Labor & Employment Law

Report: Free Trade Deals Don?t Increase Exports

By James Parks

Free trade was supposed to increase our exports by opening up markets in countries where we had trade deals. But a new report released this week shows that we have had better luck getting Made in the USA goods into countries other than our 17 trade agreement partners.

The report, ?Lies, Damn Lies, and Export Statistics: How Corporate Lobbyists Distort the Record of Flawed Trade Deals?, from the advocacy group Public Citizen, shows the research methods used by corporate groups to promote passage of the remaining Bush-era trade pacts with Korea, Colombia and Panama, are flawed and unreliable.

Says Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen?s Global Trade Watch:

There are many ways to boost U.S. exports and create American jobs, but the data show that more of the same trade deals is not one them

The corporate interests on the President?s Export Council, which meets tomorrow, are pushing for more NAFTA-style free trade agreements (FTAs) to be the centerpiece of meeting President Obama?s goal of doubling exports over the next five years and create 2 million new American jobs. But the report shows otherwise. After you correct the flaws in the corporate research, Public Citizen says, the realistic projection is that the nation would lose $30 billion in exports over five years if the deals are signed.

Here are some other findings:

•  Between 1998 and 2009, U.S. exports to FTA partners grew by an annual average rate of only 0.8 percent while exports to non-FTA partners grew by an average of 2.2 percent.
• If the difference between the FTA and non-FTA export growth rates for goods for each year were to be put in dollar terms, the total FTA export ?penalty? would be $72 billion.
  The United States has suffered large and growing trade deficits with its FTA partners..  Even as trade declined because of the economic crisis, as of 2009, the United States had a $54 billion trade deficit in goods, excluding oil, with its 17 FTA partners.

Check out the entire report here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 16, 2010 (boomark / email).