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Bush’s Failed Trade Policies

by International Brotherhood of Teamsters - 01/30/07 4:49 PM ET

President Bush today touted his failed trade policies as proof of a strong economy, demonstrating to workers everywhere that he remains out of touch with their reality.

Let’s review where Bush and Free Trade have gotten us so far:

About one in five manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2001, that’s nearly 3 million jobs that have been outsourced to workers abroad.

More than 1 million jobs have been lost due to NAFTA alone.

Up to 14 million middle-class jobs could be exported out of the United States in the next 10 years.

The U.S. trade deficit is on track to set its fifth consecutive record when numbers are totaled next month.

This administration has yet to address China and Japan’s currency manipulation as promised or to remedy the U.S.-China trade imbalance. We need thoughtful and aggressive policies on China, and yet, he remained silent on that.

Bush highlighted Caterpillar Inc. as reaping the benefits of U.S. trade policies. But for a majority of Americans, jobs have been destroyed, wages and benefits are stagnant, and communities have been stressed and terribly impacted. Our competitiveness as a nation has even been severely hindered — forcing us to rely entirely on other countries around the world for essential goods and services, even to equip our great men and women serving in Iraq. This is a matter of national security, and yet our president continues to be blind to this reality.

Our globalization policies are being severely mismanaged.

This is why the Teamsters Union is mobilizing to fight against extending fast track presidential trading authority when it comes up for renewal later this year. Fast track has proven to be nothing more than a mechanism to rush through a patchwork of bad, rubber-stamped free-trade agreements to fill the pockets of multinational companies with the profits made by taking advantage of cheap and exploitable labor. This is not only to the detriment of those workers exploited, but also to workers in the United States.

So yes, Bush’s economy may be great for corporate executives. But for the millions of workers who live in fear of their jobs being shipped overseas, who are without health care and retirement security and who are struggling to keep their families afloat, Bush’s so-called “strong