The KORUS disaster only contributed to the growing trade deficits:

http://www.epi.org/blog/u-s-korea-trade-deal-resulted-in-growing-trade-deficits-and-more-than-75000-lost-u-s-jobs/

Posted March 30, 2015 at 2:31 pm by Robert E. Scott
U.S.-Korea Trade Deal Resulted in Growing Trade Deficits and More Than 75,000 Lost U.S. Jobs

March 15th was the third anniversary of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). President Obama said that the agreement would support 70,000 U.S. jobs. This claim was supported by a White House fact sheet that claimed that the KORUS agreement would “increase exports of American goods by $10 to $11 billion…” and that they would “support 70,000 American jobs from increased goods exports alone.” Things are not turning out as predicted. Far from supporting jobs, growing goods trade deficits with Korea have eliminated more than 75,000 jobs between 2011 and 2014.

Expanding exports alone is not enough to ensure that trade adds jobs to the economy. Increases in U.S. exports tend to create jobs in the United States, but increases in imports lead to job loss—by destroying existing jobs and preventing new job creation—as imports displace goods that otherwise would have been made in the United States by domestic workers. Thus, it is changes in trade balances—the net of exports and imports—that determine the number of jobs created or displaced by trade and investment deals like KORUS.

In the first three years after KORUS took effect, U.S. domestic exports to Korea increased by only $0.8 billion, an increase of 1.8%, as shown in the figure below. Imports from Korea increased $12.6 billion, an increase of 22.5%. As a result, the U.S.trade deficit with Korea increased $11.8 billion between 2011 and 2014, an increase of 80.4%, nearly doubling in just three years.



U.S. goods exports to the rest-of-the-world (ROW) increased 9.1 percent in the same period and ROW imports increased only 5.9 percent, so our trade balance with the rest of the world improved in this period. In other words, the U.S. trade deficit and job displacement with Korea increased despite an overall improvement in U.S. trade with the ROW. It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that the KORUS trade and investment deal increased U.S. trade deficits and job displacement.

The exports are pretty steady, but the imports keep growing. One feature of this is more and more outsourcing by US corporations.

Corporations send their crap to be made in low, slave wage countries then send it to the US for sale in our markets. They use our infrastructure and markets while paying nothing of the maintenance and up keep costs required. And if the US does something they don't like they use our courts to stop the will of the people. Again they pay nothing to maintain the infrastructure to support the courts.

Of course if Obama has his way, then our courts will be obsolete under the TPP. The Supremes will not be receiving as many bribes as they do now. Instead, the corporate lawyers hired by the corporations (and the corporate tools in the government) will be getting that bribe money. And with the Supremes and many of the judges out of business, it will increase our trade deficit. Maybe someone in China or India could use them.

I understand that by shipping millions of our jobs overseas the world as a whole has gone through a dramatic improvement over the past several decades. Globally, capitalism has worked well. Hundreds of millions of poor have been lifted by the manufacture of cheap goods and selling them into the U.S. There are huge middle classes that have now been built up in other countries. At the same time, the owners and stock holders of the companies using this cheap labor have become fabulously wealthy. One needs look no further domestically than Apple.

However, this shipping of jobs overseas has never helped the U.S. as a whole and we as a people should start voting to reverse the situation. We have lost entire industries and with them much of our middle class. This is the reality outside the one percent:good jobs are hard to find, wages are stagnant to declining and social pressures are rising to the boiling point. The American dream is fading.

The solution is managed trade.

Managed trade is O.K.! China has it. Japan has it. South Korea has it. The U.S. still has it in certain small areas (See sugar protectionism). We should vote for politicians that support U.S. jobs and industry. Vote for those that will stop unregulated capitalism from destroying our country. Enough is enough.

Get the trade deficit under control and you have gone a long way to really helping America's middle class. DEMAND the same access to foreign markets as they have access to ours or put up prohibitive barriers and tariffs (China, Japan, South Korea, etc.).

This is a great historical quote from President William McKinley about protectionism (Wikipedia) - "Buy where you can buy the cheapest'.... Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. "Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: 'Buy where you can pay the easiest" In other words, cheap goods are nothing if a person has no job and no money to buy the cheap goods with.

US is a relatively high cost producer (compared to Saudi, but not compared to a lot of people).

Domestic oil production was a huge help keeping the deficit down (the good that comes with the bad).

This news comes at a curious time.

Over the past 20-somewhat years, corporatist pols pushing ( yet another ) free trade agreement usually time it to coincide with news of a small bump in exports or slight dip ( in an otherwise upward trend ) in the trade deficit as all the validation they need to show that the status-quo is working, and more of the same is needed.

Of course bizarro world logic still reigns supreme to these shills:

"Exports were up 0.9 percent" Aaannnd "imports increased 7.7 percent"

Now there's a favorable ratio in which to pursue more exports.

I can hear it now: "We lose money on every deal...but we'll make up for in volume by doing more deals!"

Too bad those things are made in countries that pay their workers less than the American Minimum wage.