among 48 countries!

READ REPORT HERE

Third wayers get their votes by tossing bones to labor and environment causes, then push for international treaties that undermine those protections behind our backs. They're double-dealers.

The little fucker was right.

Incomes rose at every quintile more in the 23 years after NAFTA than the 23 years before. But it was spread much more evenly across the country than it had been before, with the result that the Rust Belt suffered and the Sun Belt benefited.

Of course that was part of the objective.

Why would "Democrats" want manufacturing moved to the South to right to work states.

NAFTA was the start of the betrayal by the Democratic Party.

NAFTA sucks!

You can't call that "destroyed"; we're manufacturing more. There's been an explosion of manufacturing jobs in the South, in particular (see my rust belt/sun belt point).

But, more importantly, at every quintile, inflation-adjusted incomes rose more in the two decades after NAFTA than the two decades before. No idea why you're against ordinary Americans making more money.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz on NAFTA:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43032.htm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-swenson/nafta-the-transpacific-clinton_b_5523327.html

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/04/nafta-20-years-mexico-regret

NAFTA has put at least 1.4 million farmers out of work in Mexico - escalating the drug war and illegal immigration, increased our trade deficits and depressed wages all around. It has allowed business to nullify labor and environmental standards in courts where potential profits are the only thing that matters. It has normalized the concept of "zones" where labor and environmental standards do not apply.

FTAs are a recipe for growing inequality and strife. They grant powerful international rights to the wealthy and no one else.

You say "there are more jobs now", but the population is also much larger now than in 1993. The jobs we do have are very insecure and pay little, the result of a race-to-the-bottom labor market. DUers for 15 years have successfully trashed FTAs like NAFTA... with data. I don't see how you're going to reverse that trend.

I notice nobody has a response to that except to ignore it. Wages and income rose in the two decades after NAFTA more than they rose in the two decades before it.

MY brother is in manufacturing and he lost his job 3 times, it took months to find another job and he makes less today than before. I guess he is the except ion to your rule?
I used to buy american shoes - unless I want boots or sneakers those days are done. Iused to buy clothes made n the US, can't just go to a store anymore, I have to order on-line and when I do, I have to be careful because a lot of clothes that say made in the US are really manufactured in territories in slave labor conditions.

Bought an American car, most of the parts were made overseas, but it was called an American car.
If we make so much why is there such a trade deficit?

We don't manufacture TVs anymore. We manufacture cars, heavy machinery and plant, electronic components, and chemicals. We also do the prototyping for most other countries.

MY brother is in manufacturing and he lost his job 3 times, it took months to find another job and he makes less today than before

Then he's unusual; the Census data is clear: real incomes for the lowest 20%, the next lowest 20%, the middle 20%, the next higher 20%, and the highest 20% all rose more in the two decades after NAFTA than the two decades before NAFTA.

If we make so much why is there such a trade deficit?

Because we and our trade partners keep the dollar artificially strong, which lets more people work in the service sector, which is in general higher paying than the manufacturing sector (look it up before you just swallow the lie that manufacturing pays better). That is why inflation-adjusted wages and incomes are higher today at every level of the income scale than they were before NAFTA, and why unemployment is lower.

I find it hard to believe that manufacturing is as strong in the US. I know it is not here in the north, and to those who moved south, they did it to not be constrained by salaries (i.e. they now pay workers less) and to pollute more freely. I had a friend in the chemical business who was tasked to track hazardous waste, she just could not get the plants in the south to follow the federal anw and apparently no one cared. She wrote the procedure, no one would follow it. Just one more reason why I would never eat gulf sea food. It was not like they really gave her anypower, the company didn't really want it followed, they jsut wanted to push the blame downwards if they ever got blamed, she was not even a manger, just a programmer.

