1.8 Million Jobs

The last time that our corporate Dem minders patted us on the head and told us that they had everything worked out while they got together with lobbyists and the business community to sell American jobs down the river was when China entered the WTO. This was supposed to open up new markets and be a goldmine for the US economy. And it was - for the very rich. For anyone that works for a living it was a nightmare.

Contrary to the predictions of its supporters, China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) has failed to reduce its trade surplus with the United States or increase overall U.S. employment. The rise in the U.S. trade deficit with China between 1997 and 2006 has displaced production that could have supported 2,166,000 U.S. jobs. Most of these jobs (1.8 million) have been lost since China entered the WTO in 2001. Between 1997 and 2001, growing trade deficits displaced an average of 101,000 jobs per year, or slightly more than the total employment in Manchester, New Hampshire. Since China entered the WTO in 2001, job losses increased to an average of 441,000 per year—more than the total employment in greater Dayton, Ohio. Between 2001 and 2006, jobs were displaced in every state and the District of Columbia. Nearly three-quarters of the jobs displaced were in manufacturing industries. Simply put, the promised benefits of trade liberalization with China have been unfulfilled.

On the same day that George Bush and the Democrats make a "deal" on trade policy, the Census Bureau announced a six-month high in the trade deficit, with exports outpacing imports by $64 billion. We don't make anything in this country anymore, and that's a national security issue as much as it is an economic one. The power of multinational corporations to write our trade policy has gotten completely out of control, and the public knows it. That's why so many populists and fair traders won last November. And yet corporate Dems continue to sell out the American worker.

There is no way that this latest trade deal should be allowed to pass without enforceable labor, environmental and human rights standards. We barely have any jobs left to hemhorrage.