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In reply to the discussion: Harry Reid: Hillary Clinton Would 'Handle Things Probably Even Better' Than Bill Clinton [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The problem came in when the U.S. gov't(on the insistence of U.S. corporations)started arguing that social benefits, workers' rights protections and easier access to education and healthcare in other countries were a "subsidy" to the corporations based in those countries...this then led to the trade agreements being used to ratchet down wages, the social wage, and worker protections in the name of "opening markets". Corporations were able to undermine national sovereignty and override the popular will as expressed in election results.
This is why, if we can't get NAFTA and GATT scrapped and start over with a humane and democratic trade regimen, they need to be radically overhauled so that nothing but direct cash payments or infrastructure construction provided by national governments to business and tax cuts to corporations offered by governments to business are considered "subsidy". It is not a business subsidy for a people to have a more humane social regimen or for workers to have more ability to defend themselves from exploitation by corporate power.