Oh we no longer make water heaters either, and like I said most car parts and electronics are made over seas and jsut assembled here. And the New Balance story is making the news, I am sure you read it.

for the rest of this, - not my field of expertise, I know more about pensions, so did some quick googling.

now you are saying we are manufacturing more now, how does that account for

The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning economic think tank in Washington, D.C., estimates that America. lost 2.7 million jobs as a result of the U.S.-China trade deficit between 2001 and 2011, 2.1 million of them in manufacturing. Wages of American workers have also suffered due to the competition with cheap Chinese labor, EPI says. A typical two-earner household loses around $2,500 per year from this dynamic.

Since its peak in 1979, U.S. manufacturing employment has declined, with moderate losses
through the late 1990s, mostly caused by higher manufacturing productivity relative to the
rest of the economy. In the 2000s, however, with the rise of China and the new
globalization, U.S. manufacturing employment experienced a decade of unprecedented
losses, shedding 5.8 million jobs, or about one-third of the workforce.5 But unlike the prior
two decades, these losses were caused not principally by superior manufacturing
productivity growth, as apologists for the health of U.S. manufacturing continue to assert.
Rather, they were caused by significant losses in real value added output, in turn causing a
large increase in the U.S. trade deficit, which by 2002 also included a deficit in advanced
technology industries.

he is not going to help me, ha ha,

anyway, how is it not manufacturing, it is assembling, unless definitions changed.
Silly me I actually looked up new manufacturing, I see that my arch enemy G.E. is bringing new business in and setting up a light bulb company which will eventually have 150 new jobs - too bad that just a few years ago they shut down a light bulb manufacturing company ending over 200 jobs. and now they will get great tax breaks by "creating" news jobs.

When I worked for Mellon (in pensions) I would make presentations to the president to stop his constant outsourcing of jobs, basically my presentations on how to get the best bang for their dollar using American workers was dismissed as not understanding how Washington worked and they got great tax breaks for "creating new job" when they hired new people in India as they laid off people in the US both fired person and hired person were doing the same job. It was amazing how many people in government did not care they were cheating, I finally stopped writing people.

This is like bizarro world.

Employment went up.

Real wages went up.

Real wages have risen more at every quintile in the 20 years since NAFTA than they did in the 20 years before NAFTA.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I often wonder what "they" are holding over him to force this support. It's antithetical to nearly everything else he has tried to achieve.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I keep wondering about blackmail or not-so-subtle threats. Remember what Bush/Cheney offered the Taliban back in the day, "A carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs"?

These are the types of tactics our real enemy, the MIC, use - and very few are strong enough to stand against them.

All his grand speeches were just that, speeches. I never bought into him. He was bought and paid for from day 1. How do you think he had all that money from the very beginning? How do you think he got book deals? He was a no name Senator from Illinois, who had just been elected. He made a deal with the devil and never looked back.

He and Hillary are 2 of a kind and always have been. I didn't care which one got elected, because I knew it wouldn't matter to the lesser people, either of them wouldn't really do much for us.

Oh, and the economy that is so good, it's wall street traders trading paper back and forth making the money, not much is trickling down.

Z

Obama's a neoliberal. He always has been. There is no need to hold anything over him.

As the first black president he can do the TPP and give us Romney Care and liberals will have to like it because they don't want to be racist.
And the GOP set it up so nice...Openly going after him to make us all learn to love neo con policies...it was awesome.

And the Obama family has now joined the big club.

Paid attention to his handing over the entire financial system to such slime as Geithner, re-appointing Bernanke, appointing Monsanto Shills as heads of FDA departments, letting the second in command at HRC's state department be one of the top fascistas from the Bush Administration, etc?

This is why the Bernie Sanders' supporters are so strongly opposed to Hillary - she would keep bringing us more of this crappola.

You literally can't imagine that he's looked at the evidence and decided it's a good deal? Literally?

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I never said it was "inconceivable" that he's sincere.

The extreme secrecy surrounding the TPP and TTIP is suspicious, and what we have learned about them indicates an override of national sovereignty where corporate profits are concerned, nullification of local labor and environmental protections, and so many other corporate giveaways that they're frightening to many here and abroad, not just me.

