- May 17, 2013
- 67,582
- 32,714
- 2,290
http://www.citizen.org/documents/manufacturing-job-loss.pdf"Free Trade" Was Never Really About Trade
"Free trade" is not trade. Basically, trade is when each country makes things of value for export and gets things of comparable value in imports. In modern globalization, other countries manipulate their currencies, use tax strategies that distort exports and imports, and apply effective well-designed industrial policies to build manufacturing capacity. They export more products to us, and import fewer products from us.
Our trade deficits since NAFTA are over $8 trillion. With trade deficits this large, we are not trading. We are letting other countries produce for us. We borrow, de-industrialize, and ultimately fail to capitalize on future production opportunities. That's not trade. That's getting picked clean.
dear , a trade deficit is impossible since every dollar we send to China has to be spent in America. Do you understand? We buy with dollars which would have no value to them unless they could spend them. Do you understand?
Free trade is when free people voluntarily decide to trade because they feel they are both better off. Do you understand?
Nearly 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs – one out of every four – have been lost since implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).1 Since NAFTA took effect, more than 55,000 American manufacturing facilities have closed.2 Growing trade deficits post-NAFTA, WTO and other Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) drive job loss: Under the NAFTA-WTO model, U.S. manufacturing imports have soared while growth of U.S. manufacturing exports has slowed. The growth of the U.S. trade deficit with China since that country entered the WTO in 2001 has had a devastating effect on U.S. workers and the domestic economy: between 2001 and 2011, an estimated 3.2 million U.S. jobs were lost or displaced.3 Since NAFTA’s enactment, annual growth in U.S. manufacturing exports to Canada and Mexico has fallen 41 percent below the annual rate seen in the years before NAFTA.4 The inflation-adjusted U.S. goods trade deficit with Canada of $30 billion and the $2.6 billion surplus with Mexico in 1993 (the year before NAFTA took effect) turned into a combined NAFTA trade deficit of $182.1 billion by 2014 – a real increase in the “NAFTA deficit” of 565 percent.5 The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimated that the ballooning trade deficit with Mexico alone destroyed about 700,000 net U.S. jobs between NAFTA’s implementation and 2010.6 And since NAFTA, more than 850,000 specific U.S. workers have been certified for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) – a narrow program that is difficult to qualify for – as having lost their jobs due to imports from Canada and Mexico or the relocation of factories to those countries.7 Overall, the aggregate U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners has ballooned. The inflation-adjusted aggregate trade deficit with FTA partners has increased by about $144 billion – a 427 percent jump – since the FTAs were implemented. By contrast, the aggregate trade deficit with all non-FTA countries has decreased by about $95 billion – an 11 percent drop – since 2006, the median entry date of existing FTAs
Fuck you dear.
