by David Bacon
TruthOut News Analysis
Last week President Obama broke his campaign commitment and put three free trade agreements up for a vote in Congress. Nineteen years ago, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was in Congress, supporters said it would create jobs and protect labor rights. Before agreeing to new free trade treaties with Colombia, South Korea and Panama, Congress should look at the dismal record.
Promise #1. A typical pro-business study predicted in 1992 that NAFTA would create 130,000 U.S. jobs in two years, double U.S. exports to Mexico, and create 609,000 jobs there. Today Tom Donahue, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, repeats the promise, saying the three new treaties also “are about creating jobs.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, however, between 1993 and 2004 the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico ballooned by $107 billion, which cost 1,015,290 U.S. jobs. Mexico lost more jobs because of the treaty than those relocated from the U.S. Because the treaty allowed U.S. grain companies to dump corn in Mexico, 1.3 million farmers lost their livelihood as well.
Six million people from Mexico came to live and work in the U.S. as a result of this displacement. The Colombian FTA has a provision identical to that in NAFTA, which led to the corn dumping, so those farmers will be uprooted too.
Enrique Athankasiadis, President of Panama’s National Agricultural Organization, says, “We are certain that the FTA will cause great displacement in the Panamanian agriculture sector, on which 40 percent of our nation’s population depends. We Panamanians do not want to follow the Mexicans and Central Americans in the flood of immigration to the United States.”
Obama’s FTA with Korea will cost 159,000 U.S. jobs in seven years, according to EPI.
Promise #2. Supporters promised a NAFTA labor side-agreement would protect the right to join unions and raise wages in Mexico.
In the past two years, the Mexican government fired 44,000 electrical workers to destroy their union, and helped a giant mining company break a 4-year strike. NAFTA did nothing to prevent these or other violations of labor rights. Mexican wages have declined since the treaty took effect, producing more unemployed workers, more displacement and more forced migration.
This will be the story in Colombia too, where over 2850 trade unionists have been murdered in the last 25 years. Union leaders in South Korea have also been arrested repeatedly and imprisoned. But there are no protections proposed at all for workers in South Korea or Panama.
Higher profits and a “competitive edge” don’t ensure companies will keep jobs in Colombia. EPI’s founder Jeff Faux says, “These agreements provide global corporations with the opportunity to outsource production for the U.S. market.”
Workers and unions in the U.S., Colombia and South Korea all agree. The AFL-CIO’s Rich Trumka says, “We need to be creating jobs-not passing agreements that will offshore more jobs.” “We do not need a NAFTA-style FTA,” adds the Korean unions, calling it “harmful not only for the Korean workers and working families, but for the workers and working families in the U.S. as well.”
Congress should listen. Free trade treaties that throw more workers on the street, undermine labor rights and lead to forced migration, are political suicide for Democrats, as they will need workers’ votes next year. Regardless of promises about a stimulus or a new jobs bill, working families will not forget how they voted on these job-killing treaties.
