Is “Free Trade” Obama's Jobs Plan?

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/02-1

After a slight scheduling kerfuffle, President Obama is now set to give a major speech on jobs before a joint session of Congress next Thursday, September 8. Commentators have speculated that Obama could “go big” in his proposals to fight unemployment, and there are some solid suggestions on the table for how the government could help put Americans back to work. These include major investment in public infrastructure and changing the tax structure in order to reward businesses for creating U.S. jobs, rather than off-shoring their production abroad.



Unfortunately, Obama is also likely to advance some bad ideas. In his pledge to “to find bipartisan solutions” to the country’s economic problems, the president will almost certainly push several neoliberal “free trade” agreements. Specifically, he is expected to reassert his support for previously stalled trade pacts with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.

As Lori Wallach argues, “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—costing more jobs than they create.” Wallach’s organization, Global Trade Watch, has had to regularly correct news reports that uncritically accept false numbers about trade. In a post on why “Trade Does Not Equal Jobs,” even Paul Krugman, normally a trade booster, has argued that claims about the South Korea trade agreement being an engine of job creation are bunk.

The idea that “free trade” is in fact a bipartisan issue is also debatable. It’s true that President Bill Clinton and his generation of “New Democrats” enthusiastically embraced NAFTA and other neoliberal trade deals—and were far more serious about creating hemisphere-wide pacts like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) than the administration of George W. Bush ever was. (The argument of my 2008 book, How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy, was that a new Democratic president would be likely to repudiate Bush’s unilateralist, America-first brand of “imperial globalization,” but would revert to promoting a friendlier, more multilateral form of “corporate globalization”—different in some respects, but plenty bad in its own right. Obama hasn’t done much to disprove this thesis.)

More at the link --

[ixion]

1. Free trade, bogus reform, and more tax cuts

yep, that's it. :(

[blindpig]

2. That is the plan of all of the capitalist powers...

export your way out of the hole. Howerver, the world cannot absorb all of that production, the competition will be fierce.

Just like 100 years ago, and look what happened...

[obxhead]

5. The only thing that will get exported with these trade deals are jobs. nt

[OHdem10]

3. The "Free Trade Deals" will give Multinationals new markets

where they can find cheap labor and therefore in time have
access to citizens as future customers. Why are Businesses
pushing this issue so??? Free Trade does not benefit
the American Worker. Rather, Free Trade is lowering American
Standard of Living. At some point perhaps they will have
American earners' income LOW ENOUGH we can compete with
the THIRD WORLD.

In the last jobs report American Workers' income has FALLEN
once again.

[dgibby]

7. You got it. That's been the plan all along.

This "recession" did not occur in a vacuum. This is all about Globalization, nothing more, nothing less.

[Harmony Blue]

4. I see posts and threads being optimistic about the Jobs plan

to be unveiled Thursday night, but reality is that this is the reality. When will people embrace the truth? Is the truth so horrifying and so painful that people try to cite that another time it will be different?

[treestar]

6. We know you don't plan on listening with an open mind

We already know that the jobs plan is a bust and you will be saying that no matter what Obama says.

[dgibby]

8. Who is this "we" of whom you speak? n/t

[durablend]

9. Blah blah blah

And when we hear it, we'll have "misunderstood", and when he implements it we'll be told "Best we can do, shaddup and stop complaining"

Seen this movie before...didn't care for it then either.

[Harmony Blue]

13. How can you be open minded about free trade at this point?

In other words, we tried it, and it has failed America. Is that open minded enough for you?

[Honeycombe8]

10. What IS it with those trade deals that attracts Democratic leaders? Are they paid off?

Just what is it? Because it's CLEAR, absolutely CLEAR, that it costs the U.S. jobs! It was clear before NAFTA was signed...there were plenty of people warning about it, including business people. Then after it was signed, jobs in US started going south to Mexico, as predicted. But apparently the companies paid crap, because illegal immigration from Mexico increased by the millions! So it didn't help the U.S. workers, and it didn't help Mexican workers. So just who in the hell did NAFTA help?

Haven't we learned from our mistakes? What I am missing here?

[grahamhgreen]

11. There is no evidence that free trade creates jobs, in fact the opposite is true. (chart)

[LWolf]

12. "Free Trade" is bipartisan because neo-liberals hold

positions of power in the Democratic Party.

That needs to change.