Is Obama Negotiating A Treaty That Would Essentially Ban All "Buy American" Laws?
69 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have sent Barack Obama a letter expressing their concern that a new international treaty currently being negotiated would essentially ban all "Buy American" laws. This new treaty is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it is going to be one of the biggest "free trade" agreements in history. Critics are referring to it as the "NAFTA of the Pacific", and it would likely cost the U.S. economy even more jobs than NAFTA did. At the moment, the Trans-Pacific Partnership includes Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. Barack Obama is pushing hard to get the United States into the TPP, and Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, Canada, Japan and South Korea are also reportedly interested in joining. But quite a few members of Congress have heard that "Buy American" laws will essentially be banned under this agreement, and this has many of them very concerned. You can read the entire letter that was sent to Obama right here. Unfortunately, the leaders of both major political parties are overwhelmingly in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, so the objections of these 69 members of Congress are likely to fall on deaf ears. The Trans-Pacific Partnership will accelerate the flow of American jobs out of this country, and meanwhile our politicians will continue to insist that they are doing everything that they can to "create jobs".
There is not much protecting American jobs these days. The "Buy American" laws are one of the last remaining barriers that helps protect against much, much cheaper foreign labor, but now "Buy American" laws are in danger of being banned permanently as a recent article in the Huffington Post explained....
Since the 1930s, the American government has offered preferential treatment to American producers in the awarding of federal contracts. If a domestic producer offers the government a more expensive bid than a foreign producer, it can still be awarded the contract under certain circumstances, but more recent free trade agreements have granted other nations the same negotiating status as domestic firms. The Obama administration is currently pushing to grant the several nations involved in the Trans-Pacific deal the same privileged status, according to the Thursday letter.
The big problem is that foreign companies often have huge advantages over firms based in America.
In the United States, we have minimum-wage laws. On the other side of the globe, it is legal to pay workers less than a dollar an hour with no benefits.
In the United States, we have thousands upon thousands of laws and regulations that businesses must comply with. On the other side of the globe, there is often very little red tape.
The truth is that "free trade" is a really bad deal for the average American worker. In the emerging one world economic system, labor has become a global commodity and U.S. workers must now compete for jobs with people on the other side of the planet.
Since U.S. workers are often 10 to 20 times more expensive than workers on the other side of the world, there has been a massive outflow of jobs from this country. Treaties such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership will accelerate those job losses.
You would think that our politicians would notice that our formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into hellholes.
For example, the following is how James Kunstler described what he saw when he traveled through Gary, Indiana recently....
Between the ghostly remnants of factories stood a score of small cities and neighborhoods where the immigrants settled five generations ago. A lot of it was foreclosed and shuttered. They were places of such stunning, relentless dreariness that you felt depressed just imagining how depressed the remaining denizens of these endless blocks of run-down shoebox houses must feel. Judging from the frequency of taquerias in the 1950s-vintage strip-malls, one inferred that the old Eastern European population had been lately supplanted by a new wave of Mexicans. They had inherited an infrastructure for daily life that was utterly devoid of conscious artistry when it was new, and now had the special patina of supernatural rot over it that only comes from materials not found in nature disintegrating in surprising and unexpected ways, sometimes even sublimely, like the sheen of an oil slick on water at a certain angle to the sun. There was a Chernobyl-like grandeur to it, as of the longed-for end of something enormous that hadn't worked out well.
The economic guts of this country are being ripped to shreds right in front of our eyes.
Overall, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since 2001.
That number is so crazy that it is hard to fully grasp.
The truth is that the "free trade" agenda of globalists such as Barack Obama is absolutely devastating our economy.
Continued....
smh...yet more scare tactics from the right.
Here, instead of reading a bias "news source" how about going straight to the source.
The United States in the Trans-Pacific Partnership
President Obama announced in November 2009 the United States’ intention to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations to conclude an ambitious, next-generation, Asia-Pacific trade agreement that reflects U.S. priorities and values. Through this agreement, we are seeking to boost U.S. economic growth and support the creation and retention of high-quality jobs at home by increasing American exports to a region that includes some of the world’s most robust economies and that represents more than 40 percent of global trade. The Obama Administration has been working in partnership with Congress and consulting closely with stakeholders around the country to ensure TPP addresses the issues that American businesses and workers are facing today, and may confront in the future.
Change is not bad people. Breathe and learn something instead of being stirred into a frenzy by an internet source.
for later. Busy day...
Anyone read the links?
Especially,
right here ("Unfortunately, the leaders of both major political parties are overwhelmingly in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, so the objections of these 69 members of Congress are likely to fall on deaf ears." ~Take note of who this signers are)
Then, of course, these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Strategic_Economic_Partnership
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia-Pacific_Economic_Cooperation
This has been going on for a long time.
Sorry, Republicans — Nobody’s Getting Impeached
- blondekosmic15
on May. 13, 2012 at 12:41 PM