Workers will lose with trade treaty
“Let them eat cake.”
This what the Jacobin propagandist claimed was Marie Antoinette’s haughty reply when she was told, “The peasants have no bread.” Your president and your Congress are preparing a similar arrogant reply for Americans. Only in this case it is, “The peasants have no jobs.”
You will hear that often, after the Trans-Pacific Partnership is enacted and foisted upon the American people. Look at the decimation of industry and labor by NAFTA, GATT and the other “free trade” treaties. The results are increased national debt compounded by increased trade imbalances. With every free-trade treaty, jobs, wages and benefits decline, while a few plutocratic lords benefit.
Politicians and bureaucrats live luxuriously and are guaranteed lucrative retirement and benefit packages. And that does not count the bipartisan K Street contributions that will ensure their families will live in luxury for generations. But look at it this way: If I Work for Benedict Arnold Industries, but my employer shuts down the mill, mine or factory where I work because of the Environmental Protection Agency or a free-trade agreement, then I am in poverty. So are my fellow workers. So are the merchants who provide goods and services we can no longer afford. If some so-called American multinational companies, especially those in the banking industry, benefit, while millions of workers lose their jobs, where is the benefit? Sure, many of us will find “newly-created,” lower-paying jobs, with fewer or no benefits. And we know, despite all the rhetoric, our path to poverty and peasantry was done by the Democratic and Republican politicians who betrayed their fellow citizens and endorsed these trade agreements.
Michael Guy
Canonsburg