New Free Trade Agreements Threaten To Kill Jobs And Labor Rights

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 No. 1: A typical pro-business study predicted in 1992 that NAFTA would create 130,000 US jobs in two years, double US exports to Mexico and create 609,000 jobs there. Today Tom Donahue, CEO of the US 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 US trade deficit with Mexico ballooned by $107 billion, which cost 1,015,290 US 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 US.

Mexico lost a million jobs just in the first year the treaty took effect. Because the treaty allowed US 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 US as a result of this displacement. The Colombian free trade agreement has a provision identical to that in NAFTA, which led to the corn dumping, so those farmers will be uprooted, too.

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