About the time the U.S. House was warming up to cast a squeaker of a vote — 217-215 — approving the new Central American Free Trade Agreement, 320 workers in Pocatello were getting the bad news about free trade.
They will lose their jobs with Ballard Medical, a subsidiary of Kimberly-Clark, which is moving the Ballard Medical operations to Mexico, where labor is cheaper and therefore a sure-fire way of increasing Kimberly-Clark profits.
This is the tale in hundreds of U.S. communities — American workers laid off as companies send jobs overseas or relocate plants to increase profits through cheaper labor and far less costly local operating conditions.
Despite glowing promises when it was enacted, the North American Free Trade Agreement has not created jobs for Americans or stopped their outflow to other countries. And CAFTA unquestionably will yield the same miseries for U.S. workers.
"Free trade" as envisioned by Washington politicians and their corporate patrons is not free at all. U.S. laws impose environmental, workplace and product quality standards on businesses. No such standards are imposed on foreign manufacturers exporting cheaper products to the American market.
So, from the get-go, American workers are at a disadvantage in "free trade" agreements. Companies in due course simply will shut U.S. operations and move them or outsource the work to overseas employees.
The most tilted playing field in U.S. trade relations involves mainland communist China, whence comes tens of billions of dollars in non-petroleum U.S. imports. China asserts rigid control over what U.S. companies may sell there and prohibits U.S. purchases of its industry. However, China has virtual freedom to sell its products here and is now attempting to buy major U.S. consumer industries.
Why has Congress as well as the Bush administration been so eager to promote trade arrangements that are almost entirely beneficial to U.S. firms that want to move abroad and to foreign producers, but hold virtually no benefit for U.S. workers?
Does pure corporate profit sound familiar?
This period may go down as the most scandalous sell-out of American wage-earners in history — hundreds of thousands of jobs moved overseas to improve corporate profits, but leaving communities wracked with unemployment and families on welfare, crippled local economies and a shrinking U.S. workforce all around.
Free trade when conducted on a level playing field can benefit global economies.
But thus far, the so-called free trade concocted in political agreements in Washington have done more to enrich U.S. corporations who care little about the well-being of their workers.
Will the next generation of American consumers find anything on their shelves, on their backs or in their garages with "Made in the U.S.A" labels?
