Wednesday, March 08, 2006
New U.S.-Vietnam Free Trade Push Raises a Taboo Question
by David Siorta - workingforchange.com/blog
The shills who have pushed America to eliminate all labor, wage, human rights, and environmental standards from our trade policy often smarmily tell us that they are really doing so because they want to help poor workers abroad. They call this "free" trade even though it is anything but. And at first, their happy logic seems sound - investment in underdeveloped countries will bring resources to those countries, and a rising tide lifts all boats. But even if you ignore wealth stratification statistics and actually believe that nonsense, one taboo question , inadvertently raised by a new Businessweek article, never gets answered:
What happens when companies find even cheaper labor markets than the original one?
Here's what I am talking about. NAFTA was supposed to help improve conditions for Mexicans. Ten years later, statistics show 19 million more Mexicans live in poverty. Meanwhile, economist Jeff Faux notes:
"Average real wages in Mexican manufacturing are actually lower than they were [since NAFTA]. Two and a half million farmers and their families have been driven out of their local markets and off their land by heavily subsidized US and Canadian agribusiness. For most Mexicans, half of whom live in poverty, basic food has gotten even more expensive: Today the Mexican minimum wage buys less than half the tortillas it bought in 1994."
This is, in part, due to the fact that soon after we inked NAFTA, we signed the China PNTR deal and brought China into the WTO, meaning both American and Mexican jobs got shipped off there. This is a trade policy that does justice not to workers, but to people like GE CEO Jack Welch who famously said, "ideally, you'd have every plant you own on a barge" - with the "free" trade policies allowing that barge to move operations to find lower and lower wages in more and more desperate countries.
Now, even as U.S. wages stagnate thanks to free trade deals undermining worker bargaining power, we see our government is publicly pushing for a new free trade deal with Vietnam. And as Businessweek indicates, that would logically help the "barges" exploit even worse conditions. In a story about Intel opening a factory there, the magazine notes:
"A big reason for the [new investment] is rock-bottom wages. As labor shortages in some regions of China drive up costs, factory hands in parts of the mainland can earn more than five times the $55 per month that Vietnamese workers in foreign-owned factories are paid. That differential is a big reason why Sparton Corp. (SPA ) of Jackson, Mich., chose Vietnam over China last year when it made its first investment outside North America... And Vietnam this year might wrap up negotiations for World Trade Organization membership. That would be a huge boon."
So there you have it. $225-per-month Chinese wages are simply too high - so the corporate elite join hands with the corrupt politicians to move forward another round of "free" trade deals - stripped of wage/labor/human rights/environmental protections - to open up even cheaper pools of exploitable, oppressed workers. The moment workers start making any economic gains at all - out comes another trade deal to open up another pool of oppressed labor so that the corporate barges can cut costs.
This, of course, begs a question that no one wants to answer: When does it all end? We inked a free trade deal with the wildly corrupt government of Mexico - a deal that eliminated environmental and wage protections. Then we inked a free trade deal with communist China - a deal that eliminated human rights standards. Recently, we began finalizing negotiations to sign a free trade deal with the United Arab Emirates - a deal that ignores all national security concerns. And now our government is pushing a free trade deal with Communist Vietnam - a deal that allows corporations to not only undermine American workers, but undermine workers in our trading partners who we promised would benefit from our trade policies in the first place.
So again, when does it all end? As I wrote in my upcoming book Hostile Takeover, "Will we soon see a 'free' trade agreement with North Korea – a country whose dictator has quite literally enslaved his population? Forget about 'low-wage' labor – Big Business would have 'no-wage' labor America’s trade policy should encourage and reward?"
Seriously folks, when will this downward spiral end?
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by David Siorta - workingforchange.com/blog
The shills who have pushed America to eliminate all labor, wage, human rights, and environmental standards from our trade policy often smarmily tell us that they are really doing so because they want to help poor workers abroad. They call this "free" trade even though it is anything but. And at first, their happy logic seems sound - investment in underdeveloped countries will bring resources to those countries, and a rising tide lifts all boats. But even if you ignore wealth stratification statistics and actually believe that nonsense, one taboo question , inadvertently raised by a new Businessweek article, never gets answered:
What happens when companies find even cheaper labor markets than the original one?
Here's what I am talking about. NAFTA was supposed to help improve conditions for Mexicans. Ten years later, statistics show 19 million more Mexicans live in poverty. Meanwhile, economist Jeff Faux notes:
"Average real wages in Mexican manufacturing are actually lower than they were [since NAFTA]. Two and a half million farmers and their families have been driven out of their local markets and off their land by heavily subsidized US and Canadian agribusiness. For most Mexicans, half of whom live in poverty, basic food has gotten even more expensive: Today the Mexican minimum wage buys less than half the tortillas it bought in 1994."
This is, in part, due to the fact that soon after we inked NAFTA, we signed the China PNTR deal and brought China into the WTO, meaning both American and Mexican jobs got shipped off there. This is a trade policy that does justice not to workers, but to people like GE CEO Jack Welch who famously said, "ideally, you'd have every plant you own on a barge" - with the "free" trade policies allowing that barge to move operations to find lower and lower wages in more and more desperate countries.
Now, even as U.S. wages stagnate thanks to free trade deals undermining worker bargaining power, we see our government is publicly pushing for a new free trade deal with Vietnam. And as Businessweek indicates, that would logically help the "barges" exploit even worse conditions. In a story about Intel opening a factory there, the magazine notes:
"A big reason for the [new investment] is rock-bottom wages. As labor shortages in some regions of China drive up costs, factory hands in parts of the mainland can earn more than five times the $55 per month that Vietnamese workers in foreign-owned factories are paid. That differential is a big reason why Sparton Corp. (SPA ) of Jackson, Mich., chose Vietnam over China last year when it made its first investment outside North America... And Vietnam this year might wrap up negotiations for World Trade Organization membership. That would be a huge boon."
So there you have it. $225-per-month Chinese wages are simply too high - so the corporate elite join hands with the corrupt politicians to move forward another round of "free" trade deals - stripped of wage/labor/human rights/environmental protections - to open up even cheaper pools of exploitable, oppressed workers. The moment workers start making any economic gains at all - out comes another trade deal to open up another pool of oppressed labor so that the corporate barges can cut costs.
This, of course, begs a question that no one wants to answer: When does it all end? We inked a free trade deal with the wildly corrupt government of Mexico - a deal that eliminated environmental and wage protections. Then we inked a free trade deal with communist China - a deal that eliminated human rights standards. Recently, we began finalizing negotiations to sign a free trade deal with the United Arab Emirates - a deal that ignores all national security concerns. And now our government is pushing a free trade deal with Communist Vietnam - a deal that allows corporations to not only undermine American workers, but undermine workers in our trading partners who we promised would benefit from our trade policies in the first place.
So again, when does it all end? As I wrote in my upcoming book Hostile Takeover, "Will we soon see a 'free' trade agreement with North Korea – a country whose dictator has quite literally enslaved his population? Forget about 'low-wage' labor – Big Business would have 'no-wage' labor America’s trade policy should encourage and reward?"
Seriously folks, when will this downward spiral end?
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