Elizabeth Warren challenges Obama (and Clinton) on trade

[RiverLover]

Elizabeth Warren challenges Obama (and Clinton) on trade
3/12/15

Washington (CNN)Elizabeth Warren's push to kill major trade negotiations -- backed up by the AFL-CIO's plans announced Wednesday to cut campaign contributions to its traditional Democrat allies to fight alongside her -- could become major headache for President Barack Obama.

And eventually Hillary Clinton, too.

Warren is spearheading a growing liberal push to undercut Obama's attempt to negotiate free trade deals with Pacific Rim countries and the European Union. Her beef: Corporations could gain the ability to challenge countries' laws under a complicated provision that's routinely tucked into new deals.

The innocuous-sounding "investor-state dispute settlement mechanism," critics on both the left and the populist right fear, would be like an independent, international court, with the power to force the U.S. government and American corporations to abide by its rulings.

The issue pits Warren against her own party's president, and on the same side as populist conservatives. The Massachusetts Democrat took aim at that provision on a conference call hosted by liberal groups on Wednesday, saying it should "raise alarm bells for everyone."

"The name may sound a little wonky, but this is a powerful provision that would fundamentally tilt the playing field further in favor of multinational corporations," Warren said. "Worse yet, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty."...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/11/politics/elizabeth-warren-obama-hillary-clinton-trade/

And there's also the not so small matter of JOBS, which is I'm sure the AFL-CIO's concern~

How Our 'Free Trade' Policies Kill Jobs
Dave Johnson
Campaign for America's Future
3/10/15

The U.S. is currently running a net trade deficit of over $500 billion each year with our "trade partners." We have been running trade deficits every year since the late 1970s. We buy from them, but they don't reciprocate and buy from us, so the trade is out of balance -- way out of balance.

These other countries use the proceeds from our purchases to set up their own industries so that they don't have to buy from us in the future. We let this happen, so as our industries move away, we will have no choice but to import. In many cases our own so-called "American" corporations are voluntarily "deindustrializing" and sending the factories and equipment to "trading partners" elsewhere.

The Damage

When a country runs a trade deficit, it means that the "demand" for goods and services created by that country's economy is being exported, and people are being hired in other countries instead of in that country. It means that the growth of that country's economy and the number of jobs available is lower than it would be otherwise. Last week's Wall Street Journal article "U.S. Trade Gap Narrows in January," for example, called our trade deficit "a drag on overall growth." They quantified by how much, reporting, "Net exports -- the difference between exports and imports -- subtracted 1.15 percentage point from fourth-quarter gross domestic product."

...At Economy in Crisis, John Olen writes in "Lack of Jobs is Due to Our Trade Deficit":

Trade policy that encourages businesses to relocate production of goods to other nations without penalizing them for selling those goods back to this nation has resulted in millions of lost jobs. White House estimates show that for every $1 billion in goods exported, the economy creates 5,000 jobs. Unfortunately, that street goes both ways -- data from the Economic Policy Institute shows that for every $1 billion in goods imported, the economy loses 9,000 jobs.

Read More~
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson/how-our-free-trade-polici_b_6839248.html

(cross-posted in GD forum)