A New Era in Trade
Good idea!
EC-Over 100 House members, unhappy with America’s failed trade policies, are taking matters into their own hands in the form of the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act (TRADE), which has the potential to completely reshape how Washington conducts business with regard to trade.
The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Michael Michaud (D-ME), chairman of the House Trade Working Group, would completely overhaul America’s trade policy and could force the Obama administration to renegotiate current “free trade” agreements such as the flawed North American Free Trade Agreement.
“We all know that we live in a globalized world. But we need to ensure trade is fair for our workers and the economy. The TRADE Act shows what we are for in future trade agreements – and paves the way on how to fix our existing agreements,” Michaud said in a press release.
The bill would require the Government Accountability Office to conduct a comprehensive review of America’s major trade pacts including NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and the Central American Free Trade Agreement. That review must be conducted before Congress would be allowed to analyze any new or pending trade pacts.
It would also require that any future trade pacts include environmental and labor standards, food and product safety measures, human rights protections, currency anti-manipulation rules, federalism safeguards and national security exceptions.
In addition, the bill would require the president to renegotiate existing trade agreements based on the aforementioned standards and the recommendations of the Government Accountability Office. Finally, the bill would scrap fast-track negotiating authority for the president and put more power in the hands of Congress in choosing trade partners and negotiating trade pacts.
Overall the bill has 106 co-sponsors, including nine committee chairs, 45 subcommittee chairs and members of the Democratic caucus ranging from very liberal to slightly conservative. The bill also has two Republican cosponsors: Reps. Walter Jones of North Carolina and Chris Smith of New Jersey.
FYI
Chinese makers of shoddy goods rarely face U.S. sanctions
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/70986.html
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act on the way…let’s make this recession into a long lasting depression…BRILLIANT!
John, why do you want America to fail?
The variables are different a fool would compare two separate sets of variables and use it as facts.
The issue is not managed trade (free trade) vs. protectionism like in most things in life it is about balance.
All they did was promise to review. We need reform. If the Republicans had half a brain, they would jump on this. Congress is supposed to represent the people, not the privileged.
Seems really strange that we want more conditions on stuff we buy abroad than on the 12 million illegal immigrants running around in the country……
Why is this “Free Trade”?
Do you not think a country should respect Intellectual Property rights?
Do you think a country should respect basic heath and safety standards?
Do you think a country should use slave labor?
Do you think a country should manipulate currency?
I could go on and on….
BTW I will remind you the pro NAFTA/CAFTA crowd sold the policy on fixing the illegal immigration problem and laughed when many warned the opposite would happen!
Who was right?
FYI
Was Ross Perot Right?
“Ross Perot was fiercely against NAFTA. Knowing what we know now, was Ross Perot right?”
That’s what CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Hillary Clinton at last week’s Democratic presidential debate. It was a straightforward query about a Clinton administration trade policy that polls show the public now hates, and it was appropriately directed to a candidate who has previously praised NAFTA.
In response, Clinton stumbled. First she laughed at Perot, then she joked that “all I can remember from that is a bunch of charts,” and then she claimed the whole NAFTA debate “is a vague memory.” The behavior showed how politically tone deaf some Democratic leaders are.
To refresh Clinton’s “vague memory,” let’s recall that Perot’s anti-NAFTA presidential campaign in 1992 won 19 percent of the presidential vote — the highest total for any third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. That included huge tallies in closely divided regions like the Rocky Mountain West, which Democrats say they need to win in the upcoming election.
A Democrat laughing at Perot on national television is a big mistake. Simply put, it risks alienating the roughly 20 million people who cast their votes for the Texas businessman.
But Clinton’s flippant comments and feigned memory lapse about NAFTA were the bigger mistakes in that they insulted the millions of Americans (Perot voters or otherwise) harmed by the trade pact. These are people who have seen their jobs outsourced and paychecks slashed thanks to a trade policy forcing them into a wage-cutting war with oppressed foreign workers.
