Forum Post: STOP disastrous trade deals in the works!

Trade agreements have cost us millions of good-paying jobs (read unemployment & decline of middle class). Over the last 10 years, 50,000 U.S. factories shut down, millions of jobs were lost and it is harder and harder to buy products made in the United States.

We need a trade policy which demands that corporate America invest in this country, not China.

STOP new trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama which President Obama SENT TO CONGRESS ON MONDAY. The trade deals in the works since the Bush administration failed in the past and won't work now.

The Korea agreement is the largest offshoring deal of its kind since NAFTA. If enacted, it likely will displace 159,000 U.S. jobs, mostly in manufacturing. And its glaring loopholes would allow unscrupulous businesses to import illegally labeled goods from China and possibly even from sweatshops in North Korea—potentially without any tariffs at all.

In Colombia, one trade unionist is murdered almost every week and almost none of the murderers is brought to justice. In 2010, 51 trade unionists were assassinated in Colombia—more than in the rest of the world combined. So far in 2011, another 22 have been killed, despite Colombia’s heralded “Labor Action Plan.” Would we reward a country where 51 CEOs were killed last year?

The Panama agreement has many of the problems of the other two deals, like deregulating big banks and letting foreign investors bypass U.S. health, safety, labor and environmental laws. Panama is also a tax haven: a place where tax-dodging, money-laundering millionaires and billionaires hide their money.

For years, lobbyists have promised politicians that new trade agreements would lead to job creation and greater prosperity for our country. The “jobs” argument gives politicians a convenient excuse to push these agreements—which are good for the mega-rich but terrible for the vast majority of Americans. It’s sad, but not surprising, that many of our leaders in Washington are parroting these corporate talking points—and even are claiming these agreements will help solve America’s jobs crisis.

But what workers actually have experienced from new trade agreements is horrible. They have caused a devastation of our manufacturing sector, more outsourcing of service-sector jobs and a growing trade deficit that leaves us more and more in debt to the rest of the world.

Call 1-800-718-1008 AND protest.

STOP unfair trade deals