The House and Senate are debating and will vote on three free trade agreements today. The three agreements probably should not be treated the same. It might make sense to pass the South Korea agreement. The United Auto Workers, and all of the Big 3 Detroit automakers support the deal. The AFL-CIO does not. The Panama agreement probably doesn’t make much difference either way. Their economy is too small to have much influence on ours. But they have worked hard to clean up their status as a tax cheat haven. They have made concessions on environmental and labor laws. I don’t see a reason to oppose the agreement. The Colombia agreement is different. I would oppose it because of how Colombia treats its own labor movement.
If I had to guess, I’d say that these trade agreements will boost U.S, exports, leading to more jobs, some of which will be created in other countries. I don’t foresee a bunch of American factories moving to Korea or Panama, but some car parts business might move from Michigan to China. On balance, we’ll probably come out ahead, but could come out slightly behind.
There’s a reason that these bills are passing with little opposition or much public debate. They just aren’t that big of a deal. There are important issues involved, and individual industries and businesses will be impacted, but none of them will be as important or damaging as NAFTA.
If I had to vote on these bills, I’d do more research and listen to the people whose businesses will be impacted positively or negatively. Right now, based on what I know, I’d sign off on South Korea and Panama, but not Colombia.
However, I respect the view of those who think we should oppose the entire way we think about trade, and that these bills should be killed on principle.
What do you think?
