"Free Trade Rewards Workers" - Post Editorial

[laura888]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52281-2003Aug12.html


The writer is deputy U.S. trade representative, Josette Sheeran Shiner

Please help me write a letter-to-the-editor to criticize this piece! I know you all have some facts that will debunk her ideas!

<snip>

Yet even as some labor leaders lobby against trade agreements on Capitol Hill, many rank-and-file union members are reaping the rewards of economic openness. United Parcel Service, for example, the nation's largest employer of Teamsters, announced during the debates on the Singapore and Chile agreements that soaring trade had boosted international profits by more than 150 percent over the past quarter. The company estimates that every 40 packages shipped overseas create one new job -- usually a union job -- here at home.

<snip>

[duid12]

1. what a crock

>>The company estimates that every 40 packages shipped overseas create one new job

Thats either a typo or a crock...no way shipping 40 packages (estimated cost $400-$800) creates a job for anybody...maybe 40 packages per day? even that would be a stretch....

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

6. sounds like a crock to me

These people make up stuff and couldn't care less if it was true or not. What kind of job exactly is being created at $800? Gimme a break.

[Iverson]

2. It's an investment of time.

Usually, there is so much that is so wrong with arguments in favor of economic globalization that you can't possibly debunk every error. I recommend to you a different viewpoint, a whole slew of articles here:

http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Globalism/GlobalEcon.htm

Note also the disingenous way that the arguer tries to frame all opposition to these bizarre deals: "Yet even as some labor leaders lobby against trade agreements on Capitol Hill..." Proponents rely on these tactics because their arguments are weak.

And of course "the company estimates" whatever they wish, like Bush and Blair estimating anything that rationalizes preventive war.

Well, good luck to you.

[HFishbine]

3. This might help

Last month, textile manufacturer Pillowtex permenently layed off nearly 6,450 workers, 5,500 of them in North Carolina -- accounting for the largest single job loss in the state's history and the largest in U.S. textile industry history.

Two days prior, Greensboro, NC based VF Jeanswear (maker of Wrangler and Lee jeans) announced layoffs of 892 workers.

"The state's textile industry is suffering from its worst crisis in decades. Lower-priced imports from China and other countries have forced many mills to move operations overseas, or go out of business. At the same time, the three-year economic slowdown has put a crimp in consumer demand. Since 1993, textile mills have shed one of every two jobs statewide, or 83,000. Of those, 36,000 were eliminated in just the past three years , according to the N.C. Employment Security Commission."

http://newsobserver.com/front/digest/story/2737402p-2537771c.html

[AntiLempa]

4. Where to begin. . .

Unfortunately most "free traders" won't listen to any other point of view. Those that disagree with their vision of corporate managed trde are automatically anti-trade. Fortunately there is a growing number of people that oppose their vision for an economy that is completely managed by corporations and other elite elements of society.

It is also important to realize that there is more at stake than meets the eye. These people are not only a threat to the economy and living conditions, they are a threat to democracy. Despite their rhetoric of protecting the environment and labor, they see laws that protect the environment and labor as barriers to trade (for more on this go to http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_tdfull.html)

And now to debunk the article:
Many organizations put out reports debunking the myth that NAFTA was a success. The Economic Policy Institute put out an issue brief called "Phony Accounting and U.S. Trade Policy." The report itself is worth reading, but the following table is very telling.:


The Center for Economic and Policy Research has also done a lot of research on the subject. Co-Director Mark Weisbrot recently put out n column in response to a New York Times editorial “The Rigged Trade Game.” It can be read here http://cepr.net/false_trade.htm

They also put out a reprt called "Will New Trade Gains Make Us Rich?
An Assessment of the Prospective Gains From New Trade Agreements.
Here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary:
For the vast majority of workers—the three quarters of the labor force who lack college degrees—the negative distributional effects of trade over the last two decades almost certainly outweighed the positive growth effects, causing them a net loss of real income. This is true even under the assumption that trade was a relatively minor factor in the upward redistribution of income over the last two decades, and accepting the more optimistic assessments of the impact of trade on growth.
* Using a low estimate of the impact of trade on wage inequality from Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman, three-fourths of the labor force has seen a net reduction in hourly wages, attributable to expanded trade between 1.6 percent and 2.4 percent.

