Kucinich: I Have Seen the Effects of Agreements Like NAFTA and CAFTA

[Flabbergasted]

"I have traveled across America. And I have seen the effects of agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA: padlocked gates of abandoned factories, grass growing in parking lots of places where workers used to make steel, used to make washing machines, used to make textiles, used to make machine parts.

"Free trade has meant freedom for the American worker to stand in the unemployment line while their jobs were traded away. So-called free trade has brought broken dreams, broken homes, broken hearts to the American manufacturing worker. Trade without equity is tyranny. Trade without economic justice is theft. Trade without integrity, without workers' rights, without human rights, without environmental principles is not worthy of a free people."

--Kucinich in the final House CAFTA debate, July 27, 2005

http://kucinich.us/node/190

[MannyGoldstein]

1. What The DLC Has Wrought

But look at the bright side - the Clintons did earn a spot at Poppy Bush's table.

[kath]

9. ahh, yes, they're good buds now.

[EVDebs]

2. My friend's job in electronics in the Bay Area is now going to China

he emailed this news to me today. Lovely, just lovely. Who's going to be able to purchase the Chinese-made products ?

And now I'm hearing about the Chinese source of wheat glutin in the pet poisoning scandal. What's next in the 'Race To The Bottom' ?

[MGKrebs]

14. Which has nothing to do with NAFTA or CAFTA of course.

Just sayin'.

[Forkboy]

3. Spot on,as usual.

K&R

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. I live in a "right to starve" state.

As in "right to work". Orwellian language there.

I am trained in a field that they supposedly can't outsource (law).
Can I find a job with 12 years of college and a Juris Doctor? Hell no!!!!


They killed the middle class. Reagan made it safe for union busters.
Micahel Moore spelled it out long ago in "Roger and Me" about how Flint became a ghost town.

[Greyhound]

12. When raygun took office 27% of working Americans were in a union

today it is <7%.

I've been trying to tell people for years and years, they are preparing to leave, and leave us holding the bag.

[Flabbergasted]

25. Yep. Halliburton went to Dubai. I have a sense we're going to see a flood this year.

I could be wrong.

[Greyhound]

30. Oh, there'll be a flood alright, whether we see it or not is another issue.

They've (the multi-nationals) been preparing this for decades and have been enacting those plans since 2001.

Have "our guys" even started to close the loop-holes and tax breaks for moving headquarters off-shore yet? If so, I've missed it.

[AnOhioan]

5. Dennis was right then and is right now

[happydreams]

6. This guy is the only interesting democrat running. Interesting ...

because he isn't a neo-liberal.

He may just kick ass as people search for the deeper rot of this civilization.

[robcon]

7. The effect of NAFTA and CAFTA have been overwhelmingly positive.

On the U.S. and the rest of the Western hemisphere.

[Solon]

8. Not for Mexican Maize farmers or American factory workers it hasn't.

Not to mention Guatemalan 12 year old girls forced to work 24 hours in some cases to make Nike shoes of all things.

[Elwood P Dowd]

10. That is not true, and you know it.

You never give any facts in any of your posts. CAFTA hasn't even been in effect long enough to make a decision one way or the other. Total bullshit from you on this.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. They have?

not what the statistics show

Mexican GDP was hgiher before NAFTA... for example

And... here is more, the middle class was growing too

I have family down there, and I have seen the effects with my own eyes... they just predated teh midwest by half a decade

They just don't include maize farmers, but the shoe industry.. is gone

Textiles... gone, as in local not maquiladoras

should I go on

[MGKrebs]

15. I don't understand this.

Honestly, I never have understood the NAFTA conversations I have seen.

NAFTA should have brought more jobs to Mexico. Did it not? How come?

How does NAFTA negatively effect Mexican GPD?

[primative1]

16. Here is a clue

I can not speak in grand national terms but I do have limited first hand experience.
My wifes company used to employ around 2000 people localy. In 2002 they began transitioning product lines to their new Mexican plant just across the river from McAllen Tx.
Their local workforce here is now 300 while their Mexican workforce recieves pay of 3$ a day.
These workers are bussed into work daily as they cant afford transportation of their own, who knows where they "live", but as a bright note they are fed twice a day on the job. Of course when the American corporates visit the plant they refuse to eat the food because it is just plain awful.
The result of this one transition of jobs to Mexico was only marginal in terms of corporate profits, stockholders saw nothing, but exec pay has skyrocketed.
The 300 remaining american workers pay is frozen and as for the 1700 departed, who knows ... voluntarily left the workforce to pursue other opportunity?
Job security, free food and transportation to the worksite ...
Sounds like what we used to call slavery.
Now we call it progress.

[MGKrebs]

20. But it should have helped the Mexican GDP.

And it would seem to have increased Mexican jobs and the Mexican "middle class", which were the issues I was wondering about.
It seems your example is evidence of a loss of US jobs to Mexico, whcih I can clearly see, although even that has been grossly overshadowed by loss of jobs to Asia I think.

[primative1]

21. What part of 3$ a day didnt you understand?

You can call that middle class if you want but I think the claim rings hollow.
As for Mexican GDP you would likely have to be thinking of graft retained by US ex patriots living down there, unless somehow the kickbacks to the corrupt mexican government officials is included in GDP calculations.
My guess is very little of that money ever sees the light of day.

[MGKrebs]

27. Well, not knowing what they made before NAFTA, I can't say.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend NAFTA, it's just that whenever I see or participate in dicussions about it, almost immediately we often here "China", and "isn't helping Mexico". China has nothing to do with NAFTA, even I know that, and I don't understand the other part.

If jobs are moving to Mexico, which I am pretty sure is happening, why is it hurting their economy? And if it is, do they want to get rid of it? Are we forcing it down their throats? And why do they take $3/hr jobs if they had better paying jobs before?

