Lori Wallach

One More Scandal?

2013-05-20T21:40:47-04:00

What do a zombie, handcuffs, a steamroller and a legislative luge run for job-killing trade agreements all have in common? They're all apt metaphors of an expired, scandalously anti-democratic procedure called Fast Track.

And, I should know. I just wrote the book on it. How this little-known but extremely dangerous procedure was first hatched and how it has been used to ram extremely dangerous "trade" agreements through Congress over public opposition is a scary story. This is not a book for the nightmare-prone.

But everyone else should give it a read, because, gruesomely, the Obama administration and some in Congress are looking to bring Fast Track back from the dead.

With a powerful gang of corporations eager to use massive agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), now under negotiation, or the looming U.S.-EU Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) to steamroll policies supported by the public and enacted by Congress, the threats posed by such an extreme procedure are severe.

Like what? A rollback of Congress' recent Wall Street reforms, says Sen. Elizabeth Warren. An undermining of the medicine cost savings of Obamacare, says a groups of state legislators trying to implement that policy. Plans to expand extreme investor privileges that offshore thousands of jobs. A ban on Buy American provisions that create thousands of jobs. Gutting of critical food safety improvements, says Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Congress' greatest food safety champion. And, then there is a backdoor sneak-in of draconian copyright rules reminiscent of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Though few would know its name, the majority of Americans have felt the fallout from Fast Track because... drum roll... today's "trade" agreements aren't really about trade anymore. Modern "trade" deals delve into vast areas of Congress' and state legislatures' non-trade authority, and our daily lives. All U.S. laws and policies are required to conform to terms set in these pacts on food safety, Wall Street regulation, access to the Internet, medicine patents and prices, climate and energy policy, health care, immigration and more. In one lump sum, Fast Track delegated away policymaking prerogatives in all of the above to unelected trade negotiators, allowing them to impose non-trade policies, including those that Congress had previously rejected, through the back door of "trade" agreements.

In fact, when it comes to agreements that are actually about trade, Fast Track isn't needed. Of the hundreds of U.S. trade and commercial agreements completed since the mid-1970s, only 16 have required Fast Track.

One commentator aptly called Fast Track "a legislative laxative that's bad for the Constitution," given it trashes a key check-and-balance inserted by the Founders to prevent an executive branch monopoly over trade policy. I would add that Fast Track is also bad for us. It is how we got into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) -- pacts that not only resulted in massive U.S. job offshoring, but floods of unsafe imported food and higher U.S. medicine prices, thanks to patent extensions buried in the 900-page texts.

Fast Track was first hatched by Richard Nixon as a way to grab Congress' exclusive constitutional authority to set the terms of U.S. trade policy and to write our laws. Under Fast Track, the executive branch was empowered to unilaterally choose negotiating partner countries, determine the contents of pacts and then sign and enter into such deals, all before Congress had a vote. And, Fast Track empowered "trade" negotiators to set such binding rules on policies far beyond traditional trade matters (like tariffs), internationally preempting domestic food safety, medicine patent and other non-trade laws. Fast Track then empowered the executive branch to write legislation to change any U.S. law needed to conform to the agreement terms, avoid congressional committee amendment processes and directly submit legislation for a no-amendment, limited-debate vote, which was guaranteed within 60 days of submission.

In the era of Nixon, most of what was in trade agreements was about trade, but now Nixon's initial encroachment on Congress' authority has metastasized into a means of "diplomatically legislating" what Congress and the public reject under normal democratic process.

So, why would members of Congress choose to handcuff themselves? They often haven't. When President Clinton tried to revive Fast Track in 1998, he was roundly defeated in the House by 171 Democrats and 71 GOP representatives. In 2002, after two years of political deals and head-bashing, George W. Bush got the handcuffs back on Congress thanks to a 3 a.m., held-open-for-an-hour vote. The Republicans who provided the two-vote margin were defeated for reelection. In 2007, Fast Track finally met its zombie end when Congress refused to consider Bush's next request.

Why would the Obama administration want to revive the moldering corpse of Fast Track? Because the administration is pushing the massive TPP deal, which is built on the model of NAFTA. Think of the TPP as NAFTA-on-steroids with 11 nations. It is likely to prove just as difficult as NAFTA to get past the public and through Congress. To slide such a deal through Congress, the administration's hope (really, its only hope) is to use Fast Track's legislative luge run.

So, what can we do? Replace Fast Track. Getting U.S. trade negotiators under the control of Congress and the public could not be more urgent, given the TPP and TAFTA negotiations and the vast implications of those looming agreements. In fact, as my new book shows, about every two decades Congress has come up with a new mechanism to manage trade pact negotiations and approval as the scope of agreements changed. Until now.

Unfortunately, given the Obama administration's attempts to revive Fast Track, it looks like the first order of business will be to finally bury a bad idea whose time is long past.

If you want the whole gory Fast Track story and how Fast Track can best be replaced, you can buy the book or download it to your reader here: fasttrackhistory.org.

U.S. Exports Drop Under Korea Trade Deal and Obama Said What?!

2013-05-10T16:53:34-04:00

The first year of results are in for the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA), and it's grim. U.S. exports to Korea plunged 10 percent under the FTA and the trade deficit jumped 37 percent. That equates to the loss of tens of thousands of U.S. jobs.

Yikes, what does President Obama do, given this unfortunate revelation occurred the day before the high-profile Washington visit of Korea's president, when Congress and the press would be focused on all things Korea?

He announces: "On our side, we're selling more exports to Korea." Holy Pinocchio!

Not exactly trust-inspiring, as the administration now tries to sell the massive 11-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA with the same tired promises used to persuade Congress to support the Korea FTA. That would be the promise that the Korea FTA would mean "more exports, more jobs." Right...

Sadly, the Korea FTA is not a fluke. Like the TPP, it is based on the NAFTA model. And U.S. export growth to countries with NAFTA-style pacts has been particularly lackluster; growth of U.S. exports to countries that are not FTA partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to countries that are FTA partners by 38 percent over the past decade. Yup, totally counterintuitive, to say nothing of counterproductive to the administration's manufacturing revitalization goals, but that's what the data shows.

As the Korea FTA provides fresh evidence of the job-killing nature of these deals, U.S. voters want and deserve to know why any member of Congress would buy another round of empty promises for these pacts.

It's an urgent question, because the same baloney is now being served up to Congress by the administration as it attempts to persuade Congress to delegate away its constitutional trade authority through a revival of the defamed and defunct Fast Track trade authority. That would be the Nixon-created legislative-luge-run procedure on which the administration hopes to sled TPP through Congress.

It's worth noting that the extreme Fast Track process has only been used 16 times since Nixon hatched it, although hundreds of trade agreements have been negotiated and implemented during the same period. It's the tool of choice by Democratic and Republican presidents seeking to pass "trade" agreements only Wall Street, Big Pharma and chronic-job-offshoring U.S. multinational corporations could love -- agreements like the TPP. The TPP includes generic-medicine-undermining drug patent extensions, limits on financial regulation, and special incentives to offshore U.S. jobs to, say, TPP partner Vietnam, where manufacturing wages of less than $100-$150 per month make it the lower cost offshoring alternative to China.

But, back to trade prevarication patrol: Contrary to the administration's claims of its export-expansion prowess, the steep decline in U.S. exports to Korea under the FTA contributed to an overall disappointing U.S. export performance in 2012. Forget about President Obama's pledge to double U.S. exports by the end of 2014. At the sluggish 2012 export growth rate of 2 percent, the United States would not achieve that goal until 2032, 18 years behind schedule.

