Current trade policy is an attack on the workers who build America.

• Corporations have had their way with U.S. trade policy since the passage of NAFTA in 1994. So-called free trade policies have hurt America’s middle class and further impoverished much of the developing world.
• Unfair trade has weakened our unions, it has hurt LIUNA and it has hurt our country. Today we do not have free trade—we have trade controlled by global corporations.
• We don’t want to turn back the clock. We want to move forward together. We believe a better trade policy is possible.

3 million jobs—including millions of LIUNA man-hours—have been destroyed.

• Trade affects everyone. Our current trade policy has destroyed 3 million good jobs in the United States. In the last five years, man-hours under the National Maintenance Agreement have declined 46 percent. There are fewer factories and plants in the U.S. to build or maintain. In 2000, LIUNA members worked 8,026,037 man-hours under the NMA. In 2005, members worked only 4,331,162.

"Free trade" threatens our nation’s security.

• Rising trade deficits threaten our security—other nations are holding trillions of dollars we spend on foreign goods and could send our economy into a tailspin by dumping their dollars. Every day, we import $2.2 billion more in products than we export. Our unfair trade policy has not—and cannot—bring prosperity.
• Our trade policies have driven down living standards around the globe. In China, the world’s new manufacturing powerhouse, children work for 15 cents an hour, entire rural communities are being uprooted and forced into cities to work in manufacturing plants and the government is as repressive as ever. Workers have no way to stand up for safer jobs in China—3,000 workers die each year in construction accidents alone.

Where do we start?

• A global economy and fair trade can lift up poor nations and improve life in wealthier nations. That can only happen if the voices of working people are heard.
• Trade agreements must require our trading partners to include worker protections and labor standards such as fair minimum wages, reasonable work hours, safe workplaces and the freedom to join together in a union. Trade laws must be shaped by representatives of the people, not under an undemocratic fast track policy.
• We must elect politicians who will fight for fair trade and enforceable labor standards in trade agreements.

Resources

Buy American and the Recovery Program: Now What? Economic Policy Institute.

Trade Deficits and Manufacturing Job Loss: Correlation and Causality. Economic Policy Institute.

Offsets and the lack of a comprehensive U.S. policy. Economic Policy Institute.