Also, my sense is that trade with Asia has far eclipsed whatever impact NAFTA is having, if judging by the origin of stuff in the stores is any indication.

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. Yes it does

any Chinese goods comign to the US can legally enter Canada and Mexico

The US is the fulcrum

Why don't you read the treaty? You may learn soething

[MGKrebs]

34. I am trying.

[primative1]

35. Lets see if I can elaborate ...

Pre NAFTA the mexican economy was not exactly modeled after US capitalism.
It was a largely agricultural based , LOCAL trade, and principaly could function on a barter system. Think of your own hometown "under the table" economy. It works and people do live even if they dont have "jobs" in the sense most Americans think of them.
Now comes NAFTA.
The local farmers/merchants are now forced to compete directly with large US multi nationals which operate under the same predatory principles they excel at here. The local economies collapsed under the competition and we wound up with this HUGE workforce of displaced people following whatever rumours of available work popped up.
Many of these people wind up along the US border working for the endless line of US companies setting up shop within 5 miles of the border. Many more continued on to cross into the US in search of livable wages. The people that still work along the mexican side of the border will wind up crossing sooner than later, 3$ per DAY doesnt cut it there or anywhere.
Now on to CHINA and yes it does play a huge role in NAFTA even if you dont think of it that way. The promise of NAFTA was an upward movement in the average mexican's buying power. Now that China has enetered the picture there is no way that will ever happen. Even the 3$ a day wage paid to mexicans produces products at a cost that is considered excesive by US multi nationals. Every widget that goes into anything built or consumed here is globaly sourced to the cheapest outlet.
China is using mexican ports to bypass US product dumping guidelines and also avoid having to pay US longshoreman and truckers real wages. Many of these Chinese products are also finding a home in Mexico, so that the effect today is even product produced by Mexicans at Mexican wage is too expensive to compete in its own market. So now even the 3$ a day jobs are hard to find ... plenty of cheap goods but no money to pay for them ...
The entire effect is a displaced population that was once content but is now desperate and heading your way. Enjoy your cheap Ipod while you can still afford the batteries to power it. They wont last long.
When this curse-ed war finaly ends you will get a good look at what OUR real economy actualy looks like.

[MGKrebs]

38. Interesting. Thanks.

One comment: Having read that, I suspect that the Mexican government might have seen NAFTA as a way to help get their economy "on the books" so to speak, so they could collect the tax revenue they were missing out on, a task perhaps they were either unwilling or unable to to take on without help. And it might have worked if the world had stayed the same as it was in 1988.

I admit to being confused and frustrated by this issue. I see that progressives generally oppose NAFTA, but I have a real hard time understanding why, especially when you read things like the Wikipedia entry, and because so much of the resistance seems to be be because of a guilt by association with globalization and loss of jobs to China. I haven't been able to develop the resistance to NAFTA that my progressive paradigm would seem to encourage. Still looking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. The mexican middle class is mostly gone

why? Good jobs that were starting to happen BEFORE NAFTA are gone'

They have been replaced by subsistence level jobs at the maquiladoras up north

Whole swaths of Mexican industry are gone, such as, a concrete example, Dunlop Shoes, and that industry went back to oh the 17th century

The economy stopped really expanding and best case has remained stagnant.

A very concrete example is the factory my father had in Mexico City

They produced embroideries, after the borders were opened, local product could no longer compete with cheaply made Chinese product. In the end, after my father retired, the factory closed

The workers were left with two options, netter good

Trek to El Norte, looking for subsentence jobs, or trek to El Norte to search for maquiladora jobs

That is the real story behind Nafta....

As I said, they preceded the destruction in the midwest by about five years, but NAFTA is a complete and utter failure that has only deindustralized Mexico, just as our deals with China have deindustralized the US... same bloody mechanic by the way

[MGKrebs]

28. I don't understand what the embroidery factory competing with China

has to do with NAFTA.

Why do people leave their good jobs and their homes to go work up by the border for less?

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. Ask the workers in the rust bell

that question

They might be able to answer it for you.

When there are no jobs, you do whatever is available, even slave work

[MGKrebs]

40. I am from the rust belt.

The rust belt manufacturing jobs were dying long before NAFTA. In fact, that is how I ended up in Atlanta in the 70's- looking for a job. But this has nothing to do with NAFTA.

This is why I am so confused on this issue. So often the arguments against NAFTA make no sense.

[Solon]

19. Here's a website that can give you a start on the research on this...

http://www.citizen.org/trade/nafta/

[MGKrebs]

29. Thanks. That's a lot to read, but I'll be checking it out.

[Greyhound]

13. Do you just get off posting utter bullshit and watching the reaction?

[OhioChick]

17. Apparently So.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=490078&mesg_id=496067

[HughBeaumont]

39. It's not Mr. "offshoring is great" Hit-andRun RobConservaturd, is it?

I just noticed the IGNORE and figured it was him. I dropped binary potholes such as that. Nothing offered but baloney.

[WinkyDink]

18. And your place of employment would be...?

[AnOhioan]

23. Oh brother

forget the sarcasm smilie again?

[Vidar]

33. Perhaps in some parallel universe.

[AzDar]

22. Kick for Dennis the K .....

:kick:

[LiberalHeart]

26. Here's an open letter to Kucinich....

...complaining that he's offering too much of a good thing:

http://newsgrinder.blogspot.com/2007/03/open-letter-to-dennis-kucinich.html

[Fire Walk With Me]

36. There are of course problems with a globalized economy.

We don't get to vote. We don't have any checks and balances to prevent abuses. The very rich get very richer. More governments may take on the characteristics of Imelda Marcos' reign.

[WCGreen]

37. All free trade means is the Free movement of capital across

international borders...

That's it...

Plain and simple...