[CTC] Don’t be fooled by claims that TPP would create jobs

[Xiomara Castro]

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http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article77049907.html

May 15, 2016 12:00 AM
Don’t be fooled by claims that TPP would create jobs

Trans-Pacific Partnership would lead to more jobs sent overseas

Studies show our trade policies have contributed to income inequality
If the Trans-Pacific Partnership is approved, U.S. corporations would get
new incentives to offshore production to countries like Vietnam, where
workers make an average of 65 cents an hour, Agustin Beltran writes.

By Agustin “Augie” Beltran

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a massive “free trade” agreement with 11
Pacific Rim nations. Recently signed, it cannot go into effect unless
Congress approves. The pact would make it easier for corporations to
offshore more American jobs and push down our wages. It would give big drug
firms new rights to raise medicine prices, and it would flood us with
unsafe imported food.

TPP proponents claim it would benefit our region, creating 1 million
Californian jobs. Seriously? (“California should capitalize on global trade
with TPP”
<http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article71979212.html>;
Forum, April 17)

The Obama administration received a four-Pinocchio rating from The
Washington Post when it claimed that the TPP would help support 650,000
jobs nationwide. California already has lost more than 417,000
manufacturing jobs since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or
NAFTA. And it’s not just manufacturing jobs. California’s $403 million
trade surplus with NAFTA nations flipped to a $187 million deficit after
the pact.

More than 172,000 specific California jobs have been certified under the
Trade Adjustment Assistance program as lost to offshoring or imports, which
significantly undercounts jobs because the program only covers a subset of
jobs lost to trade. Included are 810 Campbell Soup employees hit by the
2012 Sacramento plant shutdown when production was moved to Malaysia and
Australia.

If the TPP is approved, U.S. corporations would get new incentives to
offshore even more production to countries like Vietnam, where workers make
an average of 65 cents an hour.

Studies have produced academic consensus that our trade policies are a
major contributor to today’s unprecedented income inequality. The TPP and
other NAFTA-style pacts promote offshoring of well-paying U.S.
manufacturing jobs, pushing down wages nationwide as trade-displaced
workers compete for lower-paying jobs in the service sector that can’t be
moved offshore.

Opposed by the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council,
Greenpeace and many other environmental groups, 350.org has called the TPP
an “act of climate denial.”

The TPP will offshore California jobs and push down our wages. Americans
across the country and across party lines have had enough of these empty
free-trade promises and are saying “no” to the TPP.

Agustin “Augie” Beltran is director of public and governmental relations
for the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council. Contact him at
social at nccrc.org.

-- 
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Citizens Trade Campaign
510-701-2798 (cell)
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