What's more, the sectors the administration promised would benefit the most from the Korea FTA are actually some of the biggest losers. U.S. pork exports to Korea are down 24 percent, beef exports fell 8 percent, and poultry exports took a huge hit, plunging 41 percent under the first year of the FTA compared to the year before it was implemented.

The auto industry numbers aren't any more promising. The U.S. deficit with Korea in autos and auto parts increased 16 percent in the first year of the FTA. U.S. auto imports from Korea have surged by more than $2.5 billion under the FTA's first year, while auto exports to Korea increased by just $130 million. Nonetheless, FTA proponents have shamelessly touted "gains" in U.S. auto exports. President Obama declared: "Our automobile exports are up nearly 50 percent!" Um, it would have been a bit more honest to not use percentages, given almost any gain would look grand compared to the teeny number of U.S. cars sold in Korea in 2011 -- about 8,000. The touted increase in 2012 totaled less than 1,500 cars. This in comparison to the 1.3 million Korean-made Hyundai and Kia cars sold here last year.

In sum, the Korea FTA's outcomes have shown the perils of relying on President Obama's promises, and have undermined his job growth agenda to boot. Given the transpartisan contempt for our current trade agreements shown in repeated polls, members of Congress who buy the same sorry promises again do so at their own peril.

Death Threats Remain Rampant Under Obama's Colombia FTA

2013-04-16T14:25:08-04:00

Shame on the Obama administration: Two years after it announced its "Labor Action Plan" to grease passage of a Bush-negotiated Free Trade Agreement (FTA), death threats against Colombian unionists persist unabated.

Remember then-candidate Obama's passionate confrontation with McCain during the last presidential debate, explaining why he opposed the U.S.-Colombia FTA: "We have to stand for human rights and we have to make sure that violence isn't being perpetrated against workers who are just trying to organize for their rights."

Yet in April 2012, as anti-union repression rose in Colombia, President Obama travelled to Cartagena to announce the implementation of the FTA, declaring: "this agreement is a win for our workers and the environment because of the strong protections it has for both -- commitments we are going to fulfill."

What change in Colombia could possibly have led a Democratic president to implement a trade agreement over the objections of Democrats in Congress with the country infamous around the world for its violence against unionists? The number of death threats against unionists had not abated, and unionist assassinations remained rampant.

The only difference was the Labor Action Plan, touted by the administration but decried by U.S. and Colombian unions and the policymakers in both countries who had long led the fight to end the deadly repression of basic rights in Colombia.

Now, a full two years after the Obama administration announced the Labor Action Plan, Colombia remains the world's deadliest place to be a union member. Unionists in Colombia received 471 death threats in the year after the Plan was launched -- exactly the same yearly number as in the two years before the Plan, according to the Escuela Nacional Sindical, the group recognized in the Plan as an authoritative source of monitoring data. This number is even more shocking when one considers the diminished ranks of unionists in Colombia, where more than 3,000 union members have been assassinated since 1986 and many have fled to exile. Meanwhile, many of the accused in the more than 2,000 unionist murder cases remain free.

If that wasn't enough, violent mass displacements of Colombians rose 83 percent in 2012, adding to the five million who have been forced from their homes and their land in the world's largest internal displacement crisis. Since the FTA's 2011 passage, horrific violence and forced displacement has increased in venues targeted for development under the FTA, such as the port of Buenaventura.

Should these disturbing numbers come as a shock? Unfortunately not. U.S. and Colombian unions and human rights organizations warned the Obama administration that the FTA would exacerbate the forced displacements and other acts of political violence that far too many Colombians face on a daily basis. In the same way that the U.S.-Oman FTA has shielded that country from U.S. economic sanctions as the government has brutalized the country's "Arab Spring" movement, the Colombia FTA signaled to Colombia's government and business elite that its interests were secured regardless of human rights abuses.

Among the unionists who have received death threats since the FTA went into effect is Jhonsson Torres, a sugar cane worker who came to Washington to plead with members of Congress not to approve the FTA until labor protections improved. One year ago, as Obama was declaring the FTA ready for implementation, the general secretary of Jhonsson's union, who had also been a target of death threats, was shot and killed while walking with his wife.

Despite members of Congress, labor unions and human rights groups in Colombia and the United States pointing out to the Obama administration the many deficiencies in the Labor Action Plan and the lunacy of implementing the FTA before any real improvement could be measured, the sad reality is a failed promise to fix the horrifying daily situations of Colombian workers.

Maybe the most infuriating fact in this tragic ordeal is the flip-flop from the trade reform agenda President Obama campaigned on in 2008 to the retrograde trade agreements that the administration is negotiating today, including a massive 11-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership FTA. In formulating this agreement, which includes Vietnam -- a country that the U.S. State Department cited last year for child labor and "antiunion discrimination." The administration is taking no incoming data on the labor rights debacle in Colombia. Nor is it considering how the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has grown 34 percent under implementation of the U.S.-Korea FTA, also passed in 2011.

Doing more of the same while trying to sell the American public on the notion that these next agreements will have different outcomes is more than dishonest.

With all of the talk about Obama's focus on his legacy, certainly violent repression of human rights and lost American jobs is not the desired narrative. The Obama administration is responsible for ignoring the warning signs and implementing the U.S.-Colombia agreement. Now what will it do to reverse the horrible trend of violence? And will it now stop selling anti-worker FTAs on the basis of empty promises?

SOTU, TPP, TAFTA -- WTF?

2013-02-13T13:52:42-05:00

Did you notice the two rabid skunks President Obama unleashed at the State of the Union picnic?

Creating American jobs! Rebuilding American manufacturing! Boosting American exports! Promoting innovation! Ensuring strong health and environmental protections! Completing an 11-nation NAFTA-style "free trade" agreement (FTA) called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - aka NAFTA with Vietnam? Launch of "free trade" negotiations with Europe long-demanded by multinational corporations to eliminate vital consumer protections - the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA)?

Two of these things are not like the others. Indeed, TPP and TAFTA would gut many of the most worthy goals included in Obama's SOTU address if the American public and Congress let them come to fruition.

Says who? Well, the official U.S. government trade and employment data, to start with. Since the implementation of our existing FTAs, more than 60,000 U.S. manufacturing facilities have been shuttered and we have lost five million manufacturing jobs - fully one quarter of America's manufacturing jobs prior to the agreements' implementation. Like TPP, these past pacts include investment rules that actually incentivize the offshoring of American jobs.

And, U.S. export growth to countries that are not FTA partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to countries that are FTA partners by 38 percent over the last decade. The aggregate U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners has increased by more than $144 billion (inflation-adjusted) since the FTAs were implemented. In contrast, the aggregate deficit with all non-FTA countries has decreased by more than $55 billion since 2006 (the median entry date of existing FTAs). Even using the Obama administration's net exports-to-jobs ratio and excluding China trade, the FTA trade deficit surge alone implies the loss of nearly one million American jobs. So, let's do more of the same NAFTA-style pacts, but this time with Vietnam, the low-wage offshoring alternative to China.

