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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDems Paint Romney as “Outsourcer-In-Chief,” But Will Obama’s Trade Deal Blow It?
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13453/dems_puncture_romneys_job_creator_image_but_will_obama_blow_credibility_via/
By Roger Bybee
Friday Jun 29, 2012 12:33 pm
The Obama administration and Democrats have been busily puncturing Mitt Romneys record as an experienced job creator, with a multi-pronged attack on Romneys role as a pioneer in offshoring jobs while heading up the private-equity fund Bain Capital.
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Yet recent leaks reveal that the Obama administration has been secretly negotiating with Pacific Rim nations the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, based on the job-destroying NAFTA model. Obamaas with his trade deals last year with South Korea, Panama, and human-rights pariah Colombiais once more falling into line behind CEOs in promoting what he as a candidate fiercely denounced in 2008 as trade deals like NAFTA and China [that] have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who've seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear.
Thus, the Obama administrations efforts to pass the TPP muddle the partisan divide on the offshoring issue, which his campaign is now using so effectively against Romney. With 86% of Americans convinced that the offshoring of jobs contributes significantly to the nations economic problems, the 2012 elections outcome may very well hang on the perception of Obama as the defender of the public interest on this issue.
Fortunately for Obama, Romneys well-documented support for the offshoring of jobs has monopolized the media's attention, thanks to an effective Democratic and labor onslaught. New polling from NBC/The Wall Street Journal show significant gains for Obama in swing states, where a new ad campaign is being focused. A combination of front-page revelations about Bain Capital, powerful rhetoric from Obama (plus this video comparing Bain Capital to the Sopranos Mafia operation), skillfully crafted ads, and cleverlytimed legislation are keeping the spotlight on Romney.
SunsetDreams
(8,571 posts)MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)We need to kill NAFTA and CAFTA and all the other bullshit too.
Pah, who am I kidding? Never going to happen. We've been sold out by our "own".
polichick
(37,152 posts)MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)I'm so tired of being mad all the time because these sellout fucks have ruined us.
polichick
(37,152 posts)...get it and have had enough.
Swede Atlanta
(3,596 posts)because he has done positive things and is better than the horrific plans of his opponent, he has been bought and paid for by the globalization lobby. He will sign a bill that offshores American jobs while denouncing the practice, if he thinks he will get $2.00 in campaign contributions.
I wish I were less cynical but when I look at some of Obama's missteps including hiring that thief-in-chief Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff, he is in some areas only marginally better than his opponent.
Free-trade needs to be rescinded and we need to start all over. If a country wants to export its goods into our country then the other country must have the same wage, benefit, taxation, etc. conditions as in this country. Don't want to pay your workers at least a minimum wage? Oh well then your goods are subject to an import duty of 5000%.
This crap has got to stop.
pampango
(24,692 posts)FDR reversed the high republican tariffs of 1921, 1922 and 1930. He believed in low tariffs and in the benefits of international trade.
He could be considered the author of the globalization movement. He pushed for the creation of the United Nations, the IMF and World Bank and GATT (which became the WTO) to create multilateral governance of trade so that it would be more difficult for individual countries to raise tariffs and start the trade wars like those that resulted from those high republican tariffs.
That is about as 'globalist' an agenda as one can imagine. (I'm not sure if he was "bought and paid for by the globalization lobby" or whether he created the "globalization lobby".)
hay rick
(7,639 posts)International trade benefited us when we were one of the few advanced manufacturing countries. The U. S. consistently maintained a trade surplus until 1975. Since then we have had only trade deficits and those deficits have expanded. A trade surplus increases GDP and a trade deficit reduces GDP. What benefited us then harms us now.
The "comparative advantage" mutual-benefit rationale for free trade is likewise a quaint relic from another age. Recent decades have witnessed the simultaneous emergence of burgeoning populations resulting in extraordinary third world urbanization (and labor pools) and the expansion of multinational corporations and financial institutions with access to huge accumulations of liquid capital and much more efficient and automated productive methods. Throw in fleets of container ships and you have a new era.
The real point of free trade now is to enable corporations to go tax and wage shopping. FDR did what he thought was good for the American people in the 30s and 40s. I suspect he would have seen a different problem calling for a different solution today.
girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)When reversing the Smoot-Hawley tariffs failed to generate trade expansion, he dropped that tactic and shifted his focus to the new new deal programs.
History didn't end in 1935, pampango.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)One of the biggest errors you just made here is that during FDR's time we didn't have monster trade deficits like we have now.
brentspeak
(18,290 posts)Your posts here are kind of like if the US Chamber of Commerce paid someone to post on DU while using an FDR avatar to ingratiate pro-globalization talking points on a Democratic website.
A repost of my own response to your propaganda from a May, 2012 earlier thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002648192#post11
Response to pampango (Reply #15)
Sun May 6, 2012, 11:56 PM
brentspeak (16,175 posts)
20. The B.S. keeps piling up
Now you're even making up stuff about the same Pew poll you posted, claiming -- without any reason -- that FDR would have supported today's corporate-written "free trade" agreements of NAFTA, CAFTA, and KORUS. FDR supported trade in general, not lobbyist-overseen deals to create your beloved job-offshoring.
pampango: "You are entitled to your opinion, but I do not share it. I think FDR..,would still support the same trade policy (i.e. NAFTA, CAFTA, etc.)"
