U.S. trade policy: Fast Track or the Right Track?

http://www.cioslorit.net/english/noticia1.asp?id=621

Fast Track or the Right Track?

U.S. trade policy today is barreling along down the wrong track, on a route littered with broken promises and missed opportunities, threatening to jump the rails altogether.

Our trade deficit hit a staggering $764 billion in 2006. Real median wages and family income continue to stagnate, while productivity growth soars. We have lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2000—many of them to trade—and good white-collar jobs that pay well are increasingly vulnerable. Estimates range from 14 million to 42 million service-sector jobs that could be subject to offshoring over the next decade -- offsetting many of the promised benefits of trade liberalization.

We see heartrending daily reports of workers’ rights abuses—here at home and around the world—as governments and corporations desperately try to eke out an advantage in a cutthroat global economy with no minimum enforceable international rules to protect workers’ human rights. Democratically elected governments find their policy scope increasingly narrowed by global trade rules that impinge on many areas that previously were the domain of national policy—from environmental and public health protections to land-use rules, gambling restrictions, immigration policy and corporate taxes.

Most of the costs of this flawed globalization model are paid by workers, family farmers and domestic producers—but all Americans are affected by growing inequality and eroding protections for consumer safety, public health and the environment. Our declining manufacturing capacity poses a serious and growing threat to both our economic and national security.

Taken together, the loss of millions of skilled jobs, the closure of nearly 40,000 manufacturing facilities and the exporting of design, engineering and research and development capacity mean the next innovation, the next generation of products and the next investment will be made in other countries. At the same time, we are losing the capability to supply our military troops with ammunition, uniforms and other essential equipment in a timely and flexible manner. The offshoring of our capacity is underwritten by a toxic brew of workers’ rights violations, lax environmental standards, currency manipulation and illegal subsidies that global corporations seek and from which they benefit.

Decades of trade deficits – all record-breakers in recent years – have contributed to a mounting cumulative international debt, which now exceeds $3 trillion. This unsustainable debt has greatly increased our vulnerability to financial crises and speculative currency movements. And the U.S. image abroad has suffered as our government is increasingly perceived as imposing an anti-development, anti-worker trade agenda on behalf of our multinational corporations. Indeed, workers’ rights have not improved, and in some cases have worsened, in Central America. Nor have the promised jobs materialized in most CAFTA signatories. It is no wonder that tens of thousands of workers and farmers have taken to the streets in Korea, Costa Rica and Thailand—among many other countries—to protest proposed trade deals put forward by the U.S. government.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The movement of goods, services, money and people across national borders can and often does bring many benefits: increased economic growth and dynamism, as well as the beneficial spread of technology, culture and ideas across borders. The key missing part is how those benefits are distributed—and how to resolve the uneasy compromise between enforceable international rules and democratic decision-making.

For globalization to live up to its promise to improve the lives of workers and the poor, not just the wealthy and the powerful—here and around the world—we need an entirely new set of rules and institutions.

FULL article at link.