Trade Deals FACT: The WH made "changes demanded by industry groups and unions" (The New York Times)

[ClarkUSA]

The House also passed a measure to expand a benefits program for workers who lose jobs to foreign competition by a vote of 307 to 122. The benefits program, a must-have for labor unions, passed with strong Democratic support. The Senate previously approved the measure.... To win Democratic support, the White House reopened negotiations with the three countries to make changes demanded by industry groups and unions, and insisted that the expansion of benefits for displaced workers be tied to passage of the trade agreements.... The benefits program was expanded in 2009 to include workers in service industries as well as manufacturing. The compromise negotiated this summer between the White House, House Republicans and Senate Democrats preserves most of the funding for the program.

Increased protections for American automakers in the South Korea deal won the support of traditional opponents of trade deals, including some Midwestern Democrats and the United Automobile Workers union.... Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hailed the deals Wednesday as an important victory for American foreign policy. And she said she expected that the South Korea pact alone would create 70,000 American jobs... the United States International Trade Commission, a federal agency that analyzed the deals in 2007, reported that... The modest projected increase in demand will come mostly from South Korea, the world’s 14th-largest economy, which will join a short list of developed nations that have free trade pacts with the United States, alongside Australia, Canada, Israel and Singapore.

The commission predicted that American farmers would benefit most, because of increased demand for dairy products and beef, pork and poultry. Conversely, it predicted that the pacts would eliminate some manufacturing jobs, particularly in the textile industry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/business/trade-bills-near-final-chapter.html

"Tonight's vote, with bipartisan support, will significantly boost exports that bear the proud label 'Made in America,' support tens of thousands of good-paying American jobs and protect labor rights, the environment and intellectual property."

~ President Barack Obama, 12 October 2011

[jaxx]

1. K&R

[flamingdem]

2. Good information

Nice to see how this can create jobs as well as markets.

[Union Scribe]

9. Lol.

Are people ever going to fucking learn?

[jeff47]

3. Not an awful lot of facts there.

Yes, Unions demanded some changes. The changes strike me as useless. You're going to retrain the people who lose their jobs to Koreans/Panamanians/Colombians to do.....what exactly? We've been down this road before, and it hasn't worked out in our favor.

As for the claim of 70k jobs:
http://m.npr.org/news/Business/141264928?page=2

"I've seen first hand the negative effects that trade agreements have had on our manufacturing sector and this one is estimated to displace 159,000 jobs and increase our trade deficit with Korea by $16.7 billion," says Rep. Mark Critz, a Democrat from Pennsylvania.

The same government report that says beef producers will be real winners also finds that in the case of South Korea the trade deficit is likely to grow. Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, says supporters are looking only at the deposits and none of the withdrawals.

"It is true that our exports will increase. The problem is our imports from Korea are going to increase a lot more," Wallach says. "If you subtract the jobs that will be wiped out by imports from the jobs that will be created by exports, you come up with a deficit."

[Skittles]

4. EXTREMELY nebulous

I love this part: "lose jobs to foreign competition" - there is no COMPETITION - we are not able to COMPETE for jobs with people who can live on ten bucks a day

[bhikkhu]

8. Panama and Columbia have little but agricultural products to export

...which we don't have the climate to grow here.

South Korea has a minimum wage close to our own. If you factor in the excellent national healthcare system, it is significantly higher.

[brentspeak]

14. As pointed out to you before, an increasing % of S. Korea's factory labor force is migrant workers

And due to loopholes, Korean companies http://www.amrc.org.hk/alu_article/wages/legal_exploitation_of_migrants_in_south_korea">avoid paying their foreign migrant workers minimum wage. Furthermore, while documented migrant workers are technically eligible for national health insurance in Korea, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83MC4Tp5yJE">many are excluded from full participation for various reasons.

You're trying to make people here believe the South Korea deal will ensure that US workers will be competing equitably with a well-compensated S. Korean labor force, but that is barely the case.

[Arctic Dave]

5. +1

More random bs thrown there to make it look like we are no being bent over.

70k "jobs" but they don't give single description of what jobs they are.

[AdHocSolver]

6. The claim that these trade deals will help Americans or the US economy is total b#llcr@p.

The economics of these trade pacts does NOT work for Americans or the U.S. economy.

The backers of these trade pacts (with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama) claim that they will generate $13 billion a year in exports. The question to ask is how big an increase in IMPORTS will they produce.

What hurts Americans is the trade DEFICIT. Increasing America's debt to pay for the increased imports will increase the devastation to the U.S. economy.

The ONLY solution to the U.S. economic problems is to limit imports of the type of goods that Americans buy on a regular basis such as clothes, shoes, appliances, electronics, linens, dishes, tools, and similar items in order to make their manufacture in the U.S. by American labor competitive.

(Parenthetically: UAW to the rest of America: We got ours -- F##k You!)

(Note to UAW members: The changes they provided to get your acquiescence to these deals will screw you, too. See the above comments.)

[Mimosa]

7. Propaganda.

Clark, how old were you when Nixon was President? This is a repeat of those early international trade deals.

[Name removed]

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[MFrohike]

11. One tiny problem

The decline of the manufacturing base, which was done by choice through Congressional action, is a large part of why we've seen wealth stratification approaching 19th century levels, an economy which primarily provides service jobs with insufficient pay, and the re-emergence of the three-card monty approach in financial markets. Any agreement which costs manufacturing jobs, which are scarce enough these days, is disastrous for America.

I'm not sure trumpeting increased agricultural exports is really the best plan given the vast amount of environmental damage we've done through the brilliant practice of farming in deserts. My guess, note I said guess, is that this will primarily benefit farmers in states with terrible water policies for agriculture. This is not a victory.

[Supersedeas]

17. it is a delicate balance

[fasttense]

12. Have you tried to get "re-training" under this program? I have.

And it is a a piece of crap program.

These benefits for workers who lose jobs to foreign competition are so restrictive as to be useless. Some states have beefed them up but for the most part these benefits are totally useless. They require you, the newly unemployed worker, to PROVE you lost your job to the free trade agreement country. You can't have lost your job to China (which has no free trade agreement) or another country. You have to prove your job went to let's say Panama. If the company already has a factory in Panama, and they now close the factory in your state, but do not add the same number and types of jobs to the Panama factory, guess what you are out of luck.

As an unemployed person you have no access to the info you need to prove you lost your job to a free trade agreement.

It's all smoke and mirrors baby.

[Tarheel_Dem]

13. K & R

:kick:

[Name removed]

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[uponit7771]

16. I'll hold my judgement until I see the tarrifs in other countries taken down, if that is true then..