“On trade, we must trust American workers to compete with anyone in the world and empower them by opening up new markets overseas. Today, our economic growth increasingly depends on our ability to sell American goods and crops and services all over the world. So we're working to break down barriers to trade and investment wherever we can.”
The record at this point is quite clear that free trade has hurt American workers. The resulting lower tariffs has made it easier for transnational corporations to shut down manufacturing facilities in the United States and take advantage of cheap labor, lower taxes, and weaker worker safety and environmental standards in foreign countries. This has contributed directly to the decline in economic growth in the United States and the real income of American workers in recent years. Meanwhile, through U.S.-backed structural adjustment programs imposed by international financial institutions and other measures, wages and government spending in most countries of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are kept low. As a result, there is not enough money left for foreign consumers to spend on U.S.-manufactured goods that could make up for U.S. losses in wages and tax revenues from the runaway shops.
“These [free trade] agreements also promote America's strategic interests. The first agreement that will come before you is with Colombia, a friend of America that is confronting violence and terror, and fighting drug traffickers. If we fail to pass this agreement, we will embolden the purveyors of false populism in our hemisphere. So we must come together, pass this agreement, and show our neighbors in the region that democracy leads to a better life.”
Though Colombia holds competitive elections, it hardly provides its Latin American neighbors a very good model for “democracy” or “a better life.” There is indeed a lot of violence and terror directed at the Colombian government and its supporters, but the U.S.-armed Colombian government is itself guilty of violence and terror as well. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported a “steep rise in reports of extrajudicial executions by the Colombian military” in recent years and months, making this a particularly inauspicious time for Congress to approve a free trade agreement with that repressive government. Amnesty also reports how Columbia has become “one of the most dangerous places in the world for trade unionists,” who are routinely murdered by government forces and government-backed death squads, raising questions as to why Congress should support “free trade” with such an unfree country in which labor rights are so severely repressed.
“The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change. And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more energy-efficient technology.”
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