Maybe the TPP and TAFTA touting is just pure cynicism. For instance, note that the president did not reiterate his 2010 State of the Union goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years by passing more "free trade" agreements. With two years left, the United States should be 60 percent of the way toward achieving this goal. Instead, the U.S. International Trade Commission annual 2012 trade data released this weekend show that under the sluggish 2012 export growth rate of two percent, we will not achieve the president's goal until 2032.

And, the FTAs that Obama touted in last year's State of the Union address have not created the promised industrial jobs. Rather, U.S. government trade flow data tracking the initial outcomes of FTAs with Korea, Colombia and Panama, which took effect in 2012, show that combined U.S. exports to the three countries during the months of FTA implementation fell four percent relative to the same months of 2011. U.S. goods exports to Korea plummeted by 10 percent and the U.S. trade deficit with Korea grew 26 percent. That equates to thousands of lost U.S. jobs just in the first year of that latest batch of more-of-the-same NAFTA-style deals.

Indeed, the annual U.S. trade deficit in goods excluding oil rose six percent in 2012 to $628 billion, the largest non-oil U.S. trade deficit in the last five years. The U.S. trade deficit with China (even with oil included) broke all past records, topping $321 billion. That Obama more-of-the-same trade agenda is working so well, why not more of the same...

But there's more!

While TPP negotiations have been conducted in extreme secrecy for three years, some texts have leaked, including the intellectual property chapter. It contains extreme SOPA-style copyright enforcement terms that would undermine Internet freedom and innovation. Says who? The Electronic Frontier Foundation and some of Congress' most reliable pro-"free-trade" voters from House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-Cal.) to Senate Trade Subcommittee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Cal.).

And, that Trans-Atlantic FTA? That's the pet project of the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue a club of financial, agribusiness, pharmaceutical, chemical and other U.S. and European multinationals. TAFTA's focus would not be trade per se - border taxes (tariffs) are already low. Rather, these talks are aimed at eliminating a list of what multinational corporations call "trade irritants" but the rest of us know as strong food safety, environmental and health safeguards.

The target list? The strongest consumer and environmental policies on either side of the Atlantic. U.S. firms want Europe to gut their superior chemical regulation regime, their tougher food safety rules and labeling of genetically modified foods and their tougher climate policies. European firms are targeting aspects of the U.S. financial reregulation regime, our stronger drug and medical device safety and testing standards and more.

Latest WTO Lunacy: Poker and Piracy Together at Last

2013-01-29T20:11:16-05:00

On Monday the World Trade Organization (WTO) officially authorized Caribbean nation Antigua to sell $21 million in "pirated" U.S.-copyrighted music, films and computer programs in retaliation for the United States failing to comply with a 2005 WTO order to allow online gambling here.

Say what? (And, no, this news was not sourced from a parody in The Onion.)

The case is an illustrated guide to much of what is wrong with the WTO. And, it should spotlight the lunacy of Obama administration plans to expand this dangerous "trade" agreement model via the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "free trade" agreement. More on that later. Let's tour what is now a full coop of WTO chickens that have come home to roost on this WTO case.

First, the backstory: in 2003, Antigua filed a case at the WTO claiming that U.S. laws banning Internet gambling violated WTO rules. The case, which some say was in fact the brainchild of an American attorney, Mark Mandel, who is handling the WTO litigation for Antigua, was joined by the European Union and other countries with major gambling industries. Antigua won a final ruling in 2005 and yesterday's "sanctions" announcement was retaliation for the United States failing to change its domestic laws to comply with the WTO.

Why does the WTO have anything to say as to whether or not the U.S. Congress can ban Internet gambling, especially when the ban applies to domestic and foreign firms alike? Unlike past trade agreements, which focused on cutting tariffs, the WTO imposes expansive constraints on signatory governments' non-trade policies and establishes new corporate rights. The WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) limits how the U.S. government may regulate foreign service firms operating here and cross-border "trade" in services too. The WTO's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement requires countries to provide expanded monopoly patent and copyright terms. (That's how U.S. drug patent monopolies got expanded from 17 to 20 years in 1994 when Congress OK'd U.S. WTO accession, overruling decades of congressional opposition to such patent extensions and costing us billions in higher drug prices, pocketed by WTO booster Big PhRMA.)

Yup, the appealing "free trade" brand was used to sell worldwide a Trojan horse delivery mechanism for a comprehensive set of policies that deeply invade domestic non-trade policymaking space. And, this horse has a kick. Unlike other international agreements, the WTO is strongly enforced.

Countries are required to conform their domestic policies to its rules and can be challenged in WTO tribunals if they don't. WTO tribunals rule against domestic laws 92 percent of the time. And if a country does not change its laws as ordered by the WTO, sanctions are authorized.

But wait, didn't WTO just authorize Antigua to violate U.S. copyrights? Welcome to the world of WTO "cross-retaliation." That is a WTO feature that the United States demanded. It wanted to be able to slap tariffs on developing countries' commodity exports (i.e. real trade) if these countries did not comply with the WTO's invasive drug patent, financial service deregulation and other one-size-fits-all dictates.

The delicious and tsunami-scale irony is that now Antigua (population 88,000 and GDP $1 billion) is being "borrowed" by gambling interests to cross-retaliate against the United States - by removing intellectual property rights from U.S. products in the first use of such a sanction. Except, wait, didn't Ralph Nader warn against just this scenario of some commercial interest finding a tiny country to attack U.S. public interest policies back when the WTO was being debated?

And, if you are looking for a silver lining, it is not that the WTO is that rare international organization where small, developing countries get a fair shake. Indeed, this case is Exhibit #1 that they do not. Rather, Antigua's move comes after seven years of the United States ignoring its initial WTO win. And, now that Antigua is trying to enforce, using a mechanism created by the United States itself, the comments from the U.S. Trade Representative's Office are ominous: "To be clear, the United States will not tolerate theft of intellectual property and will take whatever steps are most efficient and effective to prevent this from happening."

U.S. trade negotiators have threatened that Antigua will be harming its own interests if it follows through with enforcement. Hum...wonder if we'll soon hear about the threats to the students at Antigua's offshore American medical school of access to super-cheap on-line music and more... In all seriousness, Antigua will certainly face liabilities for enforcement actions, no matter how totally legal they are under WTO rules.

Which brings us back to the core point - the damaging WTO rules. By now you might be wondering about these vaunted benefits of the WTO that were promised by politicians and corporations alike back when the WTO was being considered by Congress.

Would those benefits include the 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs that we have lost since the WTO went into effect? The exploding U.S. trade deficit that has slowed U.S. growth? Would the benefit be that the United States could face more trade sanctions unless it guts the country-of-origin meat labels we all rely on in the grocery store, the highly popular dolphin protections that we all know from the dolphin-safe labels on our tuna cans or our ban on the U.S. sale of sweet-flavored cigarettes used to hook kids on smoking? Yup, the WTO has ruled against all three popular policies and ordered the United States to gut them by this summer.

The vast gulf between promised WTO benefits and reality is especially worth considering now, as the Obama administration and the same exact corporate interests are trotting out the very same myths to try to sell Americans on the TPP negotiations.

Obama, Romney 'Trade Pact' Malarkey vs. Reality: The Data Is In

2012-10-15T12:11:57-04:00

One year after passage of the "free trade" agreements with Korea, Colombia and Panama, the latest trade data show U.S. exports to Korea have declined and imports from Korea and Colombia have surged -- adding to the job-killing U.S. trade deficit. And, already this year 35 Colombian unionists have been assassinated -- more than last year's horrifying total of 29.

