Obama’s Embrace of Free Trade, and the Subversion of Democracy

[brentspeak]

By Roger Bybee
Tuesday
July 13
12:55 pm

snip

Americans already have had extremely negative perceptions of free-trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has cost more than 1 million jobs since 1994. Yet precisely at a moment of extreme anxiety, President Obama and his economic advisors seem bent on further amping up the economic worries of already-insecure voters with http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/107451-obama-says-hell-submit-trade-agreements-to-congress-as-soon-as-possible">"free-trade" proposals that the http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6222/entry/5751/will_bolder_obama_be_willing_to_la%20%20sh_out_on_job_relocations/">vast majority of Americans—particularly Democrats—deeply despise.

snip

Obama has cloaked his support for "free trade" as a strategy to build up the flow of U.S.-produced exports and increase the supply of good jobs, but working Americans have seen this movie before. They recall President Clinton and Al Gore promising that NAFTA wouldn't hurt a bit. With corporations relocating huge numbers of jobs to Mexico and using that threat to hold down wages for jobs remaining in the United States, Americans are unlikely to buy into Obama's strategy.

With South Korea alone, the Economic Policy Institute's Robert Scott has
calculated that a loss of nearly http://www.tradereform.org/2010/07/epi-korea-trade-agmt-will-cost-jobs/">200,000 jobs would occur due to a "free trade" deal designed, above all, to protect and expand the rights of financiers and investors—not workers, consumers or the environment.

snip

The elites committed to corporate globalization are accustomed to mocking, marginalizing and utterly ignoring the opposition of majorities victimized by the relocation of family-supporting jobs, the brutal exploitation of the poor in nations like Mexico and China, and the undermining of democracy. Sad to say, it appears that Barack Obama is signing on with the globalizers—and discarding a commitment to democracy, along with Democrats' prospects for November.

[Crazy Dave]

1. With wages still dropping, once we all make $8 an hour...

...watch all the jobs from overseas come back home.

That's the plan.

[Exilednight]

3. Exactly, then he can boast about huge gains in jobs. Reminds me of ............

his chest thumping when he created hundreds of thousands of jobs with the census, but he became unusually quiet when those jobs came to an end.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[brentspeak]

2. s/k

:kick:

[AzDar]

4. K & R

:kick: