The Donald Trumps NAFTA Boondoggle May 27, 2020
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy, Uncategorized.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, fair trade deals, level the playing field, NAFTA, union support for Trump, US Auto industry, USMCA
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For years labor leaders, America Firsters, and just about anyone who paid attention have railed against the unfair, job killing, economy destroying one-sided giveaway Bill Clinton and Progressive Democrats foisted on America.
NAFTA allowed and by providing economic incentives encouraged large multi-national corporations to outsource not only jobs but also production. American automobile manufacturers led the way and became the prime example of the offshoring movement. Back in 1994, when NAFTA first descended on the American worker like a plague, the average American autoworker earned about $36 an hour in today’s dollars. The average Mexican autoworker, meanwhile, earned just $6.65 per hour.
Once NAFTA opened the gates to unlimited and untaxed imports from Mexico taking advantage of this cheap labor U.S. auto companies began moving their production to Mexico. The numbers working in auto factories in Mexico tell the story. Back in the pre-NAFTA days Mexican auto factories employed about 100,000. By 2016, after NAFTA that figure grew to 767,000.
This astounding growth cost many American workers their jobs. The number of Americans working in the American auto industry fell from about 1.1 million in 1994 to 940,000 in 2016. And their average wages dropped to about $28 per hour. This drop in pay was forced on the unions when the companies threatened to outsource even more jobs if workers didn’t accept the loss of pay and benefits.
Between 1993 and 2014, the U.S.-Mexico trade balance swung from a $1.7 billion U.S. surplus to a $54 billion deficit. Economists such as Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Robert Scott, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, argue that the consequent surge of imports from Mexico into the U.S. coincided with the loss of up to 600,000 U.S. jobs over two decades.
After a long delay of more than a year caused by Nancy Pelosi and the impeachment lynch mob the House finally passed the United States Canada Mexico Agreement (USMCA). The Senate quickly followed suit and President Trump signed the new and improved trade deal replacing the job killing NAFTA. This is the upgrade 21st-century America needs. The USMCA strengthens labor protections, creates jobs, and discourages U.S. firms from outsourcing American jobs to Mexico.
Trump’s USMCA combats this exporting of America’s industrial base in several ways.
First, the trade pact stipulates that Mexican factories paying employees at least $16 an hour must account for half of all car parts by 2023. High tariffs will be placed on cars sold in America that don’t meet this threshold. This wage requirement is almost like a poison pill for Mexican auto imports since the wages of autoworkers south of the border don’t come anywhere close to this amount.
Second, USMCA also calls for a minimum of 75% of vehicle parts must be manufactured in either the United States, Mexico, or Canada. This is an increase from the 62.5% required by NAFTA. If this goal is not achieved there will be stiff tariffs on the incoming parts and the vehicles. This will encourage US manufacturers to buy American instead of from foreign sources with lower labor costs.
Just these two aspects of Trump’s USMCA will increase the production and sale of cars more nearly made in America than the current situation where autos tend to be international projects sold with American name brands. It has been estimated this could result in as much as Thirty-four billion dollars of investment in American auto manufacturers, which in turn would bring investments in construction and wages. Some have said these two changes alone might result in as many as 76,000 new U.S. automotive jobs over the next five years.
And adhering to Trump’s well-known negotiating style of crafting win-win deals, USMCA wouldn’t just help Americans. One of the requirements of the pact is that Mexico guarantees the right of their workers to unionize for collective bargaining. It also requires the establishment of what Americans have come to see as basic rights for working people, but which are innovations in the Mexican economy. Such things as independent agencies to rule on labor disputes, an end to both gender and racial discrimination, and child labor.
These types of actions will finally start to level the playing field. And as Mexican wages and benefits rise to more nearly American standards companies will have fewer incentives to move their purchasing or manufacturing south of the border. Also, as the Mexican economy begins to provide a living wage to more and more of its citizens less and less will have a reason to come north.
Unions march in lockstep to the democrat drum. They contribute money and manpower to the Democrat political machine. They’ve complained loudly and continually about NAFTA since before its passage and every day through its entire blighted reign as a drag on the American economy. Finally, someone stepped into the breach and fought the good fight to end this bad deal.
Trump has done it. After more than a year of holding it hostage to their impeachment/coup attempt Nancy Pelosi and her minions finally passed it. The President signed it. Now let’s see if the union bosses will admit which side of their bread is buttered, or will they bite the hand that feeds them? Whatever the bosses do I’m betting a large percentage of union members will shake off their pre-programmed allegiance to bi-coastal elites, the permanent bureaucracy, and their media megaphone.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2020 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Trump Trade Deals February 26, 2020
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy, Uncategorized.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, free trade, level playing field, NAFTA, Trump Trade deals, USMCA
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President Trump campaigned on his ability to revoke, revise, or replace the bewildering myriad of trade deals previous administrations negotiated which worked primarily to the benefit of everyone except US. Finally, after twenty-eight years of politicians selling American workers and entrepreneurs out President Trump is putting America first.
A case in point:
After dragging their feet and the nation through their impeachment/election campaign ploy the House recently passed the United States Canada Mexico Agreement (USMCA). The Senate quickly followed suit and President Trump signed the new and improved trade deal replacing the job killing NAFTA. This is the upgrade 21st-century America needs.
This is such an obvious improvement that even normally virulently anti-Trump labor leaders led by the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka have come out in support of the new deal. In an op-ed for CNN Trumpka said, “Because of our patience and perseverance, the USMCA now includes strong labor rights and a viable mechanism to enforce them. … We also secured a separate enforcement mechanism that allows for inspections of factories and facilities that don’t live up to their obligations. This was an important priority for the labor movement because it ensures that working people in all three countries have greater protections under this new agreement. … The deal isn’t perfect, but that it is a far cry from the original NAFTA, and that is a huge win for working people in North America.”
United Steelworkers President Thomas Conway said, “The revised deal is better than the original USMCA and certainly better than NAFTA. It should be adopted. The leaders of all three countries must diligently enforce the provisions, however, and we intend to hold them accountable to ensure that workers, the environment and consumers are protected. … Outsourcing won’t end as companies continue to search the globe for places where they can profit off of the hard work of others, spoil the environment to improve their balance sheets and raise prices for basic needs. The fight for fair trade won’t end with this agreement, but it’s an agreement worth passing.”
And it isn’t just labor leaders expressing their appreciation for the types of trade deals President Trump is working to secure, which replace the giveaways previous administrations imposed on us that transfers American wealth overseas.
Lori Wallach of the left-wing Public Citizen organization which tracks globalization’s impact on American workers, referred to USMCA saying, “It sets the floor from which we will fight for good trade policies that put working people and the planet first.” When comparing Trump’s USMCA to former President Obama’s failed Trans Pacific-Partnership (TPP) Wallach said, “The unusually large, bipartisan vote on the revised [USMCA] shows that to be politically viable, U.S. trade pacts no longer can include extreme corporate investor privileges or broad monopoly protections for Big Pharma and must have enforceable labor and environmental standards, in contrast to the 2016 Trans-Pacific Partnership, which never got close to majority House support.”
Breitbart News sums up the situation this way, “Decades-long free trade deals, NAFTA, and China’s entering the World Trade Organization (WTO) eliminated about five million American manufacturing jobs and 50,000 U.S. manufacturing plants since 1994. American manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy, as every manufacturing job supports an additional 7.4 American jobs in other industries.”
John Binder of Breitbart added, “Free trade advocates, such [as] former Vice President Joe Biden, claimed at the time that NAFTA would create a million U.S. manufacturing jobs in the first five years. Instead, nearly a million American jobs have been certified by the federal government as being lost directly due to NAFTA, according to data gathered by Public Citizen. These are only the U.S. jobs that the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program recognizes as being lost to free trade and does not indicate the actual number of jobs lost.”
Moving from the general to the specific let’s look at an example of how one American entrepreneur looked at the USMCA agreement and why he thought it was so vital to his industry and his state.
Before the passage of USMCA Jason Wilburn, president of Foerster Instruments, a manufacturer of equipment for the nondestructive testing of materials and components, along with other manufacturers from around the country converged on Washington to tell lawmakers to support and ratify the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. In an editorial published on Triblive.com Wilbur stated, “Just like the unseen parts used to make automobiles and airplanes work, the contributions of the Keystone State are often experienced — even if not always seen — every day around the world. The products manufactured in Pennsylvania help make the world function, but all of that could slow down if a critical trade agreement with our North American neighbors is not approved by Congress.”
While saying previous agreements providing for free trade throughout North America have been beneficial Wilburn added, “NAFTA is now more than 25 years old and in need of an update. That’s why the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico negotiated a new and modern agreement to replace it.” He went on to “explain the importance of tariff-free trade to my business and how the USMCA would build on previous trade deals and provide less onerous requirements to ship manufactured goods to our North American neighbors.” In addition, the small manufacturer from Pennsylvania made this ringing cry for a level playing field, “that, without tariff-free trade across North America protected by a strong trade agreement, our state’s manufactured exports to Canada and Mexico could be hit with as much as $1.7 billion in extra taxes. Costs like that are enough to devastate any business. As a result, many of Pennsylvania’s manufacturers and the workers and communities they support would lose sales as competitors from Europe and Asia swoop in on our missed opportunity, steal our business and, along with it, the American dream.”
Ending his well-stated and impassioned plea for the passage of USMCA as the House dithered away the year in its relentless efforts to impeach President Trump Mr. Wilburn wrote this, “We need to cut the red tape and the arduous regulations that make it harder to do business. The USMCA does this for small manufacturers. If the USMCA is ratified, businesses like mine will be able to continue doing what we do best: create highly sophisticated components and provide constant innovations in products to our global customers. That’s good for Pennsylvania and it’s good for our country.”
And there you have it. President Trump works tirelessly to make America great again. Now it’s up to us to see through the fog machine of artificial scandals and baseless charges and cast our votes to keep America great.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2020 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
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