In an election dominated by the urgent agenda of U.S. job creation, it is a sorry statement about the domination of corporate money in American elections that both presidential candidates tout these NAFTA-style "free trade" deals. Repeated polls show that opposition to these NAFTA-style deals is one of the only issues that unites Democratic, Republican and Independent voters.

The candidates' discussion of these pacts provided a uniquely bipartisan barf-bucket moment. President Obama boasted that the three trade deals "are helping us to double our exports and sell more American products around the world." Mitt Romney, meanwhile, named further expansion of such trade pacts as the second pillar of his U.S. jobs creation plan.

Yet another month of Department of Commerce trade data, released yesterday, supports the views of a majority of Americans who see these deals as destroying -- rather than creating -- U.S. jobs.

Obama's claim that the three trade deals are boosting exports does not survive a basic fact check. To start with, the Panama deal has not even taken effect. And, since implementation of the Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA), U.S. goods exports to Korea have declined by nine percent (a decrease of over $1.2 billion) in comparison to 2011 levels for the same months, while exports to Colombia since implementation of the Colombia FTA have barely increased (by $358 million). Under the FTAs, the United States has suffered a six percent fall in combined exports to the two new U.S. FTA partners.

Meanwhile, imports from both countries have risen substantially since implementation of the pacts. Neither candidate ever talks about the net effect of these deals, which is the measure that effects jobs and wage levels. But the bottom line is that the combined U.S. trade deficit with Korea and Colombia under the deals has jumped 29 percent above the 2011 levels for the same months.

Using the same ratio employed by the Obama administration, this trade deficit expansion implies the net loss of more than 15,000 U.S. jobs in just the first few months of the new trade deals. As if the loss during the NAFTA-WTO era of more than five million manufacturing jobs (one out of every four this nation had pre-NAFTA and WTO) were not sufficiently devastating for the American Middle Class...

And, yes, in the debate Romney did attack Obama for not doing more of such job-killing pacts quickly enough.

What neither candidate mentioned was that they both support a massive "free trade" agreement now under negotiation called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It would contain a broader version of the the NAFTA-style investor rights that promote job offshoring, ban Buy American procurement preferences and roll back financial regulation. TPP talks now include 11 countries, but the deal would be open for China, Russia and other countries to also join. Think NAFTA-on-steroids with the world.

Meanwhile, a year ago today, two-thirds of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives opposed the Korea FTA and 82 percent opposed the Colombia FTA -- the largest percentages to ever vote against a Democratic president on trade pacts. The Obama administration promised a concrete benefit for each of the pacts on the date of their passage: "greater U.S. access to the Korean auto market, significantly increased labor rights and worker protections in Colombia, and enhanced tax transparency and labor rights in Panama."

U.S. Auto Exports to Korea Down: According to data released today, U.S. automotive exports to Korea have dropped by $26 million, a seven percent decline, since implementation of the pact, as compared to 2011 levels for the same months. Meanwhile, in the months that the Korea FTA has been in effect, imports of cars and auto parts from Korea have soared $1.8 billion above 2011 levels for the same time period -- a 25 percent increase. The U.S. trade deficit with Korea in autos and auto parts has already climbed to $7.9 billion in five months under the Korea FTA -- a $1.9 billion, or 28 percent, increase over 2011 levels for the same period.

Unionist Assassinations in Colombia Up: A year after passage of the Colombia FTA and 18 months after the Obama administration announced a Labor Action Plan with Colombia to improve Colombia's labor protections, Colombia remains the world's deadliest place to be a union member. In 2011, four of every 10 unionist murders in the world occurred in Colombia, with 29 slain. This year, a reported 35 Colombian unionists already have been assassinated, more than in all of 2011, the year the Labor Action Plan was announced. Sadly, Colombian unions and human rights organizations predicted on-the-ground realities would not change, denouncing the action plan as a series of cosmetic changes. Since implementation of the FTA, imports from Colombia have increased by nine percent relative to the same period in 2011.

Panama Tax Haven Status Continues: To counter criticism that the Panama FTA would assist corporations seeking to dodge U.S. taxes via secretive Panama-based subsidiaries and bank accounts, the Obama administration announced implementation of a Tax Information Exchange Agreement with Panama. However, a large loophole in that agreement allows Panama to sidestep new tax transparency provisions if they are "contrary to the public policy" of Panama, a country that earns much of its revenue by providing strict banking secrecy and tax-free status for foreign firms incorporated there. In June 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which tracks countries' tax haven statuses, reported that Panama remains one of a handful of countries in the world that has not passed a first-stage review of its tax transparency measures, due to nearly unparalleled nonconformity on six of nine regulatory checks against tax evasion. Even the Cayman Islands did not earn that dubious distinction. Despite the lack of progress, the Obama administration has indicated its desire to implement the Panama FTA "very soon."

Corporate donors to both political parties love these deals because they provide new investor protections to offshore jobs and rights to import products that do not meet our safety standards. But, as the government trade data again show, the actual outcomes prove that the majorities of Independents, Democrats and Republicans who think that these deals hurt their families -- and the country -- have it right.

TPP: What You Don't Know Will Hurt You (Video)

2012-05-08T18:02:29-04:00

DALLAS -- Tuesday, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) twelfth round of negotiations will begin behind closed doors at the Intercontinental Hotel here. Branded as a "trade deal" by its corporate proponents, the TPP in reality would establish new corporate rights to ease job offshoring, attack environmental and health laws in foreign tribunals, and extend medicine patents. Its expansive non-trade provisions would impose constraints on government regulation of financial firms, food safety and more. As The Huffington Post's Zach Carter reported, the TPP would even ban "Buy America" procurement policy. The TPP also includes aspects of SOPA, the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act. The pact would even elevate corporations to equal status with signatory governments allowing them to privately enforce their new rights be suing government in foreign tribunals to demand taxpayer compensation for policies that undermine the companies' expected future profits.

Intensive negotiations have been underway for two years under conditions of extreme secrecy. More than 600 hundred corporate "advisers" have access to the draft texts while the press, public and Congress are shut out. This comic video, set to a parody tune based off the Jackson Five's "ABC," aims to pierce the dangerous lack of public awareness about this audacious corporate power grab. With funny animation and a sarcastic tone, it highlights that the TPP is "all about secrecy" and has "nothing to do with trade you see". You can learn more about the TPP at www.TPP2012.com.

WTO Orders U.S. to Dump Landmark Obama Youth Anti-Smoking Law

2012-04-09T14:30:23-04:00

A landmark U.S. health policy already was being struck down even as protestors surrounded the Supreme Court over the attack on President Obama's healthcare law. Behind closed doors in Geneva, a World Trade Organization (WTO) tribunal issued a final ruling ordering the U.S. to dump a landmark 2009 youth anti-smoking law.

The Obama administration's key health care achievement slammed by the WTO was the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA), sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). The ruling, issued Wednesday, was on the final U.S. appeal which means that now the U.S. has 60 days to begin to implement the WTO's orders or face trade sanctions.

This outrageous WTO ruling should be a wake up call. Increasingly "trade" agreements are being used to undo important domestic consumer, environmental and health policies. Instead, the Obama administration has intensified its efforts to expand these very rules in a massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "free trade" agreement.

