The United States is endowed with abundant natural resources, a large, hardworking and highly skilled labor force and high levels of ingenuity. In the post-World War II era, we led the world in growing our middle class and creating the right conditions for inclusive economic growth. But beginning in the 1970s, the direction of U.S. trade, tax and global economic policy changed from one of positive policies to promote growth and widespread wealth creation to policies that have concentrated wealth and political power in the hands of a few, gutted our manufacturing sector and left too many working people, their families and their communities behind.
Time and time again, America’s workers have raised their voices against poorly designed trade policies such as those enshrined in the decades-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. We have made our voices heard, against tax policies that provide an incentive to make goods and provide services offshore—instead of in the United States—and against putting the desires of giant global corporations ahead of the needs of America’s families. Yet we still are having the same arguments about whether the United States should incorporate the same failed policies into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) and the U.S.-China Bilateral Investment Treaty.
It seems there is an ideological divide: Those who fight for the “rights” of corporations and investors—even to the point of creating a private system of “corporate courts” (officially called investor-to-state dispute settlement, or ISDS) designed just for them—can’t, or more likely won’t, look at the years of evidence demonstrating that such an unbalanced system simply doesn’t work. We have been pushing for a debate on the facts and a comprehensive review of our trade policies, but those blinded by free trade ideology and the neoliberal mindset ignore the facts, aren’t interested in an honest debate and are sacrificing the heart of America’s strength—its working people. At times, they actually wage a war on the facts, seeking to skew the data in their favor and rewrite history.
When daily we see evidence of U.S. trade policy failures, whether it is WTO decisions that attempt to undermine our domestic trade enforcement laws, the latest record annual trade deficit with China ($318.4 billion in 2013), the failure of the U.S. government to act promptly and decisively to protect workers’ rights in Guatemala and Honduras, or the proposal to classify American brand-name companies that offshore all of their production as “American manufacturers,” the ideological blindness of the free traders become clear.
How many more times will America’s workers make clear what they want from U.S. trade policy—only to have those demands ignored in favor of advice from those who brought us the Great Recession? How many more times will the U.S. Trade Representative’s office claim that all of the problems of prior trade deals have been “fixed,” only to have workers experience the same trends of declining wages and disappearing family-wage jobs? Accumulating the annual trade deficits the U.S. has racked up since 1992, including both goods and services, results in a whopping $8.529 trillion. U.S. trade policy most definitely has not been “fixed.”
The potential upcoming debate about whether to grant the president preferential and expedited authority for trade negotiations—known as “Fast Track” or Trade Promotion Authority—provides the perfect opportunity to assess and review our nation’s outdated trade policies. Closed-door trade policies have left too many out and too many behind. Any grant of authority must ensure there is not only real transparency and consultation, but that the elements of our trade policy be updated to achieve balanced trade and shared prosperity. The status quo approach is unacceptable. Make no mistake—the labor movement will continue to oppose last century’s NAFTA-model Fast Track and NAFTA-model trade agreements.
America’s workers—and our brothers and sisters around the world—are tired of trade rules that put profits before people. Trade can be a force for progress in the world, or it can continue to be a disguise for rules that just create profit centers for global corporations that do not behave as good global citizens. The latter choice is becoming increasingly unsustainable. The United States can become a world leader in creating progressive trade rules that build middle classes and consumer demand everywhere, or it can become a follower. America’s workers prefer the United States to lead.