Don't Buy the Hype: 20 Years of Data Reveals 'Free Trade' Fallacies [View all]

[RiverLover]

Don't Buy the Hype: 20 Years of Data Reveals 'Free Trade' Fallacies
1/15/15

In their speeches and commentary, the administration, corporate interests and GOP leadership disregard the real, detrimental impacts that previous fast tracked trade deals...have had on America’s middle class.'

Fast-tracked international trade deals have led to exploding U.S. trade deficits, soaring food imports into the U.S., increased off-shoring of American jobs, and an "unprecedented rise in income inequality," according to new data released Thursday by the watchdog group Public Citizen.

The report, "Prosperity Undermined" (pdf), compiles and analyzes 20 years of trade and economic data to show that the arguments again being made in favor of providing the Obama administration with Fast Track trade authority—effectively handing over extensive new executive powers and delegating away core congressional constitutional authorities—have repeatedly proved false.

As an example, Public Citizen points to the damaging consequences of a 2011 trade deal with Korea, which expanded on the NAFTA model:

Since the Obama administration used Fast Track to push a trade agreement with Korea, the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has grown 50 percent—which equates to 50,000 more American jobs lost. The U.S. had a $3 billion monthly trade deficit with Korea in October 2014—the highest monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with the country on record. After the Korea FTA went into effect, U.S. small businesses’ exports to Korea declined more sharply than large firms’ exports, falling 14 percent.

President Barack Obama is expected to push Fast Track for the corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which has been negotiated largely in secret—with significant input from Wall Street and big business interests. Even in the face of evidence that prior trade deals are not working, Public Citizen says, Obama has "doubled down on the old model with TPP."

"It’s not surprising that Democrats and Republicans alike are speaking out against Fast Track because it cuts Congress out of shaping trade pacts that most Americans believe cost jobs while empowering the president to sign and enter into secret deals before Congress approves them," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. "In their speeches and commentary, the administration, corporate interests and GOP leadership disregard the real, detrimental impacts that previous fast tracked trade deals—which serve as the model for the Trans-Pacific Partnership—have had on America’s middle class over the past 20 years."

President Obama is likely to use next week's State of the Union address to push for TPP passage and Fast Track authority, Dave Johnson predicts in an op-ed published Thursday....

Dave Johnson:...Of Course “Trade” Is Good

But first, of course “trade” is a good and necessary thing. We all trade with others. This is how people, businesses and even countries “make a living.” Critics of our country’s current trade policies are not “anti-trade”; they are anti-trade-deficit. They are opposed to the use of so-called “trade” agreements to promote the interests of the largest multinational and Wall Street corporations at the expense of America’s working people, its middle class, its domestic “Main Street” companies, our environment and the country’s long-term economic health.

Compare the timeline of a chart of our country’s trade deficits with the increase in the economic tensions of our middle class, our manufacturing regions and other economic troubles:



http://ourfuture.org/20150115/as-obama-pushes-tpp-in-sotu-keep-this-in-mind