[CTC] Two More Trade Unionists Assassinated in Colombia

[Andrew Gussert]

If a majority of the majority doesn't support it, we shouldn't be passing
another failed trade deal.

 

US Democrats uneasy on deal

By FOSTER KLUG - July 6, 2010

http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/265490/us-democrats-uneasy-deal

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - If Barack Obama is to push through a long-stalled US-South
Korea free trade deal, he is going to need something rare during his
presidency: Republican support.

 

Members of Obama's Democratic Party are balking after his announcement last
week at a high-profile global summit that he will revive the accord to cut
tariffs and other barriers to trade in goods and services.

 

Democratic worries about South Korean restrictions on auto and beef trade
sank the agreement after the Bush administration and Seoul signed it three
years ago.

 

It now has Obama's support, but his party still shows little enthusiasm
ahead of crucial November congressional elections. Labor unions and other
core Democratic supporters say foreign trade agreements steal American jobs.

 

That puts Obama in the unusual position of relying on help from Republicans,
who have opposed in near-perfect unison his biggest initiatives, including
his overhauls of health care and financial regulations.

 

Republicans traditionally favor foreign trade deals more than Democrats do,
and they are lining up behind Obama's push to settle a pact that the White
House says could boost exports of American products by $10 billion a year.
It would be the largest US trade deal since a 1994 agreement with Canada and
Mexico. Republican Rep. Dave Reichert says the Korea accord "has the
potential to create thousands of American jobs and continue a partnership
with a democratically.''

 

Obama at the Toronto summit of the Group of 20 economies directed his trade
envoys to work out differences with their Korean counterparts by the time he
visits Seoul in November for the next G-20. That would allow him to send a
deal to Congress early next year. Democratic backlash was quick.

 

Rep. Louise Slaughter, chairwoman of the influential House of
Representatives Rules Committee, expressed surprise that Obama would "try to
slide this poorly written trade deal past the American public when Congress
has already said that the deal is not good for our economy or workers.''

 

Opponents say the accord does not knock down enough barriers to the sale of
American cars in Korea. There also is frustration with South Korean
restrictions on American beef imports.

 

Bowing to those worries, Obama initially refused to send the deal to
Congress for a vote. Then, early this year, Obama championed a drive to
double US exports during the next five years. Part of that push, he said,
would be strengthened trade ties with South Korea. Now, after Obama's
commitment

in Toronto, he must win over Democrats.

 

Lawmakers will face pressure not to block a deal that supporters say
strengthens ties with an important US ally at a moment of high tension on
the Korean peninsula. The United States wants to bolster Seoul after a South
Korean-led international investigation found that a North Korean torpedo
sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors.

 

During the G-20, Obama lavished South Korean President Lee Myung-bak with
attention. Besides the trade deal, Obama announced an agreement, coveted by
the Koreans, to delay until 2015 a plan for the US military to hand over to
Seoul command of troops on the Korean peninsula if war should break out
between North and South Korea. Obama also criticized North Korea over the
sunken warship.

 

"There is a foreign policy imperative to move forward with the ratification
of this agreement,'' said Jeffrey Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson
Institute for International Economics.

 

Another White House argument will point to Seoul's warning that the United
States could lose hundreds of thousands of jobs if it should fail to act and
a South Korean trade agreement with the European Union were ratified. It is
unclear how far South Korea is willing to bend in talks with Washington

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