Help Preserve Jobs and National Security & Independence:Defeat the U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement

The New American ^

[Coleus]

UPDATE, July 19, 2006. The House is expected to vote on the U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement (FTA) very soon.   The Senate has already approved this trade pact by 60-34 in June. This could be another CAFTA-type cliff hanger in the House, so please contact your representative immediately via phone, fax, or email, in strong opposition to the U.S.-Oman FTA. Phone is preferable due to the shortness of time and the bigger impact. 

Help Preserve Jobs and National Security & Independence: Defeat the U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement

What's it all mean?

We have a golden opportunity to derail the NAFTA/CAFTA series of "free trade" agreements that are producing massive job losses for Americans and eroding national security and independence.

The U.S.-Oman FTA (Free Trade Agreement) was approved by the Senate with a vote of 60-34. The vote on this agreement is expected to be much closer in the House.

In light of the winning margin of just two votes on last year's CAFTA bill, and election-year jitters over controversial votes, the U.S.-Oman deal could be defeated in the House.

NOTE: A vote by the full House is expected in July, so you have to contact your representative now! (Please!)

Reasons for Opposing the U.S.-Oman FTA:

• The U.S.-Oman FTA threatens American jobs. For example, AMTAC (American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition) states that the agreement includes a ridiculously large tariff preference level (TPL) of 50 million square meters of textiles annually for 10 years, which will mean that Chinese yarns and fabrics will be shipped to Oman, cut and sewn into garments and then exported duty-free to the U.S.
• The U.S.-Oman FTA threatens national security. As reported on the Lou Dobbs Tonight show of June 28, "Under the Oman free trade agreement, foreign port operators would have a right, an absolute trade agreement right, to establish operations, to acquire, to operate, to run port facilities within the U.S." Under the "Cross Border Trade in Services" chapter of the U.S.-Oman FTA, a Dubai Ports World-type enterprise could acquire a company in Oman, and then operate U.S. ports through that company.
• The U.S.-Oman FTA threatens our national independence. Just as a European-wide free trade agreement has led to the loss of sovereignty of European nations to the European Union, and just as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area) is now being converted into a sovereignty-destroying North American Union through the creation last year of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America, the U.S.-Oman FTA is designed to help bring about a Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA), which would be another sovereignty-destroying, supranational organization to which the U.S. would belong.

Recommended Action Plan:

1. Contact your representative in-person, or by phone, fax, or email before the House reconvenes July 10 and demand a NO vote on the U.S.-Oman FTA based on the reasons above.
   
2. Click here to see whether your rep voted yes on the CAFTA bill last year, which should be a good indicator of whether he is likely to vote yes on the U.S.-Oman FTA this year.

   Dear Representative, 

   Please vote NO on the U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement!
   
   My reasons are:
   
   •The U.S.-Oman FTA threatens American jobs. For example, the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC) states that the agreement includes a ridiculously large tariff preference level (TPL) of 50 million square meters of textiles annually for 10 years, which will mean that Chinese yarns and fabrics will be shipped to Oman, cut and sewn into garments and then exported to the U.S. duty free. 
   
   •The U.S.-Oman FTA threatens national security. As reported on the Lou Dobbs Tonight show of June 28, “Under the Oman free trade agreement, foreign port operators would have a right, an absolute trade agreement right, to establish operations, to acquire, to operate, to run port facilities within the U.S.” Under the “Cross Border Trade in Services” chapter of the U.S.-Oman FTA, a Dubai Ports World-type enterprise could acquire a company in Oman, and then operate U.S. ports through that company.
   
   •The U.S.-Oman FTA threatens our national independence. Just as a European-wide free trade agreement has led to the loss of sovereignty of European nations to the supranational European Union, and just as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) is now being converted into a sovereignty-destroying North American Union through the creation last year of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America, the U.S.-Oman FTA is explicitly designed to help bring about a Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA), which would be another sovereignty-destroying, supranational organization to which the U.S. would belong.

[expat_panama]

By eliminating tariffs you are placing a much bigger burden on the people who pay income tax....   ...Elmination of tariffs encourages offshoring, outsourcing, wage deflation in this country.

These are the two clearest arguments favoring tariffs, that they help create domestic jobs and they lower the workers' income tax burden.  This theory does make a lot of sense, so we need to check the actual wages, tariffs, and employment records to see if this is how it really happens.   

