Congress Advances on Free Trade Agreements while the President Stalls

ATR ^ | 2011-08-30 | J. Michael Wahlen

[92nina]

Today, Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson announced that there are enough votes in the Senate as well as the House of Representatives to pass free trade agreements with Columbia, Panama and South Korea. This announcement places even greater pressure on President Obama to finally submit the agreements for a congressional vote. The President has touted the agreements as job-creating measures since early 2011 and recently stated that the reason the agreements have not been passed was “the refusal by some in Congress to put country ahead of party.” However, this claim continues to ring hollow considering the main holdup has been the president himself, who has delayed submitting the legislation due to a debate on Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). The Administration currently seeks to raise the TAA levels back to the 2008 levels increased under the stimulus plan but expired earlier this year. While the Senate has largely agreed to the TAA levels requested by the President, the House has planned to take two separate votes, one on the free trade agreements, and the other on the TAA. TAA debates are no reason to delay the job-creating benefits of the free trade agreements. The Administration currently estimates that over 70,000 jobs would be created annually by the South Korean agreement alone. Additionally, the U.S. International Trade Commission estimates that the combined effect of all three agreements would be over $13 billion in increased exports annually...

Read more: http://www.atr.org/congress-advances-free-trade-agreements-president-a6415#ixzz1We1wj6fh

[92nina]

President Obama continues to stall on job-creating free trade agreements.

Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at Digg and at Reddit and in Stumbleupon and Delicious

[Wolfstar]

I’ve been neutral on fta’s for a long time, but am now convinced they are job killers for the American people. What have all the other fta’s we’ve implemented done except make it easier for American companies to ship jobs elsewhere and reduce the American standard of living. I think Ross Perot was right about this issue.

[CowboyJay]

The GOP is 100% gay on this issue. FTA’s need to be killed with fire.

[Last Dakotan]

I disagree with most of the posters here. We need free trade agreements.

The problem the US has with trade is that we have foolishly (think Clinton) entered into a number of one way trade agreements whereby foreign countries have access to our markets, but then deny through a number of means, US firms access to their home markets.

We need to reward those countries which trade freely with us and punish countries (ie China and Japan) that deny us markets.

This is step 1, step 2 is to pull MFN from China.