You are wrong on all counts unfortunately. I never claimed that these treaties help poor countries at the expense of the US. And I don’t believe that we in the US have some superior right to middle class lives. We ALL have a right to healthy food, shelter, education and healthcare. These are human rights. Free trade agreements are hugely negative for all of the powerless people in all countries that sign them.
These treaties do less than nothing to help the poor in the countries that sign them, and your notion that past treaties or free trade have done much good for the poor in China or India, or wherever, is simply untrue. Sure, a tiny slice of those nations has gained some semblance of a middle class existence, but for the overwhelming majority they’ve traded a rural agrarian sustenance living for slave labor, starvation wages in dirty factories and shanty-towns. Just look at the “prosperity” NAFTA has brought to Mexico. In fact the only nations that have avoided the pollution, disease and poverty of neoliberal trade arrangements are those that have broken free from those chains.
Just look at the nations that have actual rising living standards for the masses of the poor: they are all “enemies” of the US, or are in disfavor here: Iran (whose greatest crime was shirking the neoliberal economic model, not funding “terrorism”), Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, Botswana…
These “trade” arrangements do nothing to help the people, and everything to create a tiny caste of extremely rich plutocrats in the nations involved, while destroying what little power the governments of these nations have to protect their environments and people. Nowhere did I argue that the sovereignty destroying provisions are unimportant, though you seem pretty comfortable with them. And nowhere did I say that these treaties benefit poorer nations.
And the fact that you are not sure that NAFTA, etc., have “actually damaged the economies or standards of living in the richer…” displays the effectiveness of your brainwashing. NAFTA, etc. have helped cause the loss of literally millions of good American manufacturing jobs. China’s domination of manufacturing is DIRECTLY the result of “free” trade agreements, combined with the simultaneous crushing of union labor and offshoring of American jobs. This state of affairs was engineered by the US financial sector that rewards firms that offshore jobs even if such moves are not economically sound. You probably think China has dominated manufacturing because it can pay its workers less. If that’s true, how does Germany maintain its economic position as manufacturing exporter to the world? Germany pays its manufacturing workers incredibly high wages compared to China. What magic do they have that the US doesn’t? The magic is the simple fact that labor costs are roughly 10% of manufacturing costs. Meaning that offshoring in the US was done not to save money or “remain competitive”, but to simultaneously destroy the bargaining position of US labor while essentially creating a gulag of disposable workers in nations these corporations don’t have to answer to. The US used to have the preeminent manufacturing sector in the world. Our products were the best-made and most reliable. Our workers were paid well for this effort because they had labor unions to protect. The Germans still have labor unions and high wages. Our system was gutted on purpose: it shifts more money from labor to management/administration, rather than creating cheaper products. Wake up. Pretty much everything you think you know is either wrong or simplified to the point that its nonsense. Your conflation of “what’s good” for the poor in poorer nations with “what’s good” for the oligarchs of those nations is just one example of your confusion.
You have utterly distorted what I wrote, and added your own special sauce to create a totally upside-down view of what I wrote and what these treaties represent. Great job.
