Free Trade Agreements are Killing People

Stop TPP.

IN COLOMBIA FREE TRADE BRINGS MORE POVERTY AND MORE KILLINGS By David Bacon Truthout Report, 5/2/14 http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23408-in-colombia-free-trade-brings-more-poverty-and-more-killings The free trade agreement between the U.S. and Colombia, which took effect on May 15, 2012, hadn't yet reached its second birthday when the office of the public workers' union in Cali, SINTRAEMCALI, was firebombed.   On April 11 a Colombian court had ordered the country's government to apologize for attacking the union, along with that of the telephone workers,  SINTRATELEFONOS, and university workers, SINTRAUNICOL, during the past administration of President Alvaro Uribe, who signed the trade agreement.  The bombs were thrown five days later. In 2004 a large number of SINTRAEMCALI workers were fired, and over the years since 15 were forced to flee Cali, eight were murdered and over a hundred more threatened.  Last year a leader of the city union's retirees' organization, Luis Fabio Campo Rodriguez, was murdered, and the union's past president Alexander Lopez Maya was revealed as the target of a government assassination program, "Operation Dragon." Read the entire piece and see photos at the link provided.

Free Trade Agreements - Killing Jobs and Labor Rights

By David Bacon

http://www.truth-out.org/new-free-trade-agreements-threaten-kill-jobs-and-labor-rights/1318363783

        Last week President Obama broke his campaign commitment and put three free trade agreements up for a vote in Congress.  Business interests, ecstatic at the prospect, promise they'll bring us jobs.  Experience tells us, however, their promises are worthless.

       Nineteen years ago, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was in Congress, supporters said it too would create jobs and protect labor rights.  Before agreeing to new free trade treaties with Colombia, South Korea and Panama, Congress should look at the dismal record.

      Promise #1. A typical pro-business study predicted in 1992 that NAFTA would create 130,000 U.S. jobs in two years, double U.S. exports to Mexico, and create 609,000 jobs there.  Today Tom Donahue, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, repeats the promise, saying the three new treaties also "are about creating jobs."

    According to the Economic Policy Institute, however, between 1993 and 2004 the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico ballooned by $107 billion, which cost 1,015,290 U.S. jobs, 123,000 in California.  But although those jobs went south, Mexico lost far more jobs because of the treaty than those relocated from the U.S. 

        Mexico lost a million jobs just in the first year the treaty took effect.  Because the treaty allowed U.S. grain companies to dump corn in Mexico, 1.3 million farmers lost their livelihood as well.  Pork dumping cost another 120,000 jobs.  Eliminating its domestic content laws cost the jobs of thousands of auto parts workers.

Six million people from Mexico came to live and work in the U.S. as a result of this displacement.  The Colombian FTA has a provision identical to that in NAFTA, which led to the corn dumping, so those farmers will be uprooted too.

Columbia "Free Trade" is a bad deal

Triple Crisis bloggers on the Obama Administration's trade deals

The Obama Administration’s latest free trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, were the subject of several Triple Crisis posts this month. Matías Vernengo criticizes the Colombian agreement in his post, “The Colombia FTA: Only Corporations Win.” Guest blogger Sarah Anderson from the Institute for Policy Studies explains that FTAs under Obama restrict the use of capital controls and other crisis prevention tools in her post, “How Obama is to the Right of Reagan on Trade.” And Timothy Wise and Kevin Gallagher point out that President Obama is breaking the promises made by candidate Obama in their joint post, “The false promise of Obama’s trade deals,” based on their recent LATN policy brief, “U.S. Trade Policy: Still Waiting for a ‘21st Century Trade Agreement.’”

In his recent post, GDAE’s Timothy A Wise explains how the Obama Administration’s work on free trade agreements represents a step backwards:

U.S. Trade Policy: Moving backwards in the 21st century

Three years into the Obama Administration, progressives have no shortage of complaints about the president’s economic policies, which seem very much at odds with Candidate Obama’s soaring rhetoric. Economic policies have been centrist at best. Unfortunately, the President’s trade policies may be further to the right than that. He is now counting primarily on Republican votes to push three Bush-era trade agreements, with Korea, Colombia, and Panama. And his trade negotiators are in Chicago wrapping up a negotiating session on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), which he promised would be his signature “21st century trade agreement,” unencumbered by Bush-era provisions.

Columbia Free Trade Agreement

Columbia Free trade agreement

What I fear about the odds on defeating the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement if it comes to a vote is that, even though the Democratic electorate is sensitive to “free trade” issues in an election year, and even though labor’s message that murdering union organizers and granting immunity to their killers in Colombia should be a bar to a “free trade agreement”, Democrats remain potentially vulnerable on several fronts. First, corporate lobbyists are preparing to let out all stops in urging passage of the Colombia FTA this year. Second, most of Obama’s and Clinton’s economic advisors, and the corporate business interests that support Democrats, are fundamentally “free traders.” Third, lacking any principled critique or understanding of the American empire or its accompanying militarization, many Democrats might be stampeded by shallow and contrived appeals to “national security” and “fighting terrorism.”
Paul Garver:
Read the entire article:

http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/bush-tries-again-to-pass-free-trade-agreement-with-colombia/