Today, Sen. John McCain will endorse NAFTA-style foreign trade agreements in a speech delivered in Canada. He will criticize Sen. Barack Obama for seeking to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and similar deals. Fortunately, polls show that voters overwhelmingly side with Obama and believe that current trade policies have "subjected American companies and employees to unfair competition and cheap labor." This is a golden opportunity for progressives to speak out against the unfair trade policies of Bush and McCain.
* America has lost millions of jobs and our trade deficit has nearly doubled during the Bush presidency. Every year, about 400,000 American jobs are lost because of our foreign trade policy—and that number takes into account employment created by increased exports. The manufacturing sector has been hit the hardest, with one out of every five jobs shipped overseas over the past seven years. Last year's trade deficit was $700 billion compared to $365 billion in 2001.
* The Bush-McCain trade policy has undermined our economic security. America cannot afford to continue losing jobs. We cannot sustain gigantic trade deficits. It's time for change. Without a new strategy, we simply cannot compete successfully against foreign businesses that pay their workers less than one dollar an hour.
* The Bush-McCain trade policy enriches wealthy multinational corporations at the expense of working families. The current global economic strategy was designed by and for the multinational corporations and banks—a strategy for Wall Street, not for Main Street. Our laws and trade agreements encourage companies to ship our inventions, technologies and jobs abroad where they can take advantage of minimal safety, environmental and labor standards.
* So-called "free trade" won't solve our trade problems. Market forces that have depreciated the value of the dollar against other currencies should increase exports and diminish imports—in theory. But the rising cost of imported oil and trade with China (and Japan), countries that don't allow their currencies to adjust through the market, have prevented market efficiency. The only way to achieve a relative trade balance is by adopting an aggressive national strategy.
The progressive solution:
We've got to stop approving trade agreements modeled after NAFTA. Instead, we need to renegotiate our current trade agreements so that they work for American workers. We need new trade rules that help raise up safety, environmental and labor standards abroad, rather than driving them down here. And we must restore our position as the best country in the world for both business and labor by investing in bridges and roads, mass transit, broadband access, energy independence, new "green" technologies, and better schools.
More details and analysis can be found here:
http://ourfuture.org/makingsense2008About This Email
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This is the fifth of CAF's Making Sense 2008 emails. We're sending brief talking points to our progressive allies throughout 2008 regarding kitchen table economic issues. Please feel free to share these with your colleagues. They can subscribe to our Making Sense 2008 email list here:
http://ga3.org/caf/making_sense_2008_email_signup.html
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