Trump Reneges On Making Trade Deals Worker Friendly
In his first 10 weeks in office, Trump reneged on one promise after another. Instead of draining the swamp, he filled it with neocon generals and billionaires. He escalated ongoing wars, perhaps intends news ones, instead of curbing US interventionism as promised, along with prioritizing more US resources for long-neglected vital homeland needs.
His war on terror is phony like his predecessors, supporting what he claims to oppose, committing horrendous war crimes in multiple theaters. He’s pro-war, pro-Wall Street, pro-Big Oil, pro-other corporate favorites, anti-beneficial social change, anti-protection of constitutional rights.
He favors tough law enforcement, police state harshness by any standard, along with abandoning online privacy rights and Net Neutrality.
He hugely disappointed supporters hoping for better. Instead, they’re getting dirty business as usual – harming, not helping, them.
On March 30, Global Trade Watch director Lori Wallach blasted his failure to “make NAFTA ‘much better’ for working people.” His trade agenda “could have come from any past pro-NAFTA administration,” she explained, notably the Clintons, getting it enacted on their watch.
A formal notice to Congress of intent to launch trade negotiations was leaked on March 29 – its contents largely replicating TPP’s final text. Trump supports what he opposed on the stump, betraying American workers. Some “shocking points” include:
– protecting investor rights, empowering business over consumer protections, reneging on halting jobs offshored to low-wage countries;
– instead of buy and hire American, Trump’s plan “maintains (jobs-destroying) NAFTA rules,” Wallach explained.
– “language on intellectual property and access to medicines, financial services deregulation, food standards and product safety reflects the TPP standard that was extremely harmful to consumer interests;”
– “language on labor and environment standards describes the TPP terms that Democrats in Congress and unions uniformly rejected.”
Trump’s trade policy is corporate-friendly at the expense of worker rights and consumer protections. Longstanding US “free trade” isn’t fair. A decade post-NAFTA, around a million US jobs were lost, manufacturing hardest hit. Instead of changing harmful US policies, Trump’s agenda is a dream for corporate America, devastating for the nation’s working class, its unemployed and underemployed.
Wallach earlier explained trade deals like NAFTA and TPP represent “a huge assault on the principles and practice of democratic governance.” They’re especially troubling from a president, promising to “fight for (all Americans) with every breath in (his) body, and never, ever let you down.”
Betrayal followed instead of fulfillment, continuing the same harmful agenda as his predecessors.
It shouldn’t surprise. It’s the way things are in America, no matter which right wing of duopoly governance is in power – serving the nation’s privileged class at the expense of most others.
yogaesoteric
May 8, 2017