Disposable (after tax) income numbers are easy enough to get from the BEA, it's one of the main numbers use to figure the gdp.  Employment numbers from the BLS aren't too hard to get a hold of either.  Thanks to Todd's pdf we now got import tax numbers going back over a century, and the most useful number is that last percentage; namely the percent of the cost of all imports that's paid in taxes --it takes into account both import tax rates and how often it's charged.

What we end up finding out is that the real (inflation adjusted) after-tax income per person didn't start taking off until after 1950 when import taxes got cut down to 10% or less.   It was a hard lesson we learned in the first half of the century when a huge tax-hike made incomes collapse.  

It was the same with job creation.  The import tax-hike of the '30's happened at the same time as massive layoffs, and it wasn't until the import taxes were finally slashed that everyone got back to work  

OK, now we'll hear a lot of the tax and spend people say that we don't really know for sure that the tax cuts were the true cause of those good decades.  OK fine, we don't.  The only things we know for sure is that (1) the tax cuts didn't hurt anybody, and (2) Todd and I prefer paying less on taxes and more on feeding our kids.

[hedgetrimmer]

These are the two clearest arguments favoring tariffs, that they help create domestic jobs and they lower the workers' income tax burden.

It isn't theory. There were no income taxes on wages before 1913. The government was supported before income tax was collected.

[Toddsterpatriot]

According to the following source, income tax revenue in 2004 was about $809 billion.

Historical Amount of Revenue by Source

I guess we could raise tariffs to 65%. That would raise the same revenue. Assuming nobody changed their behavior.

[expat_panama]

There were no income taxes on wages before 1913. The government was supported before income tax was collected.

We need America, America needs revenue, and revenue depends on taxes.  We all like to have a strong America even though nobody likes to pay the taxes needed to keep it strong.   

We've got to also remember that we don't want to tax everything like they do in Albania, because then our government would go broke like Albania's, because when the rates get to high then revenue falls. 

It's all there in the PDF file back in post number140; if we really want the US government to get more money from import taxes (because we don't want to pay income taxes), then we need to keep the import tax rates down.

The other good news is that we've come a long way.  We're no longer saying that high import tax rates protect jobs or increase income --that was cleared up in post 141 and left us with just the concern about supporting the US treasury.  Now that question's cleared up too.

Cheers!

[hedgetrimmer]

What is this hypermart stuff you guys post?

[phoenix0468]

Actually, there were some pretty good jobs here in Oklahoma until just a few years ago. I'm not sure if any of the recent trade agreements caused the closing of a Wrangler's plant.

[expat_panama]

What is this hypermart stuff you guys post?

In the old days what people used to do is read the WSJ or the NYT where pundits would put up anything they wanted and nobody would check them.  These days everyone can look up the actual figures on say, personal income (Latest news release -- 6/30/06 In May 2006, personal income increased 0.4 percent.) and see for themselves what's going on. 

Hyper mart is nothing-- it's just a tool for freep posting; it's one of the internet places where you pay them and you can post stuff on the web for a link.  There are places where you can do it for free (geocities, some foto places etc.) but they have a bad habit of taking it down without warning.   I got the cheap plan at hypermart ($70/year) and that lets me store 350 mb of graphs and files on their harddrive which freepers can download at the rate of 2.5 gigs per month.

So whenever I see some useful numbers in say, a PDF file from these guys, what I do is copy/paste it on to an excel spread sheet (or you could get OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 for free) to make a graph, then I copy the graph into paint to make it a gif, and then I upload the gif to hypermeart.  If you're ever skeptical about how I fudged these graphs, just ask and I can post the numbers/links their based on too.

Freepmail me if you want to try graphing/posting your own stuff and run into a barrier.  I only learn from arguing with people I disagree with so the more you can toss hard numbers at me the better.   More importantly, it's fun.

[bert]

Opposing the free trade agreement will cost more jobs.

The American economy is driven by trade and any efforts to destroy trade destroy jobs.

[expat_panama]

Not only that, import tax-cuts mean more jobs, higher pay, and more import taxes collected. 

By cutting the import tax rate from a high of 59%  in 1933  to the current 5%, we've increased the percent of Americans with jobs by more than half, and real wages have gone up six-fold.   If that weren't enough, the amount of import taxes collected has also gone up, from just $300 million then to $21,414 million this year.

imho this thing of seeing things for ourselves on the internet beats Dan Rather all hollow.

[hedgetrimmer]

You claims have no data to back them up.

[expat_panama]

You claims have no data to back them up.

Not in my posts-- I tend to toss in too much as it is.  Just tell me which claims you want data for and I'll cough up a link.  Example:  if you question this, I can point you to the seventh and eight columns of this.