McCain’s Trade Policy ‘Is a Third George Bush Term’

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/06/20/mccains-trade-policy-is-a-third-george-bush-term/

by James Parks, Jun 20, 2008

The United States needs a new direction in trade that creates good jobs here and protects workers’ rights abroad, not four more years of George Bush’s disastrous policies that John McCain is promising, political leaders and workers said today.

Responding to McCain’s speech this afternoon on trade policy in Ottawa, Canada, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told a conference call with reporters:

Instead of delivering a speech from Ottawa, Canada, Sen.McCain should visit Ottawa, Ohio, where the Phillips plant closed and 1,100 people lost their jobs. We need trade policies that create new jobs at home, not ship them to Mexico. With John McCain, when it comes to trade, it’s a third George Bush term.

In his speech, McCain reaffirmed his strong support for “free trade” at any cost, despite the job loss and growing wage inequality exacerbated by current U.S. trade policy. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee defended NAFTA, saying it is “critical to the future of so many Canadian and American workers and businesses.”

In fact, flawed trade deals like NAFTA have contributed to the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2001 and an erosion of real wages.

Calvin Smith, a machine operator at the Hershey chocolate factory in Pennsylvania for 18 years, knows what damage NAFTA has caused. He told reporters his plant had cut 650 jobs this year, mostly due to outsourcing to Mexico. Smith, a member of Baker, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union (BCTGM) Local 464, said:

Every day I wake up and worry I’ll be told my job is being shipped off to another country. I’ve seen so many of my friends and neighbors forced out of their jobs by these rotten trade deals. Our communities are being devastated.

FULL story at link.