Beware trade winds

The trade talks held last week in Miami broke up a day early, with only a faded blueprint for an eventual free trade agreement. And for that, we can be thankful.

We now should be worrying about the prospect of more jobs and more businesses wiped out by cheap foreign labor, and even more worried about those who blindly advocate free trade for its own sake - well, actually, for the sake of a few dozen multinational corporations.

I'm neither free trader nor protectionist, and I admit to being extraordinarily parochial in my interest in this debate.

My first and principal fear is that our politicians continue to advocate and negotiate trade agreements without profound understanding of the impact on the lives of average Americans.

And they negotiate these deals without enunciating a clear vision of how our quality of life in this country will be affected.

U.S. companies and multinational corporations operating in the United States are pushing hard for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, arguing it will open new markets for the United States' $10 trillion economy.

But we've heard this specious logic before - about a decade and hundreds of thousands of jobs ago. The FTAA, which essentially expands the North American Free Trade Agreement to a hemispheric tariff-free bloc, will serve only to further threaten our workers' livelihoods and worsen our spiraling trade imbalance.

Proponents of NAFTA declared the 1994 pact would create 170,000 U.S. jobs annually. Instead, at least 750,000 jobs were lost through the end of 2002 as a direct result of NAFTA.

The Economic Policy Institute found that about four-fifths of those were in the manufacturing sector. When high-wage manufacturing jobs are replaced with service sector jobs that pay at least 23% less, the downward pressure on the wages of Americans is accelerated.

NAFTA supporters predicted Mexican workers would see increased wages, stemming the tide of Mexican migration. But Mexican manufacturing wages actually fell 21% between 1993 and 1999, and the percentage of Mexicans living in poverty now includes more than two-thirds of the population.

As a consequence, NAFTA has stimulated illegal migration to the United States. Nearly 5 million Mexican illegal aliens reside here, and more than half of them have crossed our border over the last decade.

The record U.S. trade deficit also will likely worsen if the FTAA becomes reality. NAFTA transformed a relatively manageable trade deficit with our neighbors into a full-blown problem.

While U.S. exports to Mexico and Canada have increased by 57%, imports have risen 96%. As a result, the U.S. trade deficit with those two countries has ballooned from $9 billion in 1993 to $87 billion last year - and it's only getting worse.

Thea Lee, chief international economist with the AFL-CIO, said these trends would be exacerbated if NAFTA were expanded to the entire Western Hemisphere.

"If we don't put in place any kinds of protections for workers' rights ... we're likely to see these results on a larger scale," she said.

U.S. farmers would suffer tremendously from passage of the FTAA. Since the implementation of NAFTA, about 33,000 small farmers have gone out of business - more than six times the pre-1994 rate. This agreement would likely force Florida's 90,000 citrus growers to join those out-of-work farmers.

The creation of millions of jobs during the 1990s masked the true detriments of free trade. But now that we can see the effects on our nation's workforce, economy and quality of life, it is irresponsible of the Bush administration to pursue trade agreements as though there are not exorbitant costs for so-called free trade.

"Proponents of NAFTA declared the 1994 pact would create 170,000 U.S. jobs annually. Instead, at least 750,000 jobs were lost through the end of 2002 as a direct result of NAFTA."

Why do I keep hearing that little guy with the big ears, and funny clichés [like " ....... that giant whooshing sound is all of our jobs heading to Gamma."] in my head?

I'm as conservative as on can get on many things -- however, though the concept of free trade seems good – it ceases to appear good when one loses their job because of it.

Free trade, on a level playing field, yes – but one can’t compete against virtual slave labor.

Bring the jobs home!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"That "sucking sound" was also my first thought upon reading Dobbs' piece."

Perhaps people like the "little general" will be given a chance in the future.

If Schwarzenegger does a fairly good job in California it may bring the people to take a chance on the [politically]"non-professional" candidate .

not that Perot didn't shoot himself in the foot, but he had a lot of help

Free Trade is a great concept. The problem is that if it is not reciprocal, it's not really free trade. What we've done with China and "free trade" is the equivalent of unilateral disarmament. We eliminate all our trade barriers for them, while they continue, hide and restructure their trade barriers with us. That's why China is winning the trade war.

The NAFTA was more a real free-trade agreement, but they have been seriously hurt by China problem. Manufacturing jobs that start to go to other NAFTA countries have been lost as manufacturing moves to the unlevel playing field of China.

The idea that China is becoming a capitalist economy is ludicrous. The ruling party and their family members are becoming wealthy off trade with the international community by acting as if they have free and independent businesses, but those are in fact still government controlled. If one of those chinese 'businessmen' made negative comments against the Chinese military, watch and see how free and independent their business is!

We should only be in free trade agreements (and provide 'most favored nation' status) to those countries who will play by the same rules. EU is becoming more and more protectionist (not that most of those countries weren't already), and we need to reconsider our free trade position with them as well. We should look to countries (including some of the poorest countries in the world) who are willing to reciprocate free trade with us, and open our markets completely to them. That would spread freedom and capitalism, and earn us good will. Trade with China is not doing that.

Article in last week's WSJ journal was about the plight of Bangladeshian workers in clothing factories, that they only make so much an hour and its a really backwards country. It can only get worse now with talks about tariffs on their exported clothes to the US as that's their only industry.

What got me worried was that they have 140 million people, 90% are muslim. Its the second largest muslim country behind Indonesia. If I were an Osama type wacko and wanted to recruit anti-US warriors where am I going to go look? In the middle east where the heat's on? No, I'm going to travel to a country that's:
a) mostly muslim
b) poor and backward
c) doesn't have much in future prospects
d) isn't high on the US anti-terror radar

"Proponents of NAFTA declared the 1994 pact would create 170,000 U.S. jobs annually. Instead, at least 750,000 jobs were lost through the end of 2002 as a direct result of NAFTA. "

Guess we shouldn't be surprised by the Government claiming WMD in Iraq or that removing the tax on dividends will create jobs. Remember in November, throw out all the job fakers in Washington from both parties. Clean out the barn. Put in some pro-America conservatives.

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