President Obama has said nothing to really address these concerns and has not lifted the veil of secrecy in any respect, except to say that the agreements are "good for the country." Sorry, but that's not enough.

If we're going to have to live with these trade agreements, we have a right to know specifically what's in them, in advance, in plain English that doesn't require a law degree to decipher, and to have our say before any congressional vote.

This autocratic behavior seems out of character for the president I've trusted and supported, so I can only assume he's under some sort of very intense pressure. We already know that corporations aren't a bit shy about using even lethal force to get their way in other places, so what measures might they be using here, on our president and lawmakers?

A booming stock market is obviously good for corporations and investors, but that means nothing in terms of benefit to working people - just more "tinkle down" theory.

If these agreements are so good, why are we getting soothing platitudes instead of specifics about how and why they're good? Let's see the evidence he's looked at and hear his sincere assessment of it!

Vietnam doesn't want to raise its minimum wage. Brunei doesn't want to establish one. Neither of them, or Malaysia, want to allow independent unions to form that can affiliate with international unions which can then sue those countries in tribunals over labor violations. Left to themselves, they wouldn't do any of those things. The TPP forces them to. That's an overriding of their sovereignty, and it's a good thing.

What secrecy are you talking about? Here's the full text of the treaty:

https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text

Hard to get more transparent than that.

If these agreements are so good, why are we getting soothing platitudes instead of specifics about how and why they're good?


Well, the whole thing has been up at the USTR's site for months now; in general people don't bother to read it and just go with what some random dude on the Internet said.

If we're going to have to live with these trade agreements, we have a right to know specifically what's in them

No, I don't believe you. Because it's been available to you for months, and you claim to care about this issue, but haven't read it.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I said it needs to be explained in plain English - not volumes of dense legalese that ordinary people can't fathom.

I find your attitude sanctimonious and combative, but not the least bit instructive or enlightening. Since I have no interest in dealing with that, why don't you just go your way and I'll go mine, okay?

Enjoy the rest of your evening.

...and Republicans keep popping out.

I'm thinking voter fraud or at least false advertising.

But these are Republicans you would find in the GW Bush administration, with a couple of concessions for identity politics.

The whole art of the game has become about how to use corporate funds to channel incurious authoritarians to the polls, while letting everyone else think the same thing by themselves without thinking they have a candidate or a chance. (That, and taking the democracy out of the primaries...)

Personable, but they also must be incurious, otherwise it is much much harder to sound convincing when delivering a speech that says the exact opposite of a speech you gave three months prior.

Here's W making a similar pitch.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/22/bush.apec.summit/index.html?iref=hpmostpop

Thoroughly depressing.

"Lock" on the Quid pro Quo whereby he will be ensured managerial status over a charity in excess of a gazillion dollars, and also firm up the contracts relating to receiving
some $ 350,000 (plus) for every speech in front of every corporate podium for the next four decades.

So much corrupt shit left to do, in so little time!

Sad

"It has made sure that our businesses are the most competitive in the world." ...Yes the very businesses that outsource whenever possible and evade paying their fair share of taxes whenever possible. Good for our economy, my arse.

And, what does HRC say about this crap? Actually, what was her last stance? (because I expect it to "evolve&quot

She was for all for it ... until she was against it. She called it the gold standard for trade.

and I think that's just what he's doing.

The expectation is that the deal will pass eventually, with the most likely scenario being that a President Clinton would renegotiate a few token changes without altering its substance.

wish I could label it as such....

I think a lot of Americans do not have a clear enough concept of what can and will more than likely happen if and when it gets passed.

I do hope I'm wrong but it does not look like I am

Oliver Wright chronicles the damning report from the independent fact-checking organisation ‘Full Fact'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-the-verdict-on-both-sides-of-the-campaign-you-can-t-believe-either-of-them-a6999166.html