Rep. Phil Hare: Free trade must be fair trade (courageous article)

[antigop]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0907/5912.html

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In baseball, if the pitcher on one team must throw off of a mound 90 feet from home plate while his opponent is allowed to stand 30 feet closer, that is an uneven playing field.

And if the umpire refuses to enforce any of the rules of the game, you have an all-around flawed process.
The same fundamental principle goes for our trade policies — with much more serious consequences for the failure to require fairness.

As such, Congress cannot support unfair trade agreements destined to outsource more American jobs to countries that systematically violate human rights.

And we cannot defer to an administration unwilling to hold any of the key players accountable for their actions.

I certainly support free trade. But trade must also be fair. Unfortunately, the pending trade agreements with Peru, Panama, Korea and Colombia follow the same flawed NAFTA model that resulted in the hemorrhaging of good paying jobs in America and a race to the bottom in Mexico.
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Background info:

http://www.workingassetsblog.com/sirota/

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Illinois freshman Rep. Phil Hare (D) has thrown down the gauntlet today, authoring a scathing op-ed in the Politico indicting his party's leadership for joining with President Bush and corporate lobbyists to push a series of NAFTA-style trade deals with Peru, Panama, Colombia and South Korea (known as The Secret Trade Deal of 2007 for being forged behind closed doors and concealed from the public for months). Hare points out that his party won Congress on a promise to reform America's trade policy and that endorsing job-killing, wage-destroying trade pacts just months later is a travesty of the highest order.
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[murielm99]

1. Go Phil Hare!

Illinois 17 knows how to elect good Congressmen.

Their last was Lane Evans, and Hare learned from the best.