The WTO's ruling against banning the sale of flavored cigarettes isn't the only example of its attack on consumer protection and health laws. The U.S. has filed WTO appeals on two other U.S. consumer laws -- U.S. country-of-origin meat labels and the U.S. dolphin-safe tuna label -- both were slammed by lower WTO tribunals in the past six months. Yup, in short order we could see the WTO hating on Flipper, feeding us mystery meat and getting our kids addicted to smoking.

The challenged tobacco control U.S. law was designed to reduce teen smoking by banning "starter flavorings," since tobacco firms had begun marketing flavors like cola, chocolate, strawberry and clove. The 2009 law forced U.S. firms to cease sales of these products, whether imported or domestically produced.

Wednesday, the WTO sided with Indonesia, who claimed that the U.S. ban of their imported clove-favored cigarettes should not be allowed. A key reason was that the U.S. had not banned all flavored-cigarettes (namely menthols). Thus, they argued, the policy unfairly hit Indonesia. However, data showing that teens are more likely than adults to smoke cloves (while menthol smokers include vast numbers of adults) was dismissed.

Given these recent WTO rulings spotlighting just how dangerous the existing "trade" agreement model is for an array of non-trade public interest policies, you might expect that the Obama administration would finally start implementing candidate Obama's 2008 election pledges to renegotiate existing agreements and create a new model. Instead, the U.S. is pushing for completion this summer of a nine-nation TPP that contains the same rules. The deal would also empower foreign corporations to privately enforce these rules by suing the U.S. government directly before kangaroo courts, comprised of three private sector lawyers operating under UN and World Bank investor-state arbitration rules.

The American public is uniquely united against more-of-the-same trade deals. Thus, if only for political expediency, the administration must stand with the thousands of Americans who have signed a Consumer Rights Pledge calling on the U.S. to not comply with these illegitimate trade pact rulings, and to "knock it off" on the TPP negotiations that would greatly intensify this problem.

This ruling just adds to the growing evidence that today's "trade" agreements are no longer mainly about trade; they're about corporate power and influence. Chevron is using these corporate power grab terms to try to dodge paying $18 billion to clean up horrific contamination in the Amazon ordered after 18 years of U.S. and Ecuadorian court rulings. Philip Morris is using the system to attack Australian and Uruguayan cigarette plain packaging laws that were designed to discourage smoking.

So what can we do? First, we need to insist that our elected officials stop supporting these corporate power tools branded as trade agreements -- starting with the pernicious TPP proposal. To date, U.S. trade officials have refused even to make the draft TPP text public, even though the 600 official U.S. corporate trade advisers have full access. And, in the short term, we must urge the administration to ignore these WTO rulings.

If there is any silver lining to today's ruling, it is that it will confirm the views of growing numbers of consumers, citizens and governments that the WTO must be shrunk or sunk. There is a path forward: we must put the TPP on hold and renegotiate the WTO's mandate. It's time to craft a real 21st century trade policy.

Trade Deals: Backdoor Financial Deregulation

2012-03-20T19:23:24-04:00

Wall Street has a new power tool to demolish financial stability policies, and it comes from a source many would not expect. It's not the cozy relationship between Wall Street and some members of Congress, or the hordes of bankster lobbyists who roam Capitol Hill. Wall Street has obtained and is now pushing for more powers to challenge U.S. and other nations' financial regulations via the international agreements that it has sold to a skeptical American public under the appealing brand of export-expanding "free trade" deals.

In Sunday's New York Times, Gretchen Morgenson described how the financial provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) operate as backdoor deregulation instruments. Those of us who have studied these so-called "trade deals" understand that these agreements have very little to do with trade per se. Rather, they mainly include new rights for corporations and new constraints on governments' non-trade regulatory policy space.

As my piece in a special edition of the American Prospect shows, instead of following through on President Obama's campaign commitments to fix this backdoor corporate power grab, now the administration is rushing to massively expand this mess by completing a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal now being negotiated behind closed doors with eight Pacific Rim nations.

Like NAFTA before it, the TPP would establish a two-track judicial system for corporations, giving them the right to attack our financial regulations before tribunals of three private sector attorneys operating under World Bank and UN arbitral rules. This "investor-state" system allows firms to skirt our courts and laws to directly sue our governments for cash damages over regulatory policies that they claim undermine their "expected future profits." And, this is no hypothetical threat.

Currently, Chevron is using an "investor-state" tribunal to try to avoid paying $18 billion to clean up horrific contamination in the Amazon ordered after 18 years of U.S. and Ecuadorian court rulings. Philip Morris is using the system to attack Australian and Uruguayan cigarette plain packaging laws. More than $675 million has been paid by governments to corporations under U.S. pacts' "investor-state" provisions alone, 70 percent of which has been in attacks on environmental, health and other non-trade policies. There are 11,933 corporations cross-registered between the TPP nations to which the Obama administration is now pushing to extend these outrageous powers.

Morgenson's article serves as a rallying cry for those who care about financial stability or about the sovereign right of the Congress and state legislatures to enact an array of public interest policies prohibited in these pacts. She notes threatened attacks on the Volcker rule using NAFTA. The Volcker rule is a part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It was designed to stop banks from making the kind of risky speculative moves that contributed to the financial crisis, by preventing them from making bets for themselves with deposits backed by taxpayers. The Investment Industry Association of Canada argues that " the Volcker rules may contravene the NAFTA trade agreement."

Morgenson also revealed that the Obama administration had blocked a call simply to review the 1990s WTO financial sector rules to ensure that they were consistent with the regulatory push underway in many countries. Last month, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) sent a letter to the administration calling out the administration for blocking this review, focused on how these rules ban the use of capital controls -- key tools to counter floods of speculative money that now even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) considers "an essential feature of the monetary policy framework."

As Morgenson notes, such WTO rules are controversial among the trade deal's member countries. Over a year ago, Barbados raised these problems at the WTO and proposed reforms. When Ecuador, backed by a weighty block of other WTO member countries, asked for a simple review of these rules, the U.S. blocked it - a move that is hard to understand as anything but promoting Wall Street's best interest over those of the American public.

The problems that Morgenson exposes in the WTO and NAFTA are all the more pressing, since the U.S. is currently negotiating a new "trade" deal. Once again, with the TPP, we are hearing the same sales pitch about how the deal could expand exports. This is a shameless claim, made even with respect to the recent enacted Korea Free Trade Agreement, which the official U.S. International Trade Commission study concluded would increase the U.S. trade deficit and specially slam seven manufacturing sectors.

The TPP is being negotiated behind closed doors and the text is being kept secret. However, we know that U.S. negotiators are pushing to extend a ban on capital controls, impose limits on domestic financial regulation and again empower direct corporate attacks on these policies through the investor-state regime. The TPP (which now includes Vietnam, the U.S. and seven other Pacific Rim nations, but would be open for China, Russia and others to join) would outright prohibit certain types of financial regulations that countries would no longer be allowed to "adopt or maintain" even if they apply to domestic and foreign firms alike. If it sounds like the Bush administration is negotiating the deal, it is because the draft text was written during the Bush presidency.

Morgenson's article should serve as a wakeup call that so-called "trade" deals aren't really mainly about trade but operate as a one-percenter power tool. As we mark 18 years of NAFTA's damage, there is still time to stop the TPP.