Why is Clinton desperate to avoid discussing NAFTA? Because she and other congressional Democrats are currently pushing a Peru Free Trade Agreement at the behest of their corporate campaign contributors — an agreement expanding the unpopular NAFTA model. When pressed, Clinton claims she is for a “timeout” from such trade deals — but, as her husband might say, it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is, since she simultaneously supports the NAFTA expansion.
Of course, this deviousness is precisely why it is worth asking about Perot’s predictions: to make sure America has an informed and honest discussion about impending new trade policies before they are enacted.
And so without further ado, let’s answer the question Clinton ducked: Was Ross Perot right?
In 1993, the Clinton White House and an army of corporate lobbyists were selling NAFTA as a way to aid Mexican and American workers.
Perot, on the other hand, was predicting that because the deal included no basic labor standards, it would preserve a huge “wage differential between the United States and Mexico” that would result in “the giant sucking sound” of American jobs heading south of the border. Corporations, he said, would “close the factories in the U.S. [and] move the factories to Mexico [to] take advantage of the cheap labor.”
The historical record is clear. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reports, “Real wages for most Mexicans today are lower than when NAFTA took effect.” Post-NAFTA, companies looking to exploit those low wages relocated factories to Mexico. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the net effect of NAFTA was the elimination of 1 million American jobs.
Score one for Perot.
What about immigration? In 1993, the Clinton administration pitched NAFTA as “the best hope for reducing illegal immigration.” Perot, by contrast, said that after NAFTA depressed Mexican wages, many Mexicans “out of economic necessity” would “consider illegally immigrating into the U.S.”
“In short,” he wrote, “NAFTA has the potential to increase illegal immigration, not decrease it.”
Again, the historical record tells the story. As NAFTA helped drive millions of Mexicans into poverty, The New York Times reports that “Mexican migration to the United States has risen to 500,000 a year from less than 400,000 in the early 1990s, before NAFTA,” with a huge chunk of that increase coming from illegal immigration.
Score another one for Perot.
Clinton may continue to laugh at Perot and plead amnesia when asked about trade policy. And sure, she and her fellow Democrats in Washington can expand NAFTA and ignore the public’s desire for reform. But these politicians shouldn’t be surprised if that one other Perot prediction comes true again — the one accurately predicting that Democrats would lose the next national election if they sold America out and passed NAFTA.
Foreshadowing that historic Democratic loss in 1994, he warned, “We’ll remember in November.”
Yes, indeed, Ross. America probably will.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/was-ross-perot-right.html
John,
Why did our system break down ?
Maybe when NAFTA passed those that opposed it seemed to go with the “if you can’t lick them, join them approach” -
just apply your questions to the U.S. illegal immigration issues….
John,
There will never be free trade as you’re defining it above and there never has been. You can’t control the conditions in the other countries.
Caroline
Not true in fact some of the issues are in our current trade deals they are just not enforced. Also that is what a tarrif is used for.
John,
You can’t enforce those things. You cant control what other countries do. Tarriffs are not part of free trade. Tarriffs are part of protectionism and do nothing to control what the other countries are doing.
When trade increases as a percent of real GDP, the US economy grows faster.
The faster the economy grows, the higher the ratio of trade to GDP.
Both statements are true, as defined by observable fact.
Anyone who disagrees will have to cite sources and document their views, because this is just straight facts.
.
Trade as a share of GDP dropped from an average 12.2% in the four quarters before the 1982 recession, to 11.9% during the recession, and revived to 12.0% in the four quarters after the recession.
In 1991, the figures were 16.2%, 16.7%, 17.3%: slower during the recession and faster in the recovery.
In 2001, 26.4%, 24.6% and 24.9%: down in the recession, up in the recovery.
In 2008, 29.6% and 27.2%: down in the recession and still awaiting the recovery for yet more evidence that more trade is better for real economic growth than less trade.
= = = = =
Mr Konop,
1. Do you not think a country should respect Intellectual Property rights?
Do you think a country should respect basic heath and safety standards?
Do you think a country should use slave labor?
Do you think a country should manipulate currency?
Excellent description of the economic and political development of the United States of America, sir. Really, very direct and accurate.