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Health & Fitness

America Needs A New Trade Policy

So-called "free trade" policies incentivize corporations to move their operations offshore, where wages are much lower and regulations much weaker.  Often American jobs have been moved to countries with state-dominated economic systems that offer them wage supports, free or cheap land, easy finance and tax credits, and other incentives --usually requiring technology transfers and partnerships with state-owned companies in those countries.

When these formerly "US corporations," now globalized corporations with zero loyalty to any country, offshore their production for U.S. markets, they reduce U.S. GDP, jobs and tax base for quick profits and large executive bonuses.  This increases the US trade deficit and undermines American prosperity and our long-term ability to create wealth in the USA.  To quantify this, Manufacturing and Technology News reported in September 2011 that during the previous ten years, the US lost 54,621 factories, and manufacturing employment fell by 5 million employees.

And the problem continues, with the Obama administration proposing to make it worse through two more "free trade" treaties that will be the biggest yet: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Asian countries and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union.  Obama's trade representatives have been writing these treaties in extreme secrecy, bringing in over 600 corporate representatives to write the terms even while denying Members of Congress information on those terms.

The Constitution of the United States, in Article 1 Section 8, says Congress has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations.  But since 1974 Congress has mostly abdicated its constitutional responsibility for trade by delegating this power to the Executive, through so-called "Fast Track Authority" that grants to the President authority to negotiate international agreements that the Congress can approve or disapprove but cannot amend or filibuster.  Treaties negotiated under this Fast Track Authority are then supposedly ratified by a simple majority vote (51% or more) of both houses of Congress, in contradiction to the Constitution Article 2 Section 2, which states that the President has power to make treaties "PROVIDED TWO THIRDS OF THE SENATE CONCUR." (my emphasis)

The interests of the American people require that our Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, as well as our five Representatives in the House of Representatives, take a stand against delegating away Congress' constitutional responsibility over trade, in the form of Fast Track Authority or any other broad delegation mechanism.  Indeed, it is time to restore constitutionality to our trade and diplomacy, and to reverse the so-called "free trade" policies that have "fast-tracked" the devastation of American prosperity through offshoring and outsourcing our manufacturing and other industries.

On these issues, there is a tiny light of hope appearing on the horizon.  In polite defiance of their party leadership (indeed of the leadership of both major parties), two-thirds of the Democratic freshmen in the House of Representatives recently signed a letter rejecting Fast Track and all other forms of delegating away Congressional responsibility to regulate trade. Read the letter here:

http://www.citizen.org/documents/TPPLetter.pdf

Now we need our more senior Senators and Representatives from Connecticut to lead, by following this example, to draft a similar letter and recruit many more members of Congress from both parties to stand against the secretive Executive writing of devastating trade deals and broader treaties that undermine American jobs and prosperity.

Ultimately we need to replace so-called "free trade" with BALANCED TRADE.  This would effectively require globalized corporations to invest and employ in the USA if they want to sell their products here.  By legislating an Import Certificate (IC) system to license all imports, and issuing IC's in the same value as exports, we could balance our trade.  This would divert our chronic $600 Billion annual trade deficit into a $600 Billion annual stimulation of American manufacturing, creating millions of manufacturing jobs directly and many millions more jobs through manufacturing's multiplier-effect.  Ken Davis, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, explained in an interview earlier this year how such a policy could transform our economy and revive American prosperity:

http://oxford-ct.patch.com/groups/will-wilkins-blog/p/bp--lets-think-big-again-a-growth-program-to-p...

When will the US Congress reject the lobbyist money and lucrative revolving door of cushy jobs offered them by the globalized corporations?   They could start by rejecting the TPP and the US-EU "free trade" deals and instead demand a balanced trade policy to replace the so-called "free trade" that has dismantled so much of our productive economy.

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