President Clinton and The WTO: "Outsourcer in Chief"

[amborin]

"Hillary Clinton saw herself in the middle of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during her husband's presidency. s


She fully supported and advocated NAFTA.

She supported deals with Oman, Chile and Singapore during her tenure in the Senate. As secretary of State, she was a chief advocate as talks commenced surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), one of the largest worldwide deals in recent history."

Hillary had a momentary change of heart regarding TPP. But care to predict what would happen if she were nominated?

Progressives who justifiably condemn the repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that resulted in deregulating banks have Clinton to blame. According to the findings of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee, "The decision in 2000 to shield the exotic financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives from regulation, made during the last year of President Bill Clinton's term, is called 'a key turning point' in the march towards the financial crisis."

But the only thing worse than being a taxpayer forced to bail out reckless banks is losing your job because it's been outsourced or offshored. As Richard McCormack pointed out in the American Prospect, in the beginning of this century American companies stopped making the products Americans continued to buy, from clothing to computers. Manufacturers never emerged from the 2001 recession, which coincided with China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Between 2001 and 2009 the U.S. lost 42,400 factories and manufacturing employment dropped to 11.7 million, a loss of 32 percent of all manufacturing jobs. The last time fewer than 12 million people worked in the manufacturing sector was in 1941.

Clinton had the gall to accuse those who opposed China's entry into the WTO of "aligning themselves with the Chinese army and hard-liners in Beijing who do not want accession for China." Clinton claimed that the agreement that he championed "creates a win-win result for both countries," arguing that exports to China "now support hundreds of thousands of American jobs" and "these figures can grow substantially." (Clinton's press person at the Clinton Global Initiative did not respond to my requests for feedback.)

The facts contradict these assertions. Imports of computers and electronic parts accounted for almost half of the $178 billion increase in the U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2007 and the loss of 2.3 million jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Clinton then went on to enact NAFTA, or the North America Free Trade Act, which as American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner has observed, "was less about trade and more about making it easier for U.S. based multinationals and banks to take over Mexican companies."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-white/bill-clintons-true-legacy_b_1852887.html

and:

....These claims are misleading. The Administration has proposed to facilitate China’s entry into the WTO at a time when the U.S. already has a massive trade deficit with China. In 1999, the U.S. imported approximately $81 billion in goods from China and exported $13 billion – a six-to-one ratio of imports to exports that represents the most unbalanced relationship in the history of U.S. trade. 2 While exports generated about 170,000 jobs in the United States in 1999, imports eliminated almost 1.1 million domestic job opportunities, for a net loss of 880,000 high-wage manufacturing jobs. 3

China’s entry into the WTO, under PNTR with the U.S., will lock this relationship into place, setting the stage for rapidly rising trade deficits in the future that would severely depress employment in manufacturing, the sector most directly affected by trade. China’s accession to the WTO would also increase income inequality in the U.S. 4

Despite the Administration’s rhetoric, its own analysis suggests that, after China enters the WTO, the U.S. trade deficit with China will expand, not contract....

http://www.epi.org/publication/issuebriefs_ib137/
In 1990, fifty percent of clothing sold by US retailers carried the Made in the USA label. Today only 2% of clothing sold by US retailers carries the Made in the USA label. Of course the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was implemented and signed into law by Bill Clinton, despite the fact that he could have canceled it by executive order, along with the US participation in the World Trade Organization which the United States joined on January 1, 1995, also under the leadership of Bill Clinton, had a lot to do with the end of the American textile and clothing industry. In May of 1994, Bill Clinton reversed his campaign position on trade with China and granted that totalitarian regime Most Favored Nation trading status which significantly reduced the obstacles to importing good from China and ultimately flooded US retail shelves with inexpensive Chinese made goods. Unfortunately the American textile industry is not the only one to disappear as a result of Bill Clinton's disastrous trade policies, and unfortunately for many overseas workers, that trade policy did not come with protections for workers rights.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/4/30/1381490/-How-the-Clinton-Presidency-Made-Baltimore-Worse

[antigop]

1. HRC: "Outsourcing will continue"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4919303

[jwirr]

2. Fully in favor of poppy bushes new world order. Globalization

for corporate profits.

[Jarqui]

3. They knew what NAFTA was going to do before Bill was elected

Between 2001 and 2009 the U.S. lost 42,400 factories and manufacturing employment dropped to 11.7 million, a loss of 32 percent of all manufacturing jobs. The last time fewer than 12 million people worked in the manufacturing sector was in 1941.

32% is more than 5 million jobs lost

The average manufacturing worker earnings went from $40k to $32k, a 20 percent drop in earnings (and a key cause of Bernie's income inequality).

I could go on and on. I watched some of those factory doors close. It was brutal.

[Odin2005]

4. Hillary is the enemy of the American Worker.

And the labor leaders endorsing her are class traitors.