The fact Obama and McConnell are on the same side in this deal worries me greatly. NAFTA had a huge impact on American jobs. At the very least I think that the America people need to have access to every detail of the TPP before it's enacted.
That's what I'm saying. What's to stop a Republican president from using fast track authority to gut Dodd Frank through a trade agreement if this is passed? Obama says Warren is wrong but I don't believe him nor do I trust him.
I don't think so. It had a huge impact on union jobs and other jobs that were not competitive internationally, but that had been going on for some time before NAFTA. Within NAFTA's first five years of existence, 709,988 jobs were created domestically. The unemployment rate over this period was an average of only 5.1%, compared to 7.1% from 1982-1993, before NAFTA was implemented. We can't discount the number of jobs supported by our own exports. Because $12 billion of average annual gains in exports were also created by expansion of North American trade, more than 100,000 additional US jobs were created annually. On the whole NAFTA has been neither a miracle nor a disaster, but it slowed the wholesale dependence on cheap Chinese goods.
So what about the point Warren makes about a future republican president using this to gut Dodd Frank?
All of the points that Warren is making are about energizing the “Draft Warren” movement that desperately wants her to run for president. It's a campaign year, OK? She is really off target on this one because Dodd- Frank is about financial reform and has nothing at all to do with TPP. Republicans have fought Dodd-Frank all along to placate their constituency in Big Money. They think that it may have been necessary in 2008 to reign in irresponsible financial policies but wants it lifted now so that Wall Street can run wild again and return to taking big risks of tanking the economy. The GOP has already tried to abolish Dodd-Frank but knows that Obama will veto it. So Warren only states the obvious in that the Republicans will push their agenda if they get the White House in 2016. But her rhetoric that fast tracking TPP will somehow enhance the GOP's chances of fast-tracking a bill to abolish Dodd-Frank, should they win the White House, is increasingly wide of the mark and easily rebutted. The White House strategy here is to let Warren vent all she wants. Obama is hesitating to cut her off at the ankles because he doesn't want to arouse her radical constituency which has fought him from the left all along. In the end it all comes down to the votes, and he doesn’t need her vote to pass this.
Unemployment isn't the only factor that impacts jobs. It's no small secret that wages have stagnated while productivity has increased in the American workplace. No country does more with less and wages have not increased for this level of production. Trade deficits have offset many production jobs and a lot of the data is skewed by scenarios where large quantities of materials are "exported" to Mexico to be assembled then "imported" to the US for purchase in fewer quantities. These are jobs taken from the American worker. There was also an enormous technological boom in America that drove the unemployment data you reference. It is arguable that these jobs would have been in addition to the ones lost by exporting manufacturing jobs to Canada and Mexico. The net job data do show an overall gain, but a vast number of these jobs that have been created do not pay as well as the jobs that were lost. Between 40% to 47% of the jobs in this country (depending on who you ask) pay $15/hr or less. People are raising families on wages from the 1970's. The low pay is not because that's what people are worth in terms of talent and production. It's because that's what they pay and people have little to no bargaining leverage to their wages. There will always be someone hungry enough to take fewer wages when 40% of the eligible jobs out there pay the same. Parents take two jobs, never see their kids and feed them shitty food because they don't have time to cook between working 80 hours a week. After warming up spaghetti-o's or a hot pocket, they crash on the couch for a few hours rest before the next job starts. Welcome to the new American Dream. A large portion of those jobs were manufacturing jobs. You could raise a family on a manufacturing job. Take a vacation every once in a while. Take time off to see the kids play football, softball, track, etc. There was energy to cook food and teach your kids to cook food. People in communities intersected with one another and cared about one another. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than what we have now. That's not all due to NAFTA, but it sure as hell didn't help.
They have increased exponentially on the management end of the scale but have stagnated for the actual workers. This is pure corporate greed at play. I do not think this is the case. The jobs we are losing are labor jobs, while the jobs created are knowledge jobs. Service jobs have also been created but they have never provided a middle-class income. In the 1950's union labor jobs at the auto companies and steel factories rose to unprecedented pay levels, but it crashed those industries because they were unsustainable in the international free market that are created by the Pax Americana after WWII. It's more than that . . . the main reason is that the people are not worth that much in a global marketplace. American industries either had to go out of business (like big steel) or utilize foreign labor (like big auto). Welcome to the new American reality. Manufacturing jobs no longer can provide a middle class American lifestyle. Ambitious young people cannot expect to make good wages with a high school degree and a factory job with union pay and benefits. They certainly cannot get good wages in the service industry either. They have to go to college and be capable of getting a knowledge job, which pay well and are the future of the American economy.
Thats not true. There is a shortage of trade labor. I believe large portions of our problem is that we have told our kids, "you have to go to college". It is our education system that is failing our kids. We do not zero in on what kids are good at and focus skills they enjoy. High schools should start every kid down that path. We have wasted more than enough money in this country that could have been used on local labor rebuilding our infrastructure which utilizes such trade skills.
Just on quibble there are plenty of manufacturing jobs created that support a middle class population. There are auto plants all over the south with well paying jobs. In fact a new one is coming to South Carolina. There are also jobs tied to the oil industry that provide good incomes. They include construction, operations etc in the oil industry as well as the manufacturing jobs in the oil field support (Baker Hughes, National Oilwell Dresser and others). These jobs are mainly filled by HS educated craftsmen who have applied themselves. There are millions of them throughout the U.S. Part of the reason for the failure of the manufacturing in the 70's and since has been the rigidity of labor unions. I represented one company where the labor union voted down updated work rules and let it go bankrupt (Chapter 7) don't get me wrong the world market as well as poor management have the fair share of blame. It's just so often labor union management is given a pass when they have much blame. There is a vital need for good labor unions that will look to the long run and be willing to work with an enlightened management. I am now working for a company Siemens that has invested in U.S. Plants and people and with good labor unions run world class facilities here and are profitable and pay very well. Bottom line is that it can be done but not in the old adversarial way.
Wages haven't gone up because all they money is going into the CEO's pockets. The first thing that gets cut when a company starts to see profit kind of either decrease from the previous year, or stay around the same is cut labor. They don't try to look at efficiencies or even dream of cutting the CEO's and high level management's pay.
