Lucas,
It was bad enough that President Obama -- who once promised to renegotiate NAFTA -- is pushing for passage of the job-killing, Bush-negotiated trade deal with Korea. But now Obama has announced he will also push for quick passage of Bush's trade deal with Colombia, the union murder capital of the world, and a third deal with Panama, a notorious tax haven.
If we don't get Congress to stop this damaging trade package, we're sure to be slammed with even more of the same NAFTA-style disasters in a massive Pacific trade pact that Obama is now negotiating with nine countries, including Vietnam and Malaysia.
Tell your member of Congress that if they don't stop the job-killing Korea trade deal, we'll hold them responsible for the next unfair trade deals as well.
President Bush left behind three unapproved trade deals with Korea, unionist-murder capital Colombia and tax haven Panama -- all clones of NAFTA -- plus a fledgling initiative for a massive nine-country transpacific trade zone called the Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement.
Tragically, Obama has taken on all of Bush's NAFTA projects. After modest tweaks to Bush's Korea pact, Obama had been saying that the Colombia and Panama deals needed "more work." But now he is pushing to pass all of them this year. Korea is the first domino. Unless we battle it with our hearts and souls, we will face a bottomless pit of NAFTA-on-steroids trade pacts.
In Colombia, unionists, human rights defenders, indigenous leaders, small farmers and land rights activists all continue to be murdered at astronomical rates, with equally appalling rates of impunity for the perpetrators. Despite a persistent high-dollar PR whitewash campaign to pull the wool over Congress' eyes, Colombia remains the most dangerous place on the globe for union and community leaders of all stripes. Since that deal was signed in 2006, the number of unionists murdered each year has jumped from 39 to 51 in 2010. Two more were murdered just this month.
We can't let multinational corporations take advantage of dreadful violence and impunity.
Tell Congress to stop the Korea FTA before it is too late and draw the line on more NAFTAs.
All these unfair trade deals would allow multinational corporations to directly sue governments in foreign tribunals to attack public interest policies they find unfavorable. This would subject protections of the Colombian, Panamanian or other countries' rainforests to challenge by oil, gas and mining companies' plans for polluting megaprojects.
But the multinationals and their allies in government are thinking even bigger. Their newest project is the Trans-Pacific FTA that would span from California to Vietnam, to Australia, to Chile and also include Malaysia, New Zealand, Brunei, Peru and Singapore. If completed, the deal would affect half a billion citizens. And Obama's negotiators have made it clear they intend to keep the worst provisions of the NAFTA model intact for the Trans-Pacific FTA. The way to stop them is to send back the Korea agreement and make clear: More of the same is over.
Tell Congress, the Korea deal is a line in the sand -- one they don't want to cross.
Additionally, the Panama trade deal would protect corporations' ability to hide earnings in secret bank accounts and escape U.S. taxation. At this time of budget crisis and belt-tightening, we can't afford more disloyal corporations saddling working families with even more of the tax burden -- especially not when they're shipping the good jobs away!
The sad back story to this three-part NAFTA-expansion disaster is that the Republicans in Congress took Obama's Korea trade deal "hostage." They said it has to be all or none -- the Colombia and Panama deals attached to the Korea pact. The obvious answer: Take the Korea trade deal off the table and stop all the madness once and for all! Instead, Obama caved and is now pushing a devastating trade package containing all three.
Tell Congress to reject the Korea trade deal today, or we could be stuck with three more job-killing, NAFTA-style deals tomorrow!
Thanks for all you do!
Beatriz Lopez and James Ploeser
Senior Field Organizers
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch