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President Barack Obama said in his 2013 State of the Union Address: "Trade that is fair and free across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs." But free trade agreements have not only failed to create American jobs, they have caused U.S. job losses and dramatically increased trade deficits. The 2012 Korea-U.S. Trade Agreement was supposed to create 70,000 new U.S. jobs, but it cost 40,000 jobs instead. And the U.S. trade deficit increased by $5.8 billion, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The Congressional Research Service reports that since 2000, about one-third (5.5 million) of America's manufacturing jobs have disappeared. In spite of massive job losses and dangerous deficits, Obama directed his U.S. Trade RepresenÂtative to secretly negotiate not just one, but two new FTAs. The first is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement with 12 naÂtions, including NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico, and could eventually expand to 21 nations, counting China and Russia. The second FTA is the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union's 28 nations. Since millions of Americans are out of work and the federal debt is over $17 trillion (almost $55,000 per citizen), it is an insult to AmeriÂcan workers and taxpayers to push for new job-destroying, deficit-increasing FTAs. Making things worse, in January, bi-partisan bills for so-called "fast track" procedure will severely limit Congress' deÂbate, prohibit amendments and allow only an up-or-down vote. The President is acting outside the U.S. ConstituÂtion. His trade representaÂtives rely on 17 "Industry Sector Advisory Committees" for advice, which gives corporations greater access to information and documents than is given to ConÂgress. Only from WikiLeaks have we learned that the FTAs plan to exempt corporations, including foreign corporations, from AmeriÂcan laws governing trade disputes, while U.S. businesses remain shackled by the rules of the EPA, the FDA, the ADA, and OSHA. FTAs began in earnest in 1994 when Congress renegotiated the General Agreement on Trade & Tariffs (GATT), a 22,000-page document which surreptitiously included the 14-page World Trade Organization. During a Lame Duck Session with more than 80 defeated Congressmen, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, Congress voted to replace GATT with the WTO. The idea for a WTO origiÂnated with American economist and Soviet spy Harry White durÂing a 1944 conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, along with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to effecÂtively control international trade. U.S. trade is ruled by the dicÂtates of the World Trade OrganizaÂtion (WTO) sitting in Geneva, SwitÂzerland. Its Article XVI obligates the U.S. to change our laws, regulations and administrative procedures to conform to the WTO. WTO dispute resolution panels, with more authorÂity than the U.S. Supreme Court, deliberate and vote in secret, yet its decisions cannot be vetoed by any nation. America has one vote out of 159 members. Its rulings have not been favorable to the U.S. Our laws requiring Country Of Origin Labeling, for example, were ruled to violate free trade. Congress should vote against "Trade Promotion Authority" (Fast Track) because it transfers ConÂgress' treaty and commerce powers to the President, imposes mandaÂtory deadlines, severely limits debate, allows no amendments, and permits Congress only to vote aye or nay. Then Congress should defeat the TTP and the TTIP. Grassroots Americans cannot sit idly by as our jobs are destroyed. |
