Weekly Address: Fighting for Trade Deals that Put American Workers First

[liberalmike27]

87. What a Bunch of Crap

The bill can't possibly "favor American workers," when it's a crushing blow, as have been the rest of the trade agreements to a huge segment of employment in this country. It has amounted to jobs leaving, along with the taxes they provide at every level. Look at a city sick with debt, and you have to look no further than trade agreements. In fact, I heard a Senator say we've lose 47 MILLION jobs in manufacturing, since 1979. American workers can not compete with the rest of the world, when a lot of them are making $2.00 a day. It is mathematically impossible. And why should we be trying to "compete," which I can only interpret as wage crushing, or getting by on pennies, anyway?

These agreements are sold to us as a positive, when in fact they've got negative effects, as described above. And they aren't "incidental" but purposeful, not accidents of trade, or a growing world. They are designed to lower American wages. They are designed to shift wealth away from this country. They are designed to allow foreign powers, not as advanced with safety and environmental law, to sue, this rid the evil corporations of laws, of regulation that has helped Americans.

Perhaps worse, instead of using trade to lift up foreign countries workers, we instead consign them to be a wage-slave labor class. Often they work twelve hours a day, for seven days a week, with little or no vacation, or time off. Some factories have to string nets, to keep employees from leaping off, to their deaths, they are so unhappy. The really sad thing is, we could be using them to require similar salaries, safety, and environmental laws, and regulation there, instead of allowing them to tear ours down. But that does not fit with the corporate agenda.

The taxes collected on those 47 million jobs would put us in the green on the debt too. Cities and States would be flush for money, we would not have to be pinching every penny, destroying the already beleaguered poor.

Obama said "We can't just start putting barriers up to trade" but that is exactly what our government needs to do. We lift them up. If they don't agree to be bettered, brought into humanity, we don't trade with them. We put tariffs on any company that moves, to make them "at least" as expensive to produce product and ship it here, as it would be to just produce here. Instead, most of the tariffs are put on American products, going there, and they buy next to nothing. And the trade deficit grows. The debt grows.