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April 21, 2015
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As for the bureaucrats and politicians who promised us big new markets for exports, rising trade surpluses, better jobs—were they simply ignorant, or were they knowingly lying to us?
No one can be that wrong for that long. The law of averages is against it.
Writing yesterday, Peter Morici, chief economist in the early Clinton years at the U.S. International Trade Commission, says the Korean deal alone, and the import surge that followed, cost America 100,000 jobs.
“Asian nations target specific industries—such as autos and information technology—and compel U.S. firms to establish factories and research facilities in their economies,” as China, Germany and Japan manipulate their currencies to keep exports to us high and imports from us low.
Morici estimates that our annual $500 billion trade deficit costs America 4 million jobs and is a contributing cause of the fall of U.S. family income by $4,600 since 2000.
Unless changes are made in TPP, he writes, “Congress should deny President Obama authority to negotiate yet another jobs killing trade pact in the Pacific.”
What the nation needs is not only a rejection of fast track, but also a trade policy that puts country before corporate profit, workers before Wall Street, and America first.
Such a policy once made the Republican Party America’s Party.