http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/08/a_new_fast_track_for_unfair_trade.phpTrade representatives from the United States and South Korea are racing against the clock to sign the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement under the “fast track” deadline. With $72 billion dollars traded annually between the two countries, the KorUS FTA would become the second largest trade deal after the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). While such a trade deal would normally sail through the halls of the U.S. Congress and the Korean National Assembly, times have changed since the first free-trade regimes rolled into Washington, D.C., and Seoul.
Critics of unfettered trade have had over a decade of evidence revealing how NAFTA has devastated the lives of working people across the continent. In the 2006 midterm elections, 37 members of Congress were elected on a fair-trade platform, ousting pro-free trade incumbents. Newly elected Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia even took the opportunity on primetime national television to challenge the Washington consensus on trade. In response to President Bush’s State of the Union address, Webb said that America's workers should ''expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization, their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly in the international marketplace.''
Congress granted President Bush fast track, also known as Trade Promotion Authority, to speed the negotiation of trade agreements; in return, legislators are given 90 days to review the proposed deal before they vote up or down. As this authority will expire on July 1, U.S. and Korean trade representativess will meet in Washington for three days beginning February 11 in a frenzied attempt to smooth over colossal differences in order to come up with an agreement by April 2. Wall Street corporations and South Korean chaebols (trading conglomerates) are salivating at this trade deal that would lower their tariffs and increase their profits.
Given the effects of NAFTA on America’s manufacturing workers and Mexico’s farmers, free traders can no longer simply tout the miracles of neoliberal economics. According to the Economic Policy Institute, since NAFTA took effect, over 1 million workers in the U.S. lost their high-paying manufacturing jobs, and were forced to take lower-paying service jobs where they now earn 23 percent less. U.S. workers without a college education—73 percent of the population—saw their wages drop by 13 percent since NAFTA took effect.
But NAFTA’s impact is even more apparent in Mexico where real wages dropped by 80 percent and unemployment rose from nine to 15 percent. Approximately 1.5 million Mexican farmers were forced to give up farming because they were unable to meet the price of corn produced by massively-subsidized U.S. agribusinesses. Undersold and without many other job options in a depressed economy, Mexican farmers sought low-wage work in the maquiladoras or risked the dangerous journey to cross the heavily militarized U.S.-Mexico border. Mexico, where maize originated, is now facing riots by its people over high tortilla prices because the growing demand for ethanol have inflated corn prices on the global market. These are the effects of NAFTA that free traders must address when they espouse the limitless benefits of an integrated continental economy.
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