Pacific pact would kill U.S. jobs: Opposing view

Lori Wallach | USATODAY

Whether Congress delegates away its constitutional authority over trade and agrees to "fast track" the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will affect each of us directly.

The only U.S. government projection of TPP's outcomes concluded it would result in 0% economic growth. This has led many economists who supported past trade deals to oppose TPP.

But TPP would make it easier for corporations to offshore American jobs.

TPP is almost complete after years of closed-door negotiations. The Obama administration refuses to release the text.

But thanks to WikiLeaks, we know it includes offshoring incentives that make it easier for firms to relocate to low-wage countries. These terms were also in the North American Free Trade Agreement, a deal that cost more than 700,000 American jobs.

Even if TPP does not kill your job, it will undermine Americans' wages by pitting us in competition against Vietnamese workers making less than 60 cents an hour. The wages of all workers with similar skill levels decline when Americans losing better-paying manufacturing jobs join the glut of workers competing for non-offshorable jobs.

TPP also would gut Buy American, so our tax dollars would also be offshored rather than reinvested to create jobs here. And the administration refused to include rules against currency cheating, even though several TPP countries are notorious for this practice that destroys U.S. businesses and jobs.

Consider the 2012 South Korea agreement used as the TPP template. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea almost doubled in the pact's first three years. This equates to more than 90,000 American jobs lost, according to the ratio the administration used to promise job gains from the deal.

Indeed, job-killing trade deficits have grown more than 425% with countries we have trade agreements with, but declined 11% with those we don't.

To distract from TPP's threat to our jobs and wages, the administration now says the deal would somehow counter China's rising power. Except President Obama recently revealed discussions with China about joining TPP.

The bottom line: We need a different trade policy, not a major expansion of the status quo that has cost Americans jobs and wages for the past 20 years.

Lori Wallach is director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.