The Real News (April 11): Americans Named in Panama Papers Leak

[seafan]

9. About the US/Colombia Free Trade Agreement:

Very informative and insightful post, by the way, Peace Patriot.



It is very telling that Hillary Clinton has insisted for years that she opposed to the US/Colombia Free Trade Agreement, yet this deceit is exposed in the email dump in February:

On the eve of South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary, the U.S. State Department released 1,500 pages of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails from her tenure as secretary of state. Included in the 881 emails published Friday night are messages highlighting Clinton lobbying for a controversial Colombian trade deal she previously pledged to oppose.

During her 2008 presidential run, Clinton said she opposed the deal because “I am very concerned about the history of violence against trade unionists in Colombia.” She later declared, “I oppose the deal. I have spoken out against the deal, I will vote against the deal, and I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.”

But newly released emails show that as secretary of state, Clinton was personally lobbying Democratic members of Congress to support the deal, even promising one senior lawmaker that the deal would extend labor protections to Colombian workers that would be as good or better than those enjoyed by many workers in the United States.

One of the 2011 emails from Clinton to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Clinton aide Robert Hormats has a subject line “Sandy Levin” — a reference to the Democratic congressman who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees U.S. trade policy. In the email detailing her call with Levin, she said the Michigan lawmaker “appreciates the changes that have been made, the national security arguments and Santos's reforms” -- the latter presumably a reference to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. [font color=red]She concludes the message about the call with Levin by saying, “I told him that at the rate we were going, Columbian (sic) workers were going to end up w the same or better rights than workers in Wisconsin and Indiana and, maybe even, Michigan.”[/font]

Froman — a former Citigroup executive who as trade representative was lobbying for passage of the deal — responded by thanking Clinton for her "help and support.” Hormats, a former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs who subsequently was hired by Clinton at the State Department, later chimed in, telling her “terrific job” and “GREAT line on Columbian (sic) workers!!!!!”

via IBT, Getty Images

Yeah, great line... just sickeningly bizarre.


Would those "rights" for workers in Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan also include being crushed by corruption, Mrs. Clinton? That is a fair question, and others are also asking it:

Democracy Now!'s Juan González: Hillary Clinton's policy was a Latin American crime story, April 12, 2016

Hillary Clinton displayed a sweeping grasp of federal policy at the Daily News Editorial Board on Saturday.

Touting her plan to rebuild America’s infrastructure, Clinton said:

“Look, I’m excited about this stuff. I’m kind of a wonky person.”

But I kept thinking of the big gap between Clinton’s words and actions that her own emails reveal — especially toward Latin America.

When my turn came for a question, I asked about her role as secretary of state during the 2009 military coup in Honduras — a country from which so many children and mothers have fled to the U.S. of late to escape massive political and gang violence.

.....

But it’s not just Honduras. There’s also Colombia.

During the 2008 presidential race, both Clinton and Barack Obama vowed to block the Colombia Free Trade agreement President George W. Bush had negotiated.

They specifically condemned Colombia’s notorious history of repressing trade unionists.

But Clinton emails released this year show that in 2011, she quietly lobbied members of Congress to approve the Colombia pact.

In one email, she boasted of telling a key lawmaker from Michigan that “at the rate we were going, Colombian workers were going to end up (with) the same or better rights than workers in Wisconsin and Indiana and, maybe even Michigan.”

Last year, the AFL-CIO reported 2,000 incidents of violence and threats against Colombian trade union leaders — including 105 killings — during the trade agreement’s first four years.

Not exactly Michigan’s labor climate.

Hand it to Hillary, though. She sure is wonky.

"She's Baldly Lying": Dana Frank Responds to Hillary Clinton's Defense of Her Role in Honduras Coup, April 13, 2016

Hear Hillary Clinton Defend Her Role in Honduras Coup When Questioned by Juan González, April 13, 2016

The Clinton Email Bernie Sanders Should Bring Up in Sunday’s Debate, March 4, 2016

 Sanders should ask Clinton about her relentless advocacy of free-trade treaties, and in particular about one 2011 email (to which David Sirota and Sarah Berger called attention in a piece last week) where she wrote, in pushing for the now ratified free-trade agreement with Colombia: “at the rate we were going, Columbian [sic] workers were going to end up w the same or better rights than workers in Wisconsin and Indiana and, maybe even, Michigan.”

The effect of Bill Clinton’s NAFTA and Hillary Clinton’s Colombian Free Trade Agreement has been devastating to Michigan and most of the rest of the country, and accounts for the appeal of Donald Trump.

As to the “better rights” Colombian workers have, vis-á-vis Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana, here’s what that looks like:

According to Colombia’s respected Escuela Nacional Sindical, as of April 2015, 105 union activists had been executed in the four years since Clinton’s free-trade treaty went into effect. That’s just trade unionists. More broadly, Colombia continues to be one of the most dangerous places in the world for activists of all stripes.
Threats of death and physical violence against workers—teachers, peasants, mine and oil laborers, and so on—are uncountable. They are an everyday fact of life for any Colombian who hopes to have some say over terms of labor.
Beyond physical repression and threats of physical repression, the “rights” of labor in Colombia are practically nonexistent for vast numbers of workers. Routine are “illegal forms of hiring, the use of collective pacts by companies to thwart union organizing, and the problem of impunity for anti-union activity.”
Also see this report by David Sirota: “as union leaders and human rights activists conveyed…harrowing reports of violence to then-Secretary of State Clinton in late 2011, urging her to pressure the Colombian government to protect labor organizers, she responded first with silence” and then public praise for “Colombia’s progress on human rights, thereby permitting hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid to flow to the same Colombian military that labor activists say helped intimidate workers.”

Considering that Clinton said in that email that Colombian “workers were going to end up w the same or better rights than workers in Wisconsin and Indiana and, maybe even, Michigan,” here’s the question Sanders should ask her: Did she mean that she hoped to raise Colombia up to US standards, or lower the United States’ to Colombia’s?

Hillary Clinton's trail through Latin America deserves much more public scrutiny. It is a harbinger of policies she would pursue in the White House.

It is time to end the Clinton Era and to hold Hillary and Bill Clinton accountable for their actions.