http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/stop-the-korea-free-trade_b_812646.htmlYou would think America had learned its lesson from NAFTA, which the Labor Department has estimated cost us 525,000 jobs.
But no. President Obama and the Republican leadership are united in pressing for ratification of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS-FTA).
* This is an agreement which the Economic Policy Institute
http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/free_trade_agreement_with_korea_will_cost_u.s._jobs/">estimates will cost us 159,000 more jobs over the next five years.
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This agreement, like NAFTA and the dozen or so other free trade agreements America has signed since NAFTA, is fundamentally an offshoring agreement. It is about making it easier for U.S. companies to move work overseas. The provisions to protect workers and consumers are unenforceable window dressing.
Don't be fooled by the fact that some unions, like the United Auto Workers (UAW), have endorsed the agreement. This is part of a cynical ploy by the White House to split the trade union movement in order to keep the AFL-CIO neutral. The UAW's out-of-touch leadership is so punch-drunk from the 2008 collapse of the U.S. auto industry that it has lost touch not only with what is good for the American economy as a whole, but with what is good for rank-and-file auto workers. Don't take my word for it: in the words of Al Benchich, retired president of UAW Local 909:
The UAW Administration Caucus is the one-party state that controls the UAW at the International level. Every International officer is a member of the Caucus, and they surround themselves with appointed international reps that unquestioningly do their bidding.
* Fletcher doesn't mention it here, but the one bone of contention between Obama and the GOP on the trade deals is the issue of TAA (Trade Adjustment Assistance) for workers displaced by the trade deals, a program Obama wants Congress to extend and which the GOP so far refuses to do.
Besides the obvious fact that calling for TAA unintentionally and ironically demonstrates just how the entire premise of the trade deals is a joke in the first place ("to create jobs"), these type of programs have been proven to be
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/us/06retrain.html">mostly ineffective for displaced workers anyway. Furthermore, Obama and the GOP have already agreed in discussions to slash 1/3 of the funding for any proposed TAA. Finally, any trade adjustment assistance granted to displaced workers will
only go to laid-off workers whose factories/facilities/companies are found to have been directly affected by the trade deals; no employees of supporting, ancillary industries which go out of business as a result of these job-offshoring agreements will receive any TAA benefits. Needless to say, the same can also be said of everybody else in local economies whose livelihoods are dependent on the physical presence of factories, facilities, etc.