Speaking today to the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spelled out a comprehensive new vision for global trade and investment policies to create a global economy that is good for working people, the middle class and democracy—both here in the United States and around the world.

The United States needs a “single, stream-lined, coherent national economic strategy that puts good jobs first.” The key, he said, is changing the incentives for corporations to encourage more domestic investment in cutting-edge manufacturing jobs—rather than gearing all of our trade, investment and tax policies toward pushing jobs to other shores.

Click here to read the full speech. 

For a generation, Trumka said, we have focused our international economic policies on the profitability of U.S. corporations abroad, rather than the quantity and quality of jobs at home or sustainable and democratic development around the world. As a result, large U.S.-based multinational corporations have thrived, but the United States is suffering from massive job loss and unsustainable trade deficits.

To build a stronger economy that serves our needs as a superpower, we must tackle inequality, unsustainable debt, lackluster job growth, crumbling physical infrastructure and under-investment in skills and education, he said.

That means we must invest in schools, bridges, high-speed Internet and highways, which our competitors have already done, Trumka said. And business must be a partner with workers to demand that we refocus on America’s fundamental needs.

On income inequality, Trumka pointed out that 56 percent of all income gains in the past 20 years have gone to the richest 1 percent, which many economists attribute to trade liberalization and the offshoring of jobs. The result is that the U.S. economy can’t seem to get itself out of its deep slump—partly because consumers—who are workers—are deep in debt, don’t have good jobs and have seen their real wages stagnate for a couple of decades now. But global corporations are booking record profits.

So let’s build a new U.S. global strategy, one founded on rebuilding our competitive position in the full range of high-end economic activity. We can start by improving the woeful state of our infrastructure and investing in our educational system. And we need to use our tax dollars to support and strengthen domestic job creation, get serious about addressing currency manipulation, invest in renewable energy technology and production and eliminate loopholes in our tax system that reward offshoring.   

On the global front, Trumka called for a new trade policy that emphasizes human rights, helps retain and build U.S. jobs and revises investment policies that allow foreign companies to bypass U.S. laws. He said the AFL-CIO opposes the Colombia Free Trade Agreement on human rights grounds and the Korea-U.S. treaty because the auto job protections negotiated by the Obama administration do not go far enough. But he said President Obama has an opportunity with the upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to make good on his commitment to craft a new trade policy for the 21st century that makes sense for working people and not just for multinational corporations. 

 These changes will require a new attitude toward working people and their unions and our education system, Trumka said. He pointed to the success of  Germany, Japan, Denmark and Sweden—countries that run a trade surplus, have high wages and heavily unionized manufacturing sectors, have lower unemployment and invest much more than we do in life-long skills development, education and infrastructure. 

High wages, strong unions and well-trained workers are not the problem in a globalized economy—they are the solution.   

Trumka summed up by saying, “Democracy and workers’ rights are not a means to some greater good—they are part of the fabric of the good life itself.”

Silencing workers—no matter for what purpose—undoes our common future. And when workers reclaim their voice, we reclaim our common global democratic future—a future where all of us can prosper.