* Using a higher estimate of the impact of trade on wage inequality by William Cline of the Institute for International Economics, the net reduction in hourly wages for these workers is between 9.4 percent and 10.1 percent.

* If Cline's estimate is adjusted to take account of indirect ways in which trade may lower wages—such as weakening unions' bargaining power—trade may have reduced the hourly wages of three-fourths of the labor force by between 12.2 percent and 12.6 percent.
(The reort can be found here http://www.cepr.net/will_new_trade_gains_make_us_ric.htm)

[Muddleoftheroad]

5. Talk about phony accounting

The information you are talking about doesn't assume any changes would have occurred without NAFTA. Do you think that everyone would have been the same? Or would U.S. companies taken jobs elsewhere BECAUSE they didn't have an agreement like NAFTA?

[AntiLempa]

7. maybe they would have, maybe they wouldn't have

Maybe all of the American businesses would have decided to move their operations to Bangaldesh. Maybe they would have felt an overwhelming urge to be patriotic and keep their operations in the US. Maybe they would have kept half of the jobs here and half in Mexico. Maybe they would have decided to equally distribute their profits amongst the laborers.

The point is that noone knows. You can speculate all you want, but what I see and experience is that so called free trade has been a failure.

Are you ever going to address any of the points made in a post?

[Muddleoftheroad]

9. I addressed the big point

The need for NAFTA. Free trade agreements have been made to adjust to a changing economic world. With the coming of the EU and the Euro, it is essential that American businesses also get an edge or most of them will simply leave.

Whether or not salaries have gone down is a silly debate to me because the alternative was worse.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

10. now what does that have to do with NAFTA exactly?

As was pointed out a million times, we had a trading block with Canada and Mexico for a long time, and we didn't have massive tarriffs and negotiated "free trade" all the time.

So why exactly did we need to sign an anti-democratic treaty that would allow corporations to sue the USA over our worker safety and environmental laws? What does that have to do with free trade?

[zoidberg]

12. So then how can people blame NAFTA for 'lost' jobs?

A number of factors in the 90s - cheaper communications, cheaper transportation, better infrastructure in other countries, etc... - made it profitable for manufacturing jobs to move to other countries at the rate they did. I don't see how you can blame NAFTA for these undeniable economic conditions.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

15. who profited from moving manufacturing jobs to other countries?

you said it was profitable - profitable to who exactly? It certainly wasn't profitable to the laid off manufacturers. So why should we have an anti-jobs treaty anyway? Seems like that works against the free trade of goods and services to me.

[Muddleoftheroad]

21. Profits

Go to those who own a company. A profitable company is profitable to the owners. Ideally, the employees also profit from continued employment, but that is part of the employment agreement between the sides.

[Muddleoftheroad]

23. Democratic

If we are a democratic nation and sign a treaty, how can that NOT be democratic?

A trading bloc and a free trade zone are different things. A bloc allows somewhat free trade. A free trade zone seeks to normalize the rules and regulations that all companies encounter in the nations involved.

[cthrumatrix]

25. Even the Mexican people lost something in NAFTA

The experience of NAFTA in Mexico, Canada and the U.S. shows how free trade regimes serve to weaken
peoples’ economic security. As companies relocated their production in Mexico to take advantage of U.S. $5
per day wages for Mexican workers, the U.S. lost over a million manufacturing jobs. While these laid-off U.S.
workers often find new jobs, they come with much less security and lower wages. Meanwhile, without enforceable
labour rights in NAFTA, Mexican workers have been unable to organize effectively to increase their wages.
Despite the NAFTA promise of increased economic development throughout Mexico, only the maquiladora
factories along the border region have seen significant increases in industrial activity. Yet, even here, over a
million more Mexican workers are now compelled to work for less than the minimum wage than was the case
before NAFTA.
Since NAFTA came into effect in 1994, it is estimated that eight million Mexicans have fallen from the
middle class into poverty. What’s more, there is nothing to prevent the FTAA from breeding similar economic
insecurities. Protected by FTAA power tools like “Most Favoured Nation” and “National Treatment,”
corporations based in the U.S. and Canada can move into the rest of the Americas, not only taking advantage
of cheap working conditions, but also undercutting local industries and businesses as they demand equal
treatment. For many developing countries, the demands for the elimination of tariff barriers could result in a
flood of consumer imports, thereby making their economies even more vulnerable. And, economic security
conditions could be further weakened because governments no longer will have the ability to curb speculative
investment on their currencies by controlling the inflows and outflows of capital.

http://www.citizen.org/documents/Making_the_links.pdf

So if the mexican people did not benefit...and the US people did not benefit...who made out?

