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Bush Tries to Ram Through South Korean Trade Before Fast Track Ends |
Monday, members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) will rally in Washington, D.C., to protest the latest round of negotiations for a U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. The noon demo at the Washington Court Hotel, where the trade negotiations will be held, is the latest in a series of protests, from Seattle to Seoul, involving U.S. and South Korean trade unionists and allies against yet another bad trade deal skewed in favor of Big Business at the expense of workers. The KCTU will be joined by union members in the D.C. area.
The Bush administration is pushing hard to complete negotiations on a trade deal with South Korea before its “Fast Track” authority expires June 30. Fast Track, also known as Trade Promotion Authority, was narrowly passed by the Republican Congress in 2002. The law allows the president to negotiate trade deals but prevents Congress from improving or rejecting harmful provisions by allowing only “yes” or “no” votes on such trade packages. Working families strongly opposed the 2002 legislation and the AFL-CIO union movement recently has joined in coalition with other fair trade activists to battle against unfair trade deals, including trade promotion authority.
And even as the Bush administration seeks to renew Fast Track authority, Bush’s fiscal year 2008 budget released this week proposes to cut $77 million from the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides income support and training to workers who lose their jobs due to trade. Never mind that America’s workers face the loss of millions of good paying jobs to flawed trade policies and off-shoring.
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).
Writing on Tom Paine this week, Christine Ahn, a policy analyst with the Korea Policy Institute and Oakland Institute and a member of the Korean Americans for Fair Trade coalition, notes:
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.
Since negotiations began in February 2006, over 1 million South Koreans have protested the FTA, organizing hunger and general strikes. In response, the South Korean government has used secrecy and severe repression to silence the majority of South Koreans now opposed to the FTA. As a pre-condition to even beginning negotiations, South Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun unilaterally accepted to amend four Korean laws to allow U.S. markets access to Korea. When the Korean government finally held a hearing on whether to pursue the FTA, it stopped public comment after 20 minutes because so many people were opposed to it.
Last year, AFL-CIO Policy Director Thea Lee submitted testimony to Capitol Hill noting “improvements in workers’ rights are necessary to make a trade agreement with Korea a success, but not sufficient.”
The agreement must also include equitable and transparent market access rules that allow for effective protection against import surges or other trade law violations, and must include enforceable environmental protections. In the Korean context, it is especially important that effective measures are taken to ensure that non-tariff barriers are addressed. NAFTA-style commercial provisions that protect corporate rights at the expense of public health and safety, the environment, essential human services, and equitable economic development must not be included.
In recent days, 39 new House Democrats sent a letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) stressing their “vocal stand against the administration’s misguided trade agenda” had been vital to their electoral success. In fact, the exporting of U.S. jobs and bad trade deals are among the issues working families say prompted them to go to the polls and make major changes Nov. 7.
Even as Bush tries to push through the Korea trade deal and Fast Track, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) issued another warning this week about the nation’s trade imbalance. While exports of U.S. manufactured products have grown rapidly since 2002, EPI finds such good news gives a false impression of the nation’s overall trade health. EPI senior economist Robert Scott shows how in eight of the top 10 exporting manufacturing industries, including computer equipment and motor vehicle parts, trade balances have gotten worse, while it is projected the United States will run outright trade deficits in seven of these industries in 2006.
As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says:
Misguided trade policies have exacerbated stagnant wages and growing job insecurity in America today. We have lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2001, many to offshore outsourcing, while an increasing number of white-collar service-sector jobs are also at risk. At the same time our trade deficit has ballooned to nearly $800 billion.
Yet Bush’s call for the extension of Fast Track reveals
he simply isn’t listening to the real and serious concerns of the American people regarding our nation’s economic future. Extending “fast track” authority would hamstring Congress’s ability to fix our broken trade policy at a time when working families are in dire need of a correction in course.
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