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McCain’s Trade Policy ‘Is a Third George Bush Term’ |
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The United States needs a new direction in trade that creates good jobs here and protects workers’ rights abroad, not four more years of George Bush’s disastrous policies that John McCain is promising, political leaders and workers said today.
Responding to McCain’s speech this afternoon on trade policy in Ottawa, Canada, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told a conference call with reporters:
Instead of delivering a speech from Ottawa, Canada, Sen.McCain should visit Ottawa, Ohio, where the Phillips plant closed and 1,100 people lost their jobs. We need trade policies that create new jobs at home, not ship them to Mexico. With John McCain, when it comes to trade, it’s a third George Bush term.
In his speech, McCain reaffirmed his strong support for “free trade” at any cost, despite the job loss and growing wage inequality exacerbated by current U.S. trade policy. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee defended NAFTA, saying it is “critical to the future of so many Canadian and American workers and businesses.”
In fact, flawed trade deals like NAFTA have contributed to the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2001 and an erosion of real wages.
Calvin Smith, a machine operator at the Hershey chocolate factory in Pennsylvania for 18 years, knows what damage NAFTA has caused. He told reporters his plant had cut 650 jobs this year, mostly due to outsourcing to Mexico. Smith, a member of Baker, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union (BCTGM) Local 464, said:
Every day I wake up and worry I’ll be told my job is being shipped off to another country. I’ve seen so many of my friends and neighbors forced out of their jobs by these rotten trade deals. Our communities are being devastated.
Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO’s policy director, said McCain “has never seen a trade deal he didn’t like, even though the consequences of those deals for workers in America and around the world have been dire.”
Unfair trade has led to millions of America’s workers being forced into the unemployment line and erosion of workers’ rights and living standards in our trading partners. It’s time we chart a new course on trade that benefits American workers and domestic producers, yet Sen. McCain is offering working families more of the same job-destroying policies.
Earlier this month, Brown introduced The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act. The bill calls for a long-overdue comprehensive review of U.S. trade policy. The legislation also outlines a new U.S. trade strategy—one that puts a priority on the interests of working class Americans, farmers, the environment and domestic manufacturers.
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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
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