Oh..that's right...the corporations in search of greater profit and less wages.

[AntiLempa]

14. Your real colors show.

This line says it all:
With the coming of the EU and the Euro, it is essential that American businesses also get an edge or most of them will simply leave.

The US is strong enough that it could have negotiated something else. It probably would have been applauded if it tried to hold a real summit on trade.

[Muddleoftheroad]

24. What colors?

Clearly, the U.S. WASN'T strong enough since it went the route of NAFTA.

[laura888]

19. wonderful data

I really appreciate it!

[Armstead]

8. "Free trade" is not free trade

Trade is good. But these agreements are not designed to promote trade within a larger context of progress.

Their purpose is to subvert national rights and sovergnty to the mandates of business. It forces participating nations to adopt a particular set of conservative polcies that force the dom9onance of "markets" at the expense of all other institutions and social priorities.

It takes away the rights of the citizens to pass laws and make policy through their elected officials. The kind of free trade we have now sets rules that you have to follow if you want to trade internationally. But the rules are not designed to improve the conditions of workers, improve the true health of domestic economies or protect the environment. They undermine those.

[zoidberg]

13. Examples?

I hear that line all the time, but I've yet to hear how NAFTA has undermined the democratic rights of citizens in Canada, the United States, or Mexico.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

16. explain how this is international trade

General Motors opens a factory in Mexico, the workers make some car parts, and GM ships the parts to the US. There was no international trade, just one corporation shipping from one division to another. How is this trade? Nothing even changed hands outside of the corporation?

This is supposed to help the economy how again?

[Muddleoftheroad]

22. Would you prefer

Having the whole car built somewhere else?

[JohnyCanuck]

17. Environmental legislation is gutted

Challenging one of California's newest environmental protections, a Canadian corporation has filed suit to overturn the state's ban on the gasoline additive MTBE, calling it a violation of free-trade rules.

Less than three months after Governor Gray Davis moved to end the use of MTBE, the Vancouver- based Methanex Corp. announced Tuesday that it is using the North American Free Trade Agreement to seek $970 million in compensation for lost profits.

The challenge under NAFTA's little-known "investor rights" provisions packs a big legal punch. A similar lawsuit filed last year by a U.S. company forced Canada to overturn its ban on a gasoline additive that has been implicated in health problems.

Other NAFTA suits are under way in the United States and Canada, seeking to overturn a wide variety of government regulations. Consumer and environmentalist groups warn that big business may be able to use NAFTA to gut decades of progressive legislation.

www.economicjustice.org/resources/media/collier061899.html

This whole free trade bullshit is all about taking democracy out of the hands of the population and ensuring that the planet will be ruled in accordance with the wishes of trillion dollar multinational coporations like the Exxons, Monsantos, Dow Chemicals, GE's of this world and we know how high on the list of priorities these guys place the environment and workers rights.

[Muddleoftheroad]

20. The courts

Aren't they also part of democracy?

[JohnyCanuck]

26. courts are constrained by the law of the land.

If the gov't has signed onto NAFTA then the law of the land includes the provisions of NAFTA and the courts are constrained to make their judgements in accordance with the rules laid down in the NAFTA agreement.

The NAFTA rules as they were negotiated appear to have as their primary concern the protecticon and enhancment of the profitability of multinational coporations, not the protection of workers rights or the environment.

Regarding the case of Ethyl Corp vs Canada where Canada had to backoff environmental regulations banning the use of a gasoline additive a journalist and author, Murray Dobbin, in an article called "NAFTA's Big Brother"
says the following:


The damage to public policy-making done by this particular tribunal ruling was another incremental blow to the "precautionary principle." It is this science-based principle that governments worldwide have been using for several decades to ensure public health. It establishes that government authorities do not have to have absolute proof that a substance is hazardous, and takes into account that such proof can often take decades to reveal itself. Trade agreements, including NAFTA, have been ruling against this principle, putting the burden of proof on governments, rather than corporations


Prior to NAFTA, the Canadian, US or Mexican gov'ts could decide that based on its chemical composition and it similarity to other hazardous substances there was a strong likelihood that substance X had the potential to be hazardous and cause environmental damage. Under the precautionary principle, our gov'ts could regulate or ban substance X and take the sensible and safe approach that while we wait to see if it can be proven scientifically that substance X really is safe and will not cause birth defects, cancer etc. we will regulate it or ban it, i.e. we might err, but we will err on the side of safety.

