Obama push for TAA extension doesn’t calm organized labor on free-trade deals

President Obama’s push for renewed assistance for workers who lose their jobs due to trade isn’t diminishing organized labor’s opposition to the three trade deals he wants Congress to approve.

The AFL-CIO’s view is that Trade Adjustment Assistance should stand on its own merits and not be linked to the trade deals.

“It’s beyond ridiculous that Congress hasn’t passed” an extension of the program, Celeste Drake, an AFL-CIO trade policy specialist, told The Hill.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has said that  trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Act cost nearly 700,000 jobs and created a $97 billion trade deficit with Mexico.

Citing figures from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, he argued that the largest of the three trade pacts, with South Korea, will cost the United States 159,000 jobs. The deal with Colombia will cost 54,000 jobs, he said.

“So long as these agreements fall short of protecting the broad interests of American workers and their counterparts around the world in these uncertain economic times, we will oppose them,” Trumka said recently.

“There’s nothing the administration can do to soften the blow on these trade deals,” Lori Wallach, executive director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, told The Hill. “It’s alarming to think about the harm these three NAFTA-style agreements will cause.”

Obama has made passage of the trade deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia part of his jobs campaign.

“Now it’s time to clear the way for a series of trade agreements that would make it easier for American companies to sell their products in Panama, Colombia and South Korea while also helping the workers whose jobs have been affected by global competition,” Obama told a joint session Sept. 8.

“If Americans can buy Kias and Hyundais, I want to see folks in South Korea driving Fords and Chevys and Chryslers. I want to see more products sold around the world stamped with three proud words: ‘Made in America.’”

That kind of talk pleases business, including  leaders like U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue, who Friday urged passage of the trade deals in a Wall Street Journal op-ed while criticizing the president’s jobs bill for focusing “too much on government spending and temporary tax breaks and too little on the trade, energy, tax, regulatory and entitlement reforms that will jolt our economy and job market back to life.”

“[Obama] was right to call for passage of the long-pending free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama,” Donohue wrote. “But the United States should also be vigorously negotiating new trade and investment agreements around the world.”

So far, the White House has stood firm on insisting that the trade accords pass along with an extension of TAA, the administration’s main demand.

Negotiations continue with House Republicans to guarantee that the lower chamber can pass the streamlined measure. Senate Republicans have vowed to provide enough support to pass the bill, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he wants to consider this week before adjourning.

Wallach said the administration’s TAA offer is being used to sway the votes of Democrats on the fence about the deals and to provide political cover.

While labor doesn’t appear to be happy with that tradeoff, the AFL-CIO continues to move along all tracks backing the jobs bill.

But labor also is pushing legislation to increase the value of China’s currency, which Drake called “a key piece in getting the underlying trade imbalance.”

Many lawmakers and economists argue China deliberately undervalues its currency against the dollar to give its companies an advantage in international trade.

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