If President Obama wants to ensure financial stability here and abroad, he must tell his trade negotiators to stop pushing a TPP that is emerging as NAFTA on steroids with Asia. In the meantime, Americans must demand that the TPP text, which had its 11th round of negotiations last week in Australia, be made public. Certainly we must have the same access as the 600 corporate official U.S. trade "advisors" who are allowed to see the text. The last time a regional agreement of this sort was attempted, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a draft text was released - by the Bush administration. But repeated demands to release the TPP text have to date been rebuffed by the Obama administration, even as it touts its commitment to government transparency.

Job-Killing Trade Deals Pass Congress Amidst Record Democratic Opposition

2011-10-13T13:31:51-04:00

With 9 percent unemployment and Americans desperate for job creation, it is unconscionable that President Obama and House Republicans just shoved through a trio of NAFTA-style job-killing trade agreements that even the government's own studies show will increase the U.S. trade deficit.

This represents a complete flip-flop for President Obama, who won crucial swing states by pledging to overhaul our flawed trade policies. So, it is no surprise that a sizeable majority of Democrats in Congress voted against these agreements, against Obama and for American jobs.

A larger share of House Democrats voted against a Democratic president on trade than ever before. The two-thirds of House Democrats who opposed the Korea FTA included 62 percent of the ranking members and all but nine of the 40 Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members. The Colombia FTA even got majority Democratic opposition in the New Democratic and Blue Dog Caucuses as well, overwhelming CBC opposition, and a no vote from Minority Leader Pelosi and Whip James Clyburn.

It took Bill Clinton nearly eight years of NAFTA job losses, betrayals and Clinton scandals to have nearly two-thirds of the House Democrats vote against him on trade. By following the advice on trade of the old Clinton gang reunited in his White House, Obama exceeded the same feat with his first trade votes.

As we predicted, the only way these deals passed was because congressional GOP were loyal to their corporate bosses and provided President Obama almost all of the votes. Only 21 GOP voted no on the Korea FTA and of those, only seven out of the 83 GOP freshmen did so.

Ultimately it was the Tea Party GOP freshmen who passed these job-killing deals, despite their campaign commitments at home to stand up for main street businesses, against more job offshoring and for Buy America. The three pacts explicitly ban Buy America procurement policies. The Korea FTA is projected to increase the trade deficit, with seven U.S. industrial sectors hardest hit and job losses of 159,000 in its first seven years.

This came after a major effort by the usual Inside the Beltway corporate lobbyists to "educate" away these new members' silly homegrown notions about what comprises a fair trade policy and whip them in line to vote for more NAFTAs.

That said, that the Democratic Senate majority did not stop any of these deals and that any House Democrats voted for them is just inexcusable.

The politics of this bad news trade trifecta are incredibly messed up. President Obama shoved through trade deals signed by George W. Bush and loved by Wall Street Banksters and the Chamber of Commerce, but opposed by his own base and most congressional Democrats. Congressional GOP, who don't exactly hold President Obama in high regard, provided him with almost all of the votes to do so.

Perhaps the only Democrats who are happy this evening are the folks at the Democratic congressional campaign committees who probably have started editing the "GOP freshman X came to Washington saying he would create jobs and then voted for the biggest job killing trade deal since NAFTA" ads.

And those ads write themselves. The polling on trade reveals that perhaps the only thing most Americans agree on across the political spectrum is that more NAFTAs are bad for their families and the nation. Every election cycle, more Democrats and GOP are campaigning against these sorts of NAFTA-style trade pacts, so especially given high unemployment it will be very rough for those who voted yes.

Given that, everyone is asking what the Obama administration could have been thinking to push the sorts of NAFTA-style trade deals that majorities of Democrats, Independents and even GOP voters oppose as job killers. Some assume the goal was to win back the support of the wealthy Wall Street Democrats who contributed so richly in 2008. The Korea pact is celebrated by the financial services industry for its deregulatory requirements. Even a fact sheet from the U.S. government's International Trade Administration highlights this FTA's limits on financial regulation as a boon: "The U.S.-Korea Trade Agreement will set new, higher standards for addressing regulatory issues... "

This is especially unfathomable given the White House's worries about the "enthusiasm gap," and the fact that many current Obama staff were Clinton staff who personally lived through the political fall out of the 1993 NAFTA vote. Then, a Democratic president blurring distinctions between the parties on trade and jobs caused a disgruntled base to stay home and congressional Democrats were decimated.

Even White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, whose job it is to sell these trade deals and who helped former President Bill Clinton sell NAFTA to a skeptical Congress, recognized that workers "lose from these agreements," and implied that campaigning against free trade agreements could even be an electoral advantage. ("White House's Daley seeks balance in outreach meeting with manufacturers," The Washington Post, June 16, 2011).

Whatever the reason, the reality is that any politician that supported these job-killing agreements backed by Wall Street and America's most notorious job-offshoring corporations and opposed by American workers, small business and consumers will face a reckoning as the damage of these pacts hits home.

Public Citizen is just one of the organizations that intends to closely track and publicize every development. Visit our Eyes on Trade Blog to stay updated and use our Trade Data Center

Record of Congressional Democratic Opposition to Democratic Presidents on Trade Pacts:

- 82.3% of House Democrats opposed the Colombia FTA (158 Democrats against, 31 for)
- 67.7% of House Democrats opposed the Korea FTA (130 Democrats against, 59 for)
- 64.1% of House Democrats opposed the Panama FTA (123 Democrats against, 66 for)
- 60.6% of Democrats opposed NAFTA (1993)
- 35% opposed the WTO (1994)
- 65.56% opposed China PNTR (2000)

Record of Congressional Democratic Opposition to GOP Presidents on Trade Pacts:

- 62.6% opposed the Chile FTA (2003)
- 62.14% opposed the Singapore FTA (2003)
- 41.3% opposed the Australia FTA (2004)
- 39.32% opposed the Morocco FTA (2004)
- 92.6% opposed the Central America Free Trade Agreement (2005)
- 40.4% opposed the Bahrain FTA (2005)
- 87.6% opposed the Oman FTA (2006)
- slightly more than half opposed the Peru FTA (2007)

This post has been modified since its original publication.

Obama Flip-Flops Off Trade Cliff

2011-10-04T16:13:12-04:00

Apparently, Obama has a plan for winning re-election that does not involve Ohio... oh, and he is tired of talking about job CREATION.

Yesterday, after months of seeming ambiguity about whether to really take ownership of the three job-killing, Bush-signed, NAFTA-style Free Trade Agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, he sent them to Congress for approval. Keep in mind that even the official U.S. International Trade Commission studies show that the Korea deal, the most economically significant since NAFTA, will increase our trade deficit. It's projected to cost 160,000 jobs -- many in the jobs of the future categories like high-speed trains, solar, computers etc.

At this point, that Obama did a total flip-flop on very specific, written, repeated campaign promises -- in this instance to replace the old damaging trade model starting with fixing these three deals -- is not news. But what is noteworthy is the flip-flopping right off a political cliff. See here for a memo on the polling on these issues -- opposition to these sorts of pacts is one of the few things that unites GOP, Dems, and Independents.

Now, the question is whether Congress will follow. Whether or not these job-killing deals go into effect will come down to whether 218 House members vote for them. Few Dems will support the deals. The Korea deal is an albatross of job loss. Congress should not even be considering a trade deal with Colombia, where scores of trade unionists, human rights defenders and Afro-Colombians are murdered or displaced from their lands every year and conditions have worsened since the administration signed off on an unenforceable "Labor Action Plan." At a time when America is trying to reduce the national debt, Congress should not be considering a trade deal with Panama, a notorious tax-haven where U.S. firms and wealthy individuals go to dodge their taxes.

