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Health & Fitness

American Sovereignty and Economy Threatened by "Fast Track"

Congress must vigorously oppose the upcoming "fast track" Trade Promotion Authority law, and oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) treaties the President intends to pass via "fast track."

"Fast Track" would grant the President authority to negotiate trade deals with other countries with little to no transparency and then quickly pass them through Congress with little to no deliberation.  Besides violating the US Constitution Article 2 Section 2 (requiring treaties be approved by ⅔ of the Senate), there are serious Constitutional problems with the abdication of US sovereignty and Congressional authority in these treaties.

The severe damage these treaties would do to American democracy, and to government accountability to the citizenry, is shown in the articles found here:

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http://www.tradereform.org/2013/12/leaked-tpp-texts-reveal-bonanza-special-rights-corporations/

The articles in the above link describe how the TPP and the TTIP would remove jurisdiction from Congress and state legislatures on matters of legislation and regulation --of commerce, labor and environment, intellectual property, government procurement and many other matters of national sovereignty.

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These treaties would, by virtue of Article VI of the Constitution, become "the supreme law of the land," amounting to a Constitutional Amendment by abdicating Congressional and state legislature sovereignty to appointed World Trade Organization bureaucracies of global governance with zero accountability to the American people.

And there are grave economic consequences as well.  The results of past Free Trade treaties have been disastrous.  Let's consider just 2 examples, NAFTA and KORUS.

Despite having a trade surplus with Mexico in 1993 before NAFTA was implemented, that all changed dramatically by 2011.  After 18 years of NAFTA, our trade surplus with Mexico morphed into an alarming $103 billion deficit. And that isn’t even taking into account Canada. With Canada in the equation, our combined deficit by 2011 was $185 billion.

The same is true with KORUS.  According to the US Census Foreign Trade data, since that deal with South Korea went into effect in March 2012, our trade deficit with Korea has risen 68%.  In 2011, our total trade deficit with South Korea was $13,261,800,000.  In 2012 it rose 25% to $16,612,200,000 --and the free trade treaty was only in force for the last the last 10 of those 12 months.  Now in the first 10 months of 2013, our trade deficit with Korea is already $18,664,500,000.  That means that our 2013 trade deficit will be, if staying proportional with the first 10 months, $22,397,400,000 --an increase of 68% since 2011, the last year before KORUS.

These huge chronic trade deficits are the results of the Free Trade policies, and they mean the loss of millions of US manufacturing jobs plus millions more jobs in other sectors that would have been supported through the multiplier-effect manufacturing has.

In his Dec 18 letter to me regarding his support for extending Emergency Unemployment Compensation, Congressman Jim Himes says "there are still 1.3 million fewer jobs today than when the recession started six years ago."  But how much of that spending power in Unemployment Compensation will just leak out the bottom of our economy through our annual $600 Billion trade deficits?

The solution is to create millions of new jobs in the USA by replacing Free Trade with a BALANCED TRADE POLICY.  In the last 3 years for which the Census Department provides data (2010, 2011,2012), our annual trade deficit in goods and services has averaged about $530 Billion.  If we were to implement a Balanced Trade policy, we would divert that trade deficit into over $500 Billion annual increased demand for US-made goods and services.

This would directly raise our GDP 3.313%, and when we consider that the manufacturing Institute estimates that every $1 in manufacturing output produces an additional $1.48 in other sectors through the multiplier effect, so that 3.313% rise in GDP through balanced trade jumps to 8.216% total rise in GDP.  So even if there were a gross error or disappointment knocking off half of that 8.216%, we'd still see a 4.1% rise in GDP by balancing our trade.

A Balanced Trade law like the 2006 Balanced Trade Restoration Bill S.3899 offered an elegant and guaranteed solution: require imports be licensed through Import Certificates issued in the same amount as our exports.  That would redirect our trade deficits into $6 trillion stimulus of American industries over ten-years, and add 4% to our annual GDP.  It would directly create millions of manufacturing jobs, plus many million more jobs in other sectors through the multiplier effect manufacturing has.

All without costing taxpayers a dime.

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