He just claims it has real environmental and labor protections. His lying about this is one reason he can't be trusted on trade.
He also voted against: Before getting to Peru here is an amendment you probably never heard about but it is a big deal and tells us a lot about Obama. “Sen. Obama opposed an amendment that would have prevented the weakening of laws that protect against unfair trade practices. (Hillary supported the amendment.) Sen. Obama also supports fast track authority.”
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=595...Is this true? Yes.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/r...YEAs ---39
Akaka (D-HI)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coburn (R-OK)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Craig (R-ID)
Dayton (D-MN) Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (R-SC)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Nelson (D-FL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Shelby (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
NAYs ---60
Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Burr (R-NC)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carper (D-DE)
Chafee (R-RI)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dole (R-NC) Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Frist (R-TN)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Roberts (R-KS)
Santorum (R-PA)
Schumer (D-NY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)
Wyden (D-OR)
Vote Summary
Question: On the Amendment (Dorgan Amdt. No. 1665 )
Vote Number: 232 Vote Date: September 15, 2005, 12:17 PM
Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Amendment Rejected
Amendment Number: S.Amdt. 1665 to H.R. 2862
Statement of Purpose: To prohibit weakening any law that provides safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices.
Vote Counts: YEAs 39
NAYs 60
Obama was one of only 11 Democrats (including then Democratic Joe Lieberman) to vote against this pro-worker, pro-fair trade amendment. Look at the other 11. DLC, DLC, DLC!
Here is Obama’s statement which could have being plagiarized straight from the DLC:
"Obama said he would vote for a Peruvian trade agreement next week, in response to a question from a man in Londonderry, NH who called NAFTA and CAFTA a disaster for American workers. He said he supported the trade agreement with Peru because it contained the labor and environmental standards sought by groups like the AFL-CIO, despite the voter's protests to the contrary. He also affirmed his support for free trade."
The voter's "protests to the contrary" are exactly right. The AFL-CIO does not support the bill expanding NAFTA into Peru, and the much-trumpeted labor/environmental standards leave enforcement up to the Bush administration, rather than empowering third parties to enforce them (like corporations have the power to enforce investor rights provisions in these same trade agreements). Leaving enforcement to the Bush administration -- or any administration -- is the biggest loophole possible. It is precisely why corporate lobbyists have bragged to reporters that the standards are not enforceable.
Obama is the first presidential candidate to officially declare his/her support for the NAFTA expansion moving through the Congress. His announcement is not necessarily surprising, considering he was the keynote speaker at the launch of the Hamilton Project -- a Wall Street front group working to drive a wedge between Democrats and organized labor on globalization issues. His announcement comes just days after a Wall Street Journal poll found strong bipartisan opposition to lobbyist-written NAFTA-style trade policies.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/breaking-oba ...
Sherrod Brown:
"Congress (has) passed another job-killing trade agreement that will shut down our factories, hurt our communities, and send more unsafe food into our kitchens and consumer products into our children's bedrooms."
Brown, like the other freshmen Democrats elected to the Senate in 2006, understands something that Clinton and Obama are still missing. "Our current trade model chases short-term profits for the few, at the expense of long-term prosperity, health and safety for the many. It's a model that doesn't work. Look at our trade deficit, look at manufacturing job losses, look at wage stagnation, look at imported product recalls, look at forced labor, child labor, slave labor. Look what it does to communities," says the senator, who made changing trade policy a central issue in his successful challenge to Republican Senator Mike DeWine, as did other Democratic winners such as Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Claire McMaskill of Missouri, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, John Tester of Montana and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island – all of whom opposed the Peru deal.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=256831John Edwards:
-snip-
“Today I am announcing my opposition to the Peru Trade Agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration and being considered for approval by Congress. Despite strong efforts by many Democrats in Congress, labor organizations and fair trade advocates to embed international labor standards into the Agreement, what resulted were references to general principles and not specific standards. And the Agreement still replicates and in fact expands all of the other most damaging aspects of past trade agreements. In short, this agreement does not meet my standard of putting American workers and communities first, ahead of the interests of the big multinational corporations, which for too long have rigged our trade policies for themselves and against American families.
-snip-
Right now, President Bush is pushing to expand this NAFTA approach to four more countries. He has signed agreements with Peru, Panama, Korea and even Colombia, where since 1991, in this tiny country, there have been over 2100 documented cases of trade unionists being assassinated, 72 in 2006 alone.
All of these agreements replicate these terrible features of NAFTA:
• All of these agreements provide the expansive investor rights that literally create incentives to relocate U.S. jobs overseas;
• All of these agreements limit our ability to inspect imported food - even as the International Trade Commission projects that these pacts will result in a new flood of imported food;
• All of these agreements allow foreign corporations operating here to attack our environmental, health and even local zoning laws in foreign tribunals to demand our tax dollars in compensation if following our laws undermines their expected profits.
• All of these agreements even limit how we can spend our own tax dollars. These deals ban many Buy America and other similar policies. Instead of your tax dollars going to support American workers, these agreements take away one the few opportunities the government has to directly create jobs here.
But these four proposed agreements actually go even further than NAFTA.
For instance, these deals give those foreign corporations who get contracts to rebuild our nation's bridges and highways or to operate mines or cut timber on U.S. federal land special privileges superior to the treatment of U.S. firms. U.S. firms have to meet our laws, but in contrast, these agreements let foreign corporations operating within the United States who have a gripe about their contract terms drag the U.S. government into foreign tribunals stacked with their own lawyers acting as ‘judges.'
The damage threatened by these NAFTA expansion agreements extends beyond the United States. Buried deep in the 800-page text of the Peru FTA are ambiguous provisions that could allow U.S. banks to demand compensation if Peru reverses its disastrous social security privatization. That's right, the Peru FTA could lock in the misery facing millions of the elderly and ill in that extremely poor country all to ensure U.S. firms can profit on what should be a government service available to all in the first place.
(jackson_dem’s 2 cents, this is not Edwards’ comment: I guess the people of Peru will just have to settle for “hope”)
-snip-
The Peru, Panama and Colombia agreements are also projected to displace millions of peasant farmers
-snip-
The presidents of Peru's labor unions oppose this NAFTA expansion. So does Peru's Archbishop Pedro Barreto, who calls the NAFTA expansion into Peru immoral - and a threat to the national security of his nation and ours.
http://www.art-us.org/node/282 For more about the real Obama on trade http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4585898It is a shame the msm killed off Edwards. :(