You are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts:
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/ajb/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Reciprocal_Tariff_Act.html
The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (enacted June 12, 1934, ch. 474, 48 Stat. 943, 19 U.S.C. § 1351) provided for the negotiation of tariff agreements between the United States and separate nations, particularly Latin American countries. The Act served as an institutional reform intended to authorize the president to negotiate with foreign nations to reduce tariffs in return for reciprocal reductions in tariffs in the United States. It resulted in a reduction of duties.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was authorized by the Act for a fixed period of time to negotiate on bilateral basis with other countries and then implement reductions in tariffs (up to 50% of existing tariffs) in exchange for compensating tariff reductions by the partner trading country. Roosevelt was also instructed to maximize market access abroad without jeopardizing domestic industry, and reduce tariffs only as necessary to promote exports in accord with the "needs of various branches of American production.".
Therefore, FDR's trade policy was the opposite of today's free trade agreements, which are authored deliberately to relocate domestic industry to overseas facilities and which are not required at all to consider domestic American production.
My question to you is: How much longer are you going to continue slandering FDR for your own agenda on these boards?
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)Wilms
(26,795 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)So what does NAFTA have to do with it? That is a free trade area with Canada and Mexico (with 5000 pages of regulations, exceptions, and exceptions to exceptions.
obnoxiousdrunk
(2,910 posts)admit the O/P does sound cute.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)Outsourcing to Mexico and Canada just aren't big in the news. There are plenty of DUers who would talk about it a lot.
Mexicans would not have to migrate to the US to steal US jobs if US jobs were going to Mexico.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)agreement?
Here's the ones that have been signed so far:
1994 - North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
2001 - Jordan United States Free Trade Agreement
2004 - Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement
2004 - Chile - United States Free Trade Agreement
2004 - Singapore United States Free Trade Agreement
2006 - Bahrain United States Free Trade Agreement
2006 - Morocco - United States Free Trade Agreement
2006 - Oman United States Free Trade Agreement
2007 - Peru United States Trade Promotion Agreement
2005 - Dominican RepublicCentral America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA; incl. Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic)
2011 - Panama - United States Trade Promotion Agreement
2011 - Colombia - United States Trade Promotion Agreement
2011 - Republic of Korea (South Korea) - United States Free Trade Agreement
treestar
(82,383 posts)Australia?!
Is there any objective proof though that agreements, in which our government was involved with negotiating, always work to our disadvantage? Do we get nothing in these agreements? Do we always lose jobs?
I would like to understand them more, but DU seems to indulge in simple condemnation. Are we supposed to believe then that the government negotiates these agreements to screw us over and benefit some corporations, and that they keep getting away with it and no one notices (except some zealous DUers).
One would think we at least get some ability to break into the markets in those countries.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)So, in one sense, they work. They do exactly what they are supposed to do.
If any of these so-called "free-trade" agreements worked to the advantage of middle-class workers in the United States, it would not be necessary to keep these so-called "free-trade" agreements somewhat secretive. All the politicans who favored them would be crowing about them.
We want to break into the markets in those countries? In what way? The military-industrial complex sells war machinery to those in foreign countries. Those that own and/or control commodities sell such commodities to foreign countries. Trees from public land, for example, is being harvested in Alaska and being shipped to foreign countries so that they can manufacture wood products. Coal is loaded on ocean-going ships in Duluth, Minnesota and shipped to foreign countries so that they can manufacture iron and steel, and products made from iron and steel. The big money people are exploiting and selling off resources like owners in third-world countries.
No one is claiming that the pending wage-lowering, let's-send-more-jobs-to-foreign-countries "free-trade" agreement is going to produce more middle-class jobs in this country. It's not going to happen.
treestar
(82,383 posts)How do you know this is the way it is? Are these facts or just regurgitated opinion? What exactly are we shipping to Australia and vice versa? Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Canada?
I recall NAFTA was big in the news - and listening to the Congressional debates on the radio. And what has been the effect of NAFTA in terms of actual facts? The jobs can hardly have gone to Mexico. Mexico got poorer than ever and undocumented migration to the US increased.
Why would even our corporate masters be able to continually get away with just screwing us over in favor of foreign countries without getting us anything to our benefit? Are we really that victimized? And if we are how much so must people in Mexico and Chile and Colombia? I can't picture them getting the benefits of these agreements, just their leaders/elites.
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)Forget about the theoretical bullshit that lets third-way types whitewash eroding the US industrial base. It's BAD policy. That is all.
Tarheel_Dem
(31,240 posts)AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)Tarheel_Dem
(31,240 posts)AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)fascisthunter
(29,381 posts)I see a class war building... not good. Some people just can't get enough.
Response to brentspeak (Original post)
emulatorloo This message was self-deleted by its author.