A bloc of more senior GOP oppose the Korea deal, as it clobbers certain industries. So, it will come down to the GOP freshmen.

The polling shows that Tea Partiers are among the most passionate opponents of these deals. But whether the freshmen GOP will stick with the critical position many of them campaigned on and/or heed the Ron Paul call to oppose these deals is at best unclear. Many have already flipped to yes votes, falling in line with the massive Chamber of Commerce campaign that has been aimed at getting them "educated."

If the deals are passed, you can imagine the Democratic congressional campaign committees again making hay with differentiator ads attacking these job-killing votes.

Maybe the White House is hoping that Democratic base voters and Independents seeing those ads forget that it was those congressional GOP and the Democratic president who slammed their futures with more NAFTAs.

Trade Pacts Obama Is Flacking in Jobs Plan Would Increase Trade Deficit Say Government Studies

2011-09-07T17:53:00-04:00

Everyone expects Obama's imminent jobs plan and related speeches to include a pitch to pass Bush's leftover Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with Korea, Colombia and Panama. We got the preview of this during Obama's bus tour.

Problem is, whatever one thinks about the idea of "free trade," the federal government's own studies predict that these three deals would increase the U.S. trade deficit. Higher deficits mean more jobs will be displaced by imports than are created by exports.

This was a critical factoid largely missed by reporters covering Obama's speeches after the debt ceiling deal -- with many stories simply repeating Obama's claim that these FTAs were vote-ready job-creators for Congress to take up ASAP. See Minority Leader Pelosi challenging that claim of job gains when NBC's Andrea Mitchell assumed it into a question during an interview. (The FTA comments are at 11:40.)

The Korea FTA, the most economically significant FTA since NAFTA, is not only projected to increase the U.S. trade deficit. The Korea FTA would especially slam seven industrial sectors that include many of those "jobs of the future" Obama touts in alternative energy and transportation, high tech and more. This is the conclusion of the official U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) study on the pact.

Yes, this is the same agency that systematically employs such optimistic assumptions about trade deals that it projected NAFTA would create a new trade surplus and China's WTO entry would have little effect on our trade balance, a projection that was off by hundreds of billions in greater trade deficits. Here's the USITC study data mashed with state-by-state data, which shows jobs at risk by state and congressional district in a searchable form.

Some other questions to consider about the trade aspects of Obama's plan:

If Obama's underlying trade goal is to double exports, as announced in his State of the Union speech, then why is he pushing Bush's old NAFTA-style trade deals -- given the data is conclusive that U.S. export growth to countries with which we have such FTAs is half of that to countries with which we have no FTA? If the difference between the U.S. FTA partner and non-FTA export growth rates for goods for each year were to be put in dollar terms, the total U.S. FTA export "penalty" would be $72 billion over the past decade.

And, if the goal is to double exports, why is the first and only major trade deal being negotiated by the Obama administration the Trans-Pacific FTA? This is a prospective deal with eight countries, except the U.S. already has FTAs with the four countries (Singapore, Australia, Chile and Peru) that comprise 80 percent of the combined $2.3 trillion GDP of the participating nations. Hardly seems Vietnam (per capita annual income $1,168), Brunei (population 417,000), or New Zealand (annual GDP $139 billion -- less than half of Maryland) are worth receiving priority in U.S. trade agency resources. Yet, while Obama was giving his Detroit Labor Day speech, trade negotiators from nine Pacific Rim nations descended on Chicago to start a Trans-Pacific FTA summit -- and were greeted by labor and other activists at a protest demanding a fair new deal or no deal.

What about the majorities of GOP, Independent and Democratic voters who, according to numerous polls, oppose more NAFTA-style deals and think current U.S. trade policy is a jobs killer? Why has Obama decided to flip-flop on his campaign promises for trade policy reform and take ownership of Bush's NAFTA-style deal rather than creating a new American trade agreement model that might actually create jobs here?

And then there is the Motor City, Korea trade and autos angle: If Obama uses his Detroit speech to tout "broad support" for the Korea FTA, after he tweaked Bush's text by slightly delaying the deal's auto tariff phase-outs, its worth noting that a the recent USITC study of just the auto sector changes still predicts that the Korea deal will increase the U.S. trade deficit in autos and auto parts by hundreds of millions of dollars. Obama's "new" deal also requires Korea to waive environmental and safety standards for U.S. cars, undermining Korean consumer demand for our cars. And the AFL-CIO will be scoring each of these FTA votes -- having opposed all three after Obama's "renegotiation" -- as have a wide range of unions including Teamsters, Carpenters, Communication Workers, Steelworkers, Machinists, IBEW, ILWU, and more.

In sum, pretty crazy twist for President Obama to include in his emergency job creation plan a trio of leftover Bush trade agreements that official government studies show will increase the U.S. trade deficit and continue the NAFTA model reviled as job killers by a diversity of American voters who agree on little else...

The Korea Trade Deal in Two Minutes (VIDEO)

2011-06-29T14:00:00-04:00

Check out this two-minute film from Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch about the job-killing NAFTA-style Korea trade deal.

Or, if film isn't your thing, read the script below. It is replete with links to images and underlying documents. And, if this makes you mad, do something about it. Click here to go to our action page.

Script:

It is heartbreaking, but true: After campaigning against more job-killing NAFTA-style trade agreement, President Obama has adopted Bush's Korea trade deal.

It is opposed by labor, consumer, environmental and family farm organizations. The Chamber of Commerce and multinational corporations love it.

NAFTA with Korea is projected to cost 159,000 more American jobs and increase our trade deficit. Losers under this deal: the jobs of the future; solar and wind energy; mass transit equipment and more.

NAFTA with Korea is celebrated by the Wall Street firms who wrecked our economy. No doubt, it limits financial regulation.

NAFTA with Korea is opposed by many in Korea because of its financial deregulation and because it would allow up to 65% Chinese parts to go into "Korean" exports to the US--killing Korean jobs.

The Korea deal has the outrageous NAFTA-style provisions that empower multinational corporations to skirt our court systems and directly attack our state and federal laws before World Bank and UN tribunals to demand compensation from us taxpayers for any policies they say undermine their future expected profits. Under trade deals, this system has been used to attack toxics bans, forestry and mining laws, land use and zoning rules -- even domestic court rulings.

NAFTA with Korea could also undermine our national security. The sanctions we have to keep the North Korea dictatorship from obtaining hard currency to build up its weapons systems would be undermined. A loophole in the deal would deliver billions to the North Korean regime. It allows goods assembled in South Korea but comprised of parts from the notorious Kaesong North Korea sweatshop zone to obtain special access to our market.

We can stop NAFTA with Korea by ensuring a majority in Congress vote against it. Opposition to more NAFTAs is one of the few issues that unite Americans across the political spectrum. You can make the difference visit www.citizen.org/korea to learn how you can take action to stop the Korea Trade Deal.

Obama's Colombia-Korea NAFTA Expansion Is Disgusting

2011-04-07T15:24:37-04:00

Today's announcement by the Obama administration of an "Action Plan" ostensibly aimed at addressing Colombia's horrific labor rights conditions is a remarkably cynical maneuver to facilitate passage of yet another of President Bush's leftover NAFTA-style Free Trade Agreements (FTA). With today's move, Obama takes ownership of a Colombia-Korea trade agreement package that poses enormous policy and political peril.

