The House vote on the Peru Free Trade Agreement is tomorrow. This agreement is just one more trade agreement built on the failed NAFTA model and we must call upon members of Congress to turn it down.
Email or call Congress Now and tell your representative to vote No to another job killing trade agreement.
In a letter to Congress (pdf), Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said:
While we applaud the efforts to improve worker rights in the Peru FTA and pending FTAs, it falls short of satisfying the concerns of workers that have been repeatedly raised since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other recent FTAs. The Peru FTA and the passage of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) last week does not represent the kind of comprehensive policy that workers need to ensure that the benefits of our globalization policies are not only going to multinational corporations, but to workers as well.
We are eager to be able to support new trade agreements that will create good American jobs, but unfortunately, this is not the case with the Peru FTA or the other pending FTAs.
Failing Americans
American workers have suffered under these types of free trade agreements, Hoffa said, including:
The loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since NAFTA.
The loss of these good jobs has resulted in downward pressure on all American wages.
While American workers' productivity has soared, real median wages remain at 1970s levels.
Our current trade model has resulted in a nearly $800 billion trade deficit which, at 6 percent of our national income, threatens U.S. and world economic stability.
Bad News for Peru
Likewise, this free trade agreement is bad news for Peru, according to Dr. Riordan Roett, the Director of the Western Hemisphere Program at the The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
This does not bode well for Peru. Indeed, economists at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) estimate that the Peru FTA's agricultural provisions will displace significant numbers of campesino farmers by eliminating an array of programs that regulate staple food markets for rice and other foods and provide low-interest credit and other supports.
The great irony of the Peru and Colombia FTAs is that these countries are unlikely to gain much in terms of market access for exports. It is unlikely that these countries will experience significant export-led growth because the FTAs provide no new market access in the United States beyond that already provided under the current Andean Trade Preference Drug Eradication Act. Moreover, given the United States' unsustainable trade and current account deficits (now at about 6 percent of GDP), the decline of the dollar means a shrinking export market for goods from these nations. The prospective FTA partners are therefore being promised a heaven on earth they will never see.
It is time to develop an alternative trade model that will yield real benefits for long suffering peoples. And just as Peru FTA opponents and critics do not have to start from scratch, neither do proponents of an alternative model.
To start with, we could examine the European Union's practice of developing poorer countries' social and economic capacities before they are allowed to accede to a trade agreement, including through the development of more progressive tax codes. Stopping to expand NAFTA is not the end of trade, but instead, a starting point for a real discussion on how trade can work as a tool for diplomacy.
It should also be noted, said Roett, "that at least 1.3 million Mexican farmers have lost their livelihoods under NAFTA. According to a 2004 report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 'Agricultural trade liberalization linked to NAFTA is the single most significant factor in the loss of agricultural jobs in Mexico.' Thus far, limited employment growth in Mexico's manufacturing sector has failed to absorb displaced rural workers."
Tell Congress that Peru FTA is bad for American workers and bad for Peru, Vote No on the Peru FTA.