That’s why unions and much of the manufacturing sector are opposing new trade deals with Pacific Rim partners. The problem with the pacts, as critics point out, is that they are designed to allow companies to chase labor and have little to do with expanding markets.
The primary benefit of the deals, they say, is that corporations are able to produce goods more cheaply for consumption in the United States.
“We don’t have a free trade agreement with Great Britain, which could actually buy American products,” said Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, which opposes the agreements. “Instead we have this penchant for doing free trade agreements with countries that are low-cost manufacturing centers. Why? Because multinational companies aren’t looking at this and saying, ‘It will be great to make things in Ohio and send it to South Korea.’ No, they’re looking at this and saying, ‘It will be great to make things in South Korea and send it to Ohio.’ ”
Making things in South Korea may make them cheaper, but it means fewer jobs here — and the ones that do remain end up paying less. That flies in the face of Henry Ford’s dictum that you have to pay your workers enough to allow them to buy your products.
The problem is that we have bought into the false notion that we can have truly free trade and that free trade implies a lifting of rules. The fact is, all trade pacts have positives and negatives — and even the freest of trade operates under specific rule sets. What we think of as free trade today is a pro-corporate construct that only considers cost. A different set of rules is possible that could prioritize sustainability, high-paying jobs, workplace safety, etc.
The trade issue, like so much of our economy, has been framed in such a way as to benefit the corporate classes and not the rest of us — which is just another reason the #occupywallstreet protests continue to grow
Hank Kalet 