Passing the Korea deal would kill U.S. jobs - even the 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 even on the very week that President Obama announced his reelection bid, once again the administration's response to a GOP/corporate hostage situation has been to betray its commitments and stomp its political base to comply with hostage takers whose goal is Democrats' defeat.

In February, GOP congressional leaders made an evil genius move. If the Obama administration wanted credit with potential corporate donors for moving Bush's Korea FTA - the biggest NAFTA-style job-offshoring deal since NAFTA, beloved by Wall Street for its financial deregulation terms - then the ultimate price had to be paid: also move Bush's Colombia deal, reviled by labor and other key elements of the Democratic base.

Obama had the power to call the GOP's bluff. The Korea FTA remains under the extreme White House power rules of the Fast Track procedure. Fast Track votes are the only ones over which the White House controls timing. Under Fast Track, if the White House sends a trade pact to Congress, it gets an automatic vote within a set number of days. Stopping it would require the House GOP to take action.

Anyone care to bet that if the Obama administration made Speaker Boehner face this reality, he actually would pull the plug on the biggest dollar trade deal since China PNTR that every GOP corporate constituency is salivating over? (And passing the Korea deal alone would do plenty of political damage to Obama, given that a wide swath of Democratic base groups oppose it, if for no other reason than it is projected to increase the U.S. trade deficit and cost tens of thousands more manufacturing jobs.)

Yet, instead of countering the GOP gambit by exercising its strength, the administration scrambled through March to dust off basically the same list of easily doable "demands" that had been blasted by Democrats and labor during the Bush administration. The motivation was transparent: Enactment of this kabuki dance facilitated compliance with the GOP demands to move the Colombia FTA.

Statements from members of Congress, USW President Leo Gerard and AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka outline the extreme deficiencies in this sham "plan." (Also check out a statement from Ways and Means Ranking Member Sandy Levin, which is worryingly vague.) Last month, a group of six leading human and labor rights advocates in Congress submitted a document noting that the conditions in Colombia made considering any trade agreement unacceptable and setting forth some real benchmarks for improvement. This adds to the long-standing demands of TransAfrica and American and Colombian unions for real reform. All ignored.

Obviously, if the goal of this administration action was to actually address the conditions in Colombia - where the number of unionist assassinations has grown during the period of maximum congressional and public scrutiny, from 37 when the FTA was signed in 2007 to 51 in 2010 - a very different approach would be undertaken.

To start with, the administration would have adopted the recommendations of those in Congress, unions and other civil society groups who have taken the lead on these issues. Instead, the White House sprung a done deal that meets none of the congressional benchmarks and requires no change in outcomes in the horrible human and labor rights violations suffered daily in Colombia before a trade agreement may be considered.

Instead of rushing into an easy-to-meet list of changes to laws and agencies in Colombia, which can be done largely with the stroke of a pen, the administration would have required demonstrated changes on the ground - a serious reduction of unionist and other rights defenders' murders, successful prosecution of some of the thousands of impunity cases - and then conditioned consideration of any trade pact on such changes in reality. Ninety-seven percent of the past murders remain unprosecuted.

And, the terms of a real initiative would have been enforceable as part of a trade agreement - with consequences related to loss of trade benefits for failure to maintain real improvements. Instead, this plan is all optics, an informal bilateral plan of action. And contrary to administration claims, many aspects of it fall outside the weak labor chapter in the FTA text, which relates only to "trade related" labor issues. Finally, a real plan for change would have explicitly addressed the documented and escalating human rights abuses, murders and forced displacement of Afro-Colombians, indigenous people and other vulnerable populations.

However, the administration's goal was not to make a serious agreement to deliver real change, but to get something that could be announced when Colombian President Santos visited the White House today.

So, today we face a situation - an Obama Colombia-Korea 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?

The Korea Trade Deal Is Lose-Lose

2011-02-15T18:31:04-05:00

The Obama administration's effort to convince Congress to pass a NAFTA-style trade pact with South Korea on foreign relations and national security grounds took a beating last month when a large delegation of Korean opponents of the pact came to Washington. The administration has defaulted early on to the standard argument of last resort -- foreign policy -- because even the notoriously trade-pact-boosterish U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has concluded that the Korea agreement will increase the overall U.S. trade deficit and undermine the prospects for seven diverse manufacturing sectors here.

Prominent members of the Korean National Assembly, as well as leaders of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (equivalent to the AFL-CIO in Korea) and other civil society leaders, spoke with members of Congress, the press and U.S. civil society groups about why they oppose the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that former President George W. Bush negotiated and signed and President Obama is now pushing to pass.

A majority of Koreans oppose the FTA, are offended that it requires South Korea to subject itself to the jurisdiction of foreign arbitral tribunals, and fear it will undermine the financial stability policies Korea has implemented following the recent and 1997 financial crises; this was the message from the South Korean officials to U.S. members of Congress. The FTA is also "an unacceptable humiliation and an overly high price to pay for the Americans' role in providing national defense," they said.

This is exactly opposite of the mantra widely chanted by corporate lobbyists and the Obama administration officials that focuses on how passage of the FTA will be seen as cementing U.S. friendship with South Korea.

The South Korean delegation found that concerns about the agreement's "investor-state" enforcement system, which empowers foreign investors to skirt domestic courts and seek cash compensation for regulatory costs before foreign tribunals, were shared by many U.S. representatives. They repeatedly asked why, given both Korea and the U.S. have well-functioning domestic court systems, private investors and corporations should be elevated to the same level as governments in obtaining rights to enforce a public treaty. And they repeatedly asked why this offensive system was being imposed on Korea when the U.S. trade pact with Australia did not include the private corporate enforcement. Moreover, they noted what a severe blow would be dealt to public sentiment in both countries when the first U.S. or Korean laws are attacked before foreign tribunals by one of the 2,055 cross-established corporate affiliates.

Another issue intensifying opposition to the FTA in Korea is the pact's pre-crisis era financial deregulation requirements. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis wiped out decades of improvements to Korean living standards, Korea's policy response to the recent global crisis was forceful. Yet, aspects of both Korean and U.S. financial regulation would newly be exposed to direct challenge by the very firms that wrecked the global economy.

Finally, the Korean union members on the delegation clearly shocked many of their audiences with their stories of how South Korean labor laws allow for strikers to be arrested for, well, striking and also allow individual strikers to be sued for compensation by their employers for lost profits. They also explained why Korean unions, including the unions representing auto workers, opposed the agreement -- even though the USITC study showed that the U.S. deficit in autos and auto parts would increase by at least $531 million under the pact.

What is the issue? The FTA allows its benefits to accrue to autos that contain only 35 percent U.S. or Korean content. That is to say, cars with 65 percent Chinese content would be considered "Korean" or "American" and newly obtain duty free access. The Korean unions -- and, as it turns out, all but a few U.S. unions -- have honed in on that provision's massive incentive to outsource car part, steel, glass, rubber and other auto supply chain jobs. Even NAFTA had a 50 percent domestic content rule. Korea's pact with the European Union requires 55 percent.

The bottom line for the U.S.-South Korea FTA is that some large U.S., Korean -- and Chinese -- multinational firms could gain at the expense of the majority of people in both countries. We've seen this movie before; it was called NAFTA, and it ended badly for most of us.