The U.S. September 2012 monthly trade deficit declined by -5.1%, or -$2.25 billion. August's trade deficit was revised down by -$427 million, which gives a 3.1% monthly increase instead of the originally reported 4.1%. While the press touts the lowest monthly trade deficit since December 2010, the reality is September gives the second largest China trade deficit in history.
The U.S. May 2012 monthly trade deficitdeclined $1.91 billion to $48.68 billion. This is a 3.78% monthly decrease in the trade deficit, all due to reduced imports. Exports decreased $359 million, or -0.20%. Imports declined $1.55 billion, which is a -0.67% decrease from April. The decline in oil prices is the reason the trade deficit shrank for the month.
In yet another blow to U.S. workers, the Obama administration has signed a deal for Mexican truckers to operate inside the United States.
The news headlines all sing hallelujah over some soon to be disappearing punitive tariffs Mexico put on 99 U.S. products simply because we wouldn't let Mexican truckers, instead of American ones, on U.S. highways. There is no mention in the major press of the cost to American workers, the increased illegal drugs entering the country, the illegal immigrants being smuggled into the U.S., and the wages and jobs lost. Nor is there anything mentioned about border security in the press, or even challenging Mexico for being in violation of NAFTA by their attempts to subvert U.S. labor law in the first place.
The teamsters have been fighting this tooth and nail and just came out swinging. Mexican truckers have lax safety standards and much lower wages, yet will be allowed to work in the United States, by driving on American roads, displacing U.S. truckers.
Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa today castigated the U.S. Department of Transportation for agreeing to open the border to long-haul Mexican trucks. Opening the border endangers America’s highway safety, border security and warehouse and trucking jobs.
By way of Public Citizen, there is a new 400 page report on Australia's six NAFTA style trade agreements that concludes they ain't doin' much for their economy, Bloody onkus mate.
The Productivity Commission has told the government there is little evidence to suggest Australia's six free-trade agreements have produced substantial commercial benefits
Millions of dollars of taxpayer funds has been paid out to multinational corporations due to corporate lawsuits filed under NAFTA's investor-state dispute settlement provisions.
The Age reports Australia is losing millions to free trade agreements, over copyrights of all things.
Copyright provisions inserted in the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement could eventually cost Australia as much as $88 million per year as the nation pays an extra 25 per cent each year in net royalty payments, ''not just to US copyright holders, but to all copyright holders''.
The copyright provisions extend payments from 50 years after an author's death to 70 years and enshrine in Australian law ''rules that would otherwise be anti-competitive such as permitting the use of region codes on DVD players''.
The provisions have saddled Australia with copyright obligations ''even higher than in the US … because we matched their higher level of copyright protection but have maintained our lower level of copyright users' rights'', the report says.
GM's recent move to early retire their skilled labor is a great example of labor arbitrage by nation-states. The reason is so they can match labor costs to Mexico for manufacturing a new car in the United States. Remember all of that talk about fixing NAFTA?
Remember all of those promises during campaign 2008 to finally reform trade and stop NAFTA like trade agreements? Chalk up another one to the win elections rhetoric dust heap. While Obama claims this NAFTA style Bush era trade agreement is the very ole and tired corporate-speak win-win, odds are it's another lose-lose. A loss for the American people and a loss for Obama himself in 2012.
Obama has announced a new trade agreement with South Korea. There is just one new tweak that is better than before, the tariff schedule on autos.
The new agreement calls for South Korea to reduce its tariff on U.S. auto imports from 8% to 4%, and fully eliminate it in five years.
Meanwhile, the 2.5% U.S. tariff on auto imports will remain in place until the fifth year, instead of being immediately eliminated as specified in the 2007 agreement.
Here's what Public Citizen said about the auto tweaks:
Merely tweaking the “cars and cows” market access provisions of Bush’s NAFTA-style Korea trade pact but leaving in place the offshoring-promoting foreign investor protections is a slap in the face to the majority of Americans who, according to repeated polls, oppose the same old trade policy that has cost millions of American jobs.
Some good news for U.S. workers. Obama's negotiations with South Korea for yet another NAFTA styled trade agreement failed. There will be no new trade agreement. This one was a battle of the businesses, the labor arbitrage loving statistical spin machine U.S. Chamber of Commerce against U.S. auto makers Ford and Chrysler.
President Barack Obama won’t be returning from his Asia trip with a renegotiated free trade agreement between the U.S. and South Korea. Concerns over barriers to American automakers selling more vehicles in that country remain a point of contention.
The Obama administration had hoped to reach a deal on the free trade agreement first settled in 2007. That deal was never formally approved by either nation, and congressional Democrats – particularly those in the House – had balked because of concerns that U.S. automakers still couldn’t compete on equal footing in South Korea.
This week, Chrysler Group LLC joined Ford in opposing the deal as written. Last week, Ford took out a full-page ad claiming that for every 52 Korean cars sold in the U.S. only one American car is sold in South Korea.
Of course the Obama administration is pledging to keep at it, but the House, including the new Republicans might have some different ideas.
In a joint statement, current House Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin, a Royal Oak Democrat, and his presumptive replacement, Republican Dave Camp of Midland, said “Further negotiations will succeed only if South Korea adopts concrete steps to open its market to U.S. exports” including autos.
Believe this or not, Whirlpool received Stimulus funds to create jobs and instead they are closing plants! This is obscene that they are being given funds to create jobs and instead offshore outsourcing them. We should demand at least those funds be rescinded.
It can barely get greedier than this: We're in tough economic times, so Whirlpool receives $19 million in taxpayer funds to create jobs. Then it turns around and announces it will shutter its Evansville, Indiana refrigerator plant and displace the 1,100 workers there. Disgusting.
The corporate wing of the Democratic party hasn't lost any of its strength. If we can't even TALK about updating NAFTA then we are lost when it comes to agreements like GATT.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said on Monday that it had no plans to reopen negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement to revise its labor and environmental provisions, as then-Senator Barack Obama promised to do during his presidential campaign.
“The president has said we will look at all of our options, but I think they can be addressed without having to reopen the agreement,” said Ronald Kirk, the United States trade representative.
I am so used to the New York Times refusing to acknowledge the reality of bad trade deals, this article clam as a shock.
“A new phenomenon has grown up under Nafta — high-productivity poverty,” said Harley Shaiken, chairman of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Low wages means low purchasing power. “It is not a successful strategy for globalization,” Mr. Shaiken said.
Even Nafta’s greatest success — exports — has become a liability, as Mexico feels the full brunt of declining consumption in the United States. The auto industry, for example, which has flourished under Nafta, has ground to a virtual standstill. Over all, Mexican auto exports fell more than 50 percent in the first two months of this year compared with 2008, and production dropped almost 45 percent.
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