Public Citizen: Trade Pact Trifecta

[amborin]

Three NAFTA-style agreements. All negotiated by the Bush administration. Now adopted by the Obama administration. All posing enormous policy and political peril.

Passing the Korea deal would kill U.S. jobs. Even official government studies show it will increase the U.S. trade deficit. Passing the Colombia deal would kill any leverage Colombian union, Afro-Colombian and other community leaders and their U.S. union and civil society friends and allies have to stop the murders, forced displacements and other acts of political violence that dominate life in Colombia. And passing the Panama deal would kill our ability to fight tax havens without risking attack by corporations under new privileges established in the pact.

President Obama campaigned and won on his promises to deliver a fundamental change of course on our trade policy. Instead, we face a situation - an Obama Colombia-Korea-Panama NAFTA expansion - that is equal parts damaging, heartbreaking, infuriating and disgusting. Does anyone even remember that there was supposed to be change we could believe in?

http://citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=4868

info on the pacts here:

http://www.citizen.org/documents/korea-colombia-panama-factsheet-may-2011.pdf