Tweet
The NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade agreement announced late Friday night by President Obama has all the same provisions in it that Obama vigorously opposed on the campaign trail when George W. Bush originally negotiated the deal.
With 15.1 million people currently unemployed in the United States, it is insane to extend the same NAFTA privileges to Korea that have already ransacked America’s manufacturing sector and decimated our labor force.
President Obama is going to send this NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade deal to Congress soon. We need to put a stop to this new NAFTA immediately, so Congress needs to hear from you now.
Sign our petition to Congress at NoNewNAFTA.com:
“No New NAFTA! Don’t support another job-killing, NAFTA-style ‘free trade’ agreement with Korea.”
There’s a lot of lies and disinformation about the NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade deal. Here are the facts.
Like its job-killing cousins NAFTA and CAFTA, this Korean trade deal would, according to Public Citizen:
- Allow foreign corporations to operate inside the United States under privileged international trade agreements, rather than having to obey our laws that apply to our businesses.
- Prohibit us from limiting the size of banks, making us give up the right to decide what “too big to fail” is on our own shores
- Ban the government’s ability to adopt “buy American” policies
- Prohibit us from banning risky financial goods and services (like derivatives trading), otherwise US taxpayers will have to pay compensation to international companies for the profits they won’t be able to reap from engaging in such transactions
- Force the United States to submit to the judgment of foreign tribunals
- Elevate foreign corporations to equal status with the sovereign United States, empowering foreign companies with new rights to sue the U.S. government before the UN and World Bank tribunals, skirting US courts.
Think that can’t happen? To date, US taxpayers have paid out over $400 million (PDF) in compensation to foreign corporations from such cases under NAFTA. And we spent million in legal costs even on cases we won, with billions more outstanding in unsettled cases.
Make no mistake – the Korea Free Trade deal is as dangerous to America as NAFTA, CAFTA, and the rest of the “free trade” deals.
No New NAFTA: sign our petition to Congress to stop the NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade deal.
6 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL Action
Wow. Obama has gotten into full on blame the dirty fucking hippies mode. How dare we have the temerity to suggest that he represent the middle class or *gasp* adhere to his own promises and stated principles?
obama gave an award winning performance during the presidential campaign. He was a fraud and a liar then, as he is now. Now’s the time for all liberals to come together and form a strategy to make sure this guy doesn’t serve a second term.
FIrst I posted this to the wrong thread, then I posted it to a thread with no comments, and now I’m going to post it here because I think it belongs here.
Signed the petition – hope it helps
Clinton had the excuse that econ common knowledge was trade helps everyone – But Obama is post the paper by MIT’s Nobel Prof Samuelson that showed that FTA’s did not always help – and indeed FTA’s shipped jobs overseas if there was no protection of ones “competitive advantage based goods and services”
More basic is that this FTA – unlike NAFTA – this just screws the US as we get quotas for auto sales in Korea with ONLY a 2% tariff, provided we have no non-tariff barriers (rules that apply only to import that do not apply to our own production) and a zero cash tariffs – we also had to accept no meat allowed in from cattle older than 30 months, and free trade in port delayed an additional 2 years beyond where Bush had already gotten an agreement.
Thanks, Michael; what a crap agreement. Makes you wonder what was changed when Obama came back from Korea without signing it? Oy!
American corporations save money by circumventing us laws. Shipping a job over seas allows them to bypass environmental, labor and safety laws. With the added bonus for some corporations really cheap child labor. They pollute at will etc. It is fortunate for these corporations that there are dictatorships and communist countrys etc.. around to hedge up the profit margin. Few dollars to a dictator is a lot cheaper than observing any costly laws. Any product imported into the united states should face a tarrif .. that would over compensate for circumventing us laws to make a buck. This would level the playing feild for american workers. The alternative is to require all us companys.. or ANY companys selling products in the usa.. to meet or exceed the intent of any us laws applicable for that products manufacture in the usa.. or be banned from sale in the united states. WE have environmental, safety and labor laws for a reason.. circumventing these should be a crime.
these nafta’s are just selling out the american worker.. for corporate profits.
another option is to eliminate all us labor environmental and safety laws so we can compete with the slave labor and polluters overseas.. but then that would move america one step closer to being a banana republic. and the pollution might effect YOUR kids..
bush clinton obama.. say one thing .. but they behave like they are out to destroy the middle class.