Trade deals are no deal for US

Yet even after losing 682,000 jobs to NAFTA since it took effect in 1994, and 2.4 million to China since it joined the World Trade Organization, Washington continues in its blind faith that somehow these trade deals are good for us. This summer Congress is expected to take up three new trade deals - with Korea, Panama, and Colombia. These trade pacts are bad for American workers, bad for our domestic economy, and bad for democracy.

Consider the impact on just one industry - textiles. In recent years Korea has carefully targeted $21 billion in government subsidies in order to capture a larger share of the technical textile industry, which supplies high-tech fibers for aerospace and for products like Kevlar. This is an industry still dominated by US manufacturers. The trade deal would immediately remove tariffs for Korean imports entering the United States, but would gradually phase out tariffs on US goods entering Korea over many years. This would create an immediate 15 percent competitive advantage for most Korean textiles and other products.

How many American jobs will be lost? According to the National Textile Association, 40,000 in textile-related industries alone. In all, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the pending Korean and Colombian trade deals are likely to cost us 214,000 jobs.

The bad news doesn’t end there. Buried within the Korean trade deal is a gift to the Wall Street tycoons who wrecked our economy. It prohibits either country from adopting limits on each other’s banks. Although the provisions don’t directly prohibit new controls over Wall Street, the effect is the same. Congress won’t restrain Goldman Sachs while their Korean competitors run free. If Congress approves the Korean trade deal, needed reforms, like those to limit the size of banks so they can’t be too big to fail, would be put out of reach.

These unfair trade deals undermine our democracy in other significant ways. They empower foreign corporations to haul us before a secret trade tribunal whenever they think a law or regulation makes it harder for them to do business here.