Lucas,
We have come to a watershed moment in the battle over fair trade and the fight against corporate globalization and its job-destroying, environment-trashing, democracy-gutting reign.
President Barack Obama says he wants Congress to implement the largest trade deal since NAFTA - the Korea Free Trade Agreement. That is a NAFTA clone deal that Bush negotiated, but could not pass. It has the terrible NAFTA-style provisions that promote job off-shoring and undermine labor, environmental, and other public interest laws that Obama promised to reform as a candidate. To stop this terrible backslide, we must draw a line in the sand NOW by showing that a majority of lawmakers in the House of Representatives will not support more NAFTAs.
Take action! Call your representative today!
If we don't put a stop to this now, we are almost sure to face a tsunami of similar NAFTA-style agreements in the coming months. Multinational corporations and their lobbyists are already preparing to push through deals with Colombia, Panama, and a host of other countries through a Trans-Pacific trade deal (read NAFTA with Vietnam and the rest of the Pacific Rim) if they are successful in passing the Korea deal now.
Only by working together can we stop this debacle now. Please call your representative today. Get a commitment he or she will vote no - and join folks across the country who are reporting back their success in holding their representatives accountable by using our Vote Tracker.
You can bet that your representative is getting piled on by the corporate lobbyists and their public relations firms. They need to hear from you! Only if you voice your own concern, and get other constituents like yourself to follow suit, can we stop this lunacy. Imagine, at a time of nearly 10 percent unemployment, a trade pact that is projected to cost another 160,000 jobs and increase our trade deficit.
Learn more about the Korea trade deal in our new fact sheet. This deal is a disaster: it would lead to job offshoring, financial deregulation, attacks on environmental laws. And be sure to pass this information along to your friends, family and fellow activists.
It is entirely possible to defeat this retrograde, damaging deal! Opposition to more of the same damaging trade deals is one of the only issues that unites Americans nationwide across party lines. That is why the corporate NAFTA-lovers are frenzied in trying to rush its passage. We can forge a just and economically viable direction for trade policy! But only if we act NOW.
Thank you for every action you take,
James Ploeser and Beatriz Lopez
Senior Field Organizers, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch division