[CTC] Biden promises Buy American enforcement

[Citizens Trade Campaign]

The KORUS Free Trade Agreement was negotiated and signed by President Bush
over three years ago.  Because of concerns about cars and catfish -
refrigerators and rice - TV sets and beef, and a host of other important
issues, this FTA remains unresolved.  

 

Scores of members of congress have suggested the Korea FTA be renegotiated
or scrapped, and hundreds of groups from the faith, farm, labor and
environmental communities remain opposed to passage in its current form.

 

We are asking you to join with these many groups, and add your
organization's name to the list of those opposed to this Bush-negotiated
Korea FTA.  

 

To add your organization's name, please send it to
<mailto:agussert at citizenstrade.org> agussert at citizenstrade.org by August
12th.   (The letter will not go out under any specific letterhead.)

 

Many Thanks,

 

Andy Gussert

202-494-8826

---

 

August 16th, 2010

 

President Barack Obama

The White House   

1600 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W.   

Washington, D.C. 20500 

 

Dear President Obama:

 

We, the undersigned faith, family farm, environmental, labor, consumer
protection and civil society organizations, are among the many that support
your campaign commitments to create a new American trade agreement model
that works for more people, and strongly oppose the Bush-negotiated
Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA). 

 

Signed by President Bush over three years ago, the Korea FTA represents a
throwback to a failed trade policy, not the promised change. Our members
strongly oppose more of these same job-killing, community destroying trade
policies.

 

We urge you to renegotiate the Korea FTA text.  Doing so offers an
opportunity to begin to unify Americans in favor of new trade rules that
create American jobs. 

 

This Korea FTA, signed before the financial crisis, includes financial
service deregulation terms that typify Bush's FTAs, but contradict efforts
to restore stability to the global economy. The pact's labor chapter
includes the Bush administration's explicit ban on reference to the
International Labor Organization's core Conventions. Yet the Conventions and
related jurisprudence are the fundamental platform of international labor
rights. This limitation was imposed by the previous administration in 2007
when various FTAs' labor chapters were being modified. 

 

This FTA also includes extreme foreign investor rights and their private
investor-state enforcement that you rightly criticized during the campaign.
These terms pose special threats because there are many Korean firms
operating here that would be newly empowered to attack U.S. environmental,
financial, health and other policies in foreign tribunals.  Canadian firms
have used NAFTA, the only other pact with a major capital exporting country
that includes these terms, to bring a series of cases which have cost
millions in government legal costs even when we successfully defend against
the attacks. Implementing the Korea FTA as written would newly expose the
U.S. government and taxpayers to expansive financial liabilities related to
compensation demands in foreign tribunals from Korean firms operating within
our borders.

 

These are problems of equal importance to the barriers to the Korean market
that were left unaddressed with respect to numerous U.S. industries such as
the auto and beef sectors.  As you recall, the International Trade
Commission's 2007 study of the Korea FTA concluded that it would result in
the growth of the U.S. global trade deficit, an outcome that would undermine
the goal of creating two million new American jobs through export expansion.


 

Both the problems with the FTA's rules and with meaningful market access for
U.S. exports must be addressed in a manner that incorporates needed
improvements into the agreement's legally-binding, enforceable terms.

 

Moving forward with another job-killing FTA is contrary to what our
organizations' millions of members want, and, as polling demonstrates, what
the overwhelming majority of Americans want. Public demand for a new
American trade model was high even before millions of Americans lost their
jobs to the worst economic debacle since the Great Depression. Now, given
the level of unemployment and economic insecurity plaguing many Americans,
implementing another NAFTA-style trade pact is especially unwise. 

 

As a roadmap for renegotiating the most problematic provisions of the Korea
FTA text, we encourage you to consider the Trade Reform, Accountability,
Development and Employment (TRADE) Act, which has the support of over 150
members of Congress, including a majority of House Democrats. 

 

We strongly agree with your statements that America needs a new trade
agreement model that works for the majority, not just the special interests.
We cannot support outdated trade agreements, such as Bush's Korea FTA, that
benefit serial offshoring multinational corporations at the expense of
America's small businesses, workers and farmers and the environmental,
health and public interest laws on which all Americans rely. We hope that
you will renegotiate the most damaging aspects of the Korea FTA. If it is
brought before Congress without the needed changes, we will work to defeat
it.

 

Sincerely, 

 

National Organizations

 

Americans for Democratic Action


Communications Workers of America

National Family Farm Coalition   

Int. Association of Machinists


Int. Brotherhood of Boilermakers

Int. Brotherhood of Teamsters

Public Citizens Global Trade Watch

United Methodist Gen. Board of Church & Society

United Steelworkers      

United Students Against Sweatshops 

Witness for Peace

 

State Organizations

 

California Fair Trade Coalition

Florida Fair Trade Coalition

Maine Fair Trade Campaign

Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition

New York Citizens Trade Coalition

Ohio Conference on Fair Trade

Oregon Fair Trade Coalition

Pennsylvania Fair Trade Coalition

Texas Fair Trade Coalition

Washington Fair Trade Coalition

Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition

 

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