'm angry about the dire financial conditions facing the state and its families. Michigan has fallen from its boom days primarily because our good-paying manufacturing jobs have been exported.

We're in "the most severe crisis in the state's existence," says David Littmann, senior economist at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, in a recent Washington Post story. For the first time since the Great Depression, Michigan is a poor state relative to the rest of the nation. Detroit has the highest unemployment rate of any U.S. city.

Free trade flight

A chief facilitator of this migration, of both our neighbors and jobs with fair pay and benefits, are so-called "free trade" agreements. The truth is, there is nothing free about these deals -- we're paying a high price for these deals. Our federal government must rethink the way it negotiates trade agreements.

A smart first step is allowing the fast track authority to expire on July 1. This authority lets presidents negotiate trade deals and submit them to Congress for a vote within 90 legislative days. They must be rejected or approved with no amendments.

Since Congress granted President George W. Bush this power in 2002, he has used it to craft a series of agreements that sell workers short.

The "free trade" agreements -- with individual countries, such as Australia, Chile, Morocco, Oman and Bahrain, and greater regional agreements, like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) -- are nothing more than off-shoring agreements that have made it easier for U.S. companies to shop for the cheapest sweatshop wage and weakest labor laws.

By James P. Hoffa: Labor Voices


FULL story at link.

[brentspeak]

1. k & r

:kick:

[ClintonTyree]

2. That's one thing I'll never be able to forgive Bill Clinton for....

NAFTA. Perot was right, that "giant sucking sound" was the millions of good paying jobs rushing out of our country. The only ones who benefited were the corporations that sold the American worker out for cheap labor and higher profits, in other words, the rich. I'll never, NEVER be able to forgive Clinton for that. :spank: