You don’t hear from me often. Over the past year, I’ve spent most of my time on Capitol Hill, meeting with members of Congress, educating them about our current flawed trade policy and how we can create a trade model that works. I’ve been working to get a majority in Congress to say “No!” to the three devastating NAFTA-style trade deals signed by President Bush that President Obama is now trying to ram through Congress
Today, I urgently need a favor from you.It will take about five minutes. Congress will vote on these job-killing, unsafe-import-flooding deals this Wednesday.
Take 5 minutes to save jobs.http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=83Jt6GNmmJnCsR8cymZBAD9tlpxX7gFi">Dial 1-800-718-1008 and tell your Representative to vote “No!” on the three flawed trade deals with Korea, Colombia and Panama.
Here’s why:
- The Korea trade deal is the largest offshoring deal of its kind since NAFTA. If approved, the deal will displace 159,000 American jobs in the first seven years. Even the official U.S. government study on the Korea pact says that it would increase our trade deficit — meaning more job loss — and it hits the “jobs of the future” sectors hardest — solar, high speed trains, computers.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=YqWEKszABy3ZTDPH7bGSHQihIsWfmrt%2B">Learn more.
- We should have never even discussed a new trade deal with Colombia, the world capital for violence against workers. More unionists are assassinated every year than in the rest of the world combined. In 2010, 51 trade unionists were assassinated. Do you think we would consider a trade deal with a county where 51 CEOS were murdered? So far in 2011, another 22 have been killed, despite Colombia’s heralded new “Labor Action Plan.”
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=XWcjXWcAHgZybQgTf8SEkwihIsWfmrt%2B">Learn more (PDF).
- The Panama agreement has many of the same problems as the other two deals — undercutting the reregulation of the big banks and speculators who destroyed our economy and empowering foreign investors to attack U.S. health, safety, labor and environmental laws before foreign tribunals. But, Panama is also one of the world’s largest tax havens. There, rich U.S. individuals and over 400,000 corporations dodge paying the taxes our communities desperately need. This FTA would take away our current tools to fight tax dodging and money laundering.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=vzvnleQmaDxqRG3wei897wihIsWfmrt%2B">Learn more. (PDF).
Stop the trade deals that replicate the failed policies of the past.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=CPaq38r3avxxDs0YflRh/QihIsWfmrt%2B">Call your Representative today.
Behind the scenes and throughout the country, our team has done everything we can do to try and get through to the leaders in Congress to stop these trade agreements. But it looks like many of our leaders in Washington — both Democrats and Republicans — are siding with corporate lobbyists instead of learning from the experience of working Americans.
YOU know the reality of these trade deals better than corporate lobbyists—and Congress needs to listen to you.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=MGqVhgRQrs107PJcXQaWaQihIsWfmrt%2B">Please call 1-800-718-1008 right now.
Thanks for all you do,
Lori Wallach
Executive Director
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch