Mind The Gap

It's an election year in America, so Right Democrat is well and truly back:

President Obama has been a disappointment on trade issues. With high unemployment and a record trade deficit, Obama needs to be fighting to protect American jobs. Action to save American jobs does not require 60 votes in the U.S. Senate. With the stroke of a pen, the President could impose tariffs to protect American workers from unfair foreign competition. Imposing a 10% tariff on all imported goods would help restore balance to our trading relationships, revitalize the domestic manufacturing sector, create American jobs and lower the national debt. Instead, the President either clings to neo-liberal assumptions about the importance of free trade or lacks the political courage to reverse our self-destructive trade policies. As American workers stand in unemployment lines or face wage stagnation, Obama is now picking a fight with his political base by supporting a new free trade agreement with South Korea.

A study by the well-respected Economic Policy Institute predicts the U.S. trade deficit with South Korea will grow by about $16.7 billion and destroy 159,000 American jobs within seven years of implementation if approved by Congress.

EPI economist Robert Scott writes:

"The Obama administration has announced that it intends to finalize a new free trade agreement with South Korea (KORUS FTA) in time for the next G-20 summit in November. Although the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) projects this will have a small positive impact on the U.S. trade balance, and “minimal or negligible “impact” on U.S. employment, history shows that such trade deals lead to rapidly growing trade deficits and job loss in the United States.

The USITC has a history of vastly underestimating the negative impacts that free trade agreements have on the U.S. economy. In 1999, it estimated that China’s entry into the World Trade Organization would increase the U.S. trade deficit with China by only $1.0 billion, and have no significant impact on U.S. employment. In fact, the U.S. trade deficit with China increased by $185 billion between 2001 (when China entered the WTO) and 2008, and 2.4 million U.S. jobs have been displaced or lost. The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico also rose rapidly after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994.

With U.S. unemployment close to 10%, and an employment gap of nearly 11 million jobs, it would be foolish and self destructive for the United States to implement a free trade agreement with Korea that leads to further job loss.

A credible primary challenge would be in order, both to keep Obama on his toes and because someone will have to be the nominee in 2016. Marcy Kaptur would be good: a pro-life battler and a Progressive Caucus member who declined to endorse either Obama or Clinton in 2008 because neither was offering enough to the victims of the “free” trade agreements that she and Bart Stupak are now prominent in seeking to repeal. A pro-life woman seeking the Democratic nomination has happened before. But never on a full platform of policies. And certainly never from the populist, anti-war Left.