Trade Experts: Renegotiate NAFTA
Trade experts from throughout the Americas say U.S. trade policies must be completely revised and existing agreements renegotiated and agree with the Obama administration’s proposal to renegotiate part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that allowed unsafe Mexican trucks to drive on U.S. highways.
In a forum hosted by the International Labor Rights Forum, the Global Policy Network and the Economic Policy Institute, trade union leaders from the United States, Mexico, Central America and Colombia said that existing and proposed trade agreements have failed to live up to their promise and have actually made things worse.
Most Workers Lose in Global Economy
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Here is one strong reason for the Obama administration and Congress to think big about how to reduce economic inequality and insecurity in the years to come: Most working Americans have suffered steady and significant income losses that stem from current global economic policies, according to a new book.
While the effect of global trade on American workers is often measured in jobs lost, Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), argues in his new book that the vast majority of U.S. workers have been hurt by increased global trade—through diminished wages, as well as lost jobs.
In Everybody Wins, Except for Most of Us, Bivens says global trade likely cost a full-time U.S. worker earning the median wage some $1,400 in 2006. This is as much or more than what median wage-earners lost during the recession of the early 2000s. For workers on its losing end, globalization has felt like a chronic (if largely unseen) recession.