As Murray Dobbin explains, under NAFTA that rule is out the window and we now have to act as guinea pigs for multinationals while they unleash god knows what on us because no one has yet proven beyond a shadow of scientific doubt their product will causes harm, bearing in mind of course, it might take years for the harm to show up in increased cases of cancer, degenerative diseases of one sort or another and/or birth defects in human or animal populations.

See also what Dobbin says about the dispute settling tribunals under which NAFTA disputes are settled before the matters even reach the courts.

These suits, whose decisions go to the heart of government policy-making and national sovereignty, are treated exactly as if they are narrow, contractual disputes between commercial enterprises. Thus they are shrouded in complete secrecy from the beginning of the process to the end.

Because they are presumed to be simply about commercial matters, they explicitly exclude from the proceedings any other public interests potentially affected by the case. Tribunals are not even obliged to publicly announce their decisions. Governments do not have the right to appear at these star chamber events to defend the laws and regulations that are being challenged, but have to ask for intervener status if they wish to present arguments.

Decisions are made not by judges of the domestic judicial system (who are obliged to take account of the broad public interest) but by a tribunal of trade arbiters who are naturally biased in favour of facilitating trade. Most are trade lawyers, often with firms that serve corporate clients. While their decisions may have a profound effect on health and environmental matters, the tribunal members have no expertise in any area other than trade law. The country being sued chooses one of the tribunal members, as does the country that is the home base of the challenging corporation. The third member is mutually agreed to or appointed by an arbitration body.

You might be happy to trust your life and health and the lives and health of your loved ones to the good intentions of Monsanto, Dow Chemical, Westinghouse etc. and a bunch of trade lawyers. I most certainly am not.

[Muddleoftheroad]

27. Trade agreements

Trade agreements are inherently designed to facilitate trade. Without trade, jobs dry up, unemployment gets worse, etc. It's easy to complain about trade when you have a job, much harder when you don't.

[SharonAnn]

28. The best example is Chapter 11 of NAFTA where a company

can basically get financial compensation because of being forced to follow the law. Example:

California outlawed MTBE becasue of the pollution it was causing in the underground water system(s) all over the state. Canadian company that made MBTE wanted to sell it to California but no one would buy it any longer because it was banned. Canadian company "sues" in NAFTA court, wins, US pays huge penalty. Sooner or later the penalty cost gets passed on to California.

So, no matter what voters vote in or who they vote in, a foreign company can sue in secret NAFTA court and end up with tremendous financial gain (cost passed on to the voters) or the US can try to override the state law(s) or eliminate the federal law(s).

[Hubert Flottz]

11. Rewards workers in China!

Is the real truth!

[laura888]

18. thanks to all who wrote!

thanks for coming through for me!

[PROGRESSIVE1]

29. WTF!!!!

How does someone loosing their job get "rewarded"??? Unless this is some perverse thinking of Mr. Bush in which people being punished is the equivalent of being rewarded!?!?


:eyes:

[SoCalDem]

30. In a perverse way (they way THEY think) it gives them

"more time with their family ":eyes:..

Just think.. the kiddies get to spend more time with their depressed, worried-to-death Daddy, as he compemplates ways to kill himself so it does not look like suicide, so his family can survive..

and they get to learn all the different ways to serve Top Ramen..

and they get to travel... from rental to rental after they lose the house

and they get to learn commerce as Mom & Dad sell all their belongings..

and they get exercise, because the cars get repossesed..

and they get to see Mom in a new light too.. as main breadwinner and "proud owner" of three low-pay jobs..

and they get to learn about "olden-days" as they try folk remedies instead of medicine..

yup.. In the Repube world, it's an ADVENTURE :)

[BushHasGotToGo]

31. Why should trade boundaries be arbritrarily set at the border?

Sound's kinda racist.