Trade deficits, job losses are more reasons to fear TPP

Bad trades deals have a real cost to regular Americans. And a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis makes it clear what that is -- jobs.

The huge U.S. trade deficit, especially in manufactured goods, led to the loss of all 5 million U.S. factory jobs that have disappeared since 2000, EPI stated. Analyst Robert Scott’s issue paper adds productivity gains in factories were responsible for virtually none of the losses, counter to many prevailing
economists’ claims.

U.S. factories lost just over 5 million jobs since 2000, when factories employed upwards of 18 million people. They fell to 11.5 million during the Great Recession, and recovered 800,000 jobs since. But productivity rose at least 3.7 percent yearly through 2007, and 1.7 percent since then. The reason for so small a factory recovery is the trade deficit, Scott says.

The leading cause of growing U.S. trade deficits is currency manipulation, which distorts trade flows by artificially lowering the cost of imports and raising the cost of exports. More than 20 countries, led by China, have been spending about $1 trillion per year buying foreign assets to artificially suppress the value of their currencies. Ending currency manipulation can create between 2.3 million and 5.8 million jobs for working Americans, and about 40 percent of those jobs -- between 891,500 and 2.3 million -- would be in manufacturing.

As the analysis explains:

A rising trade deficit indicates that U.S. manufacturers are losing business to manufacturing industries in other countries like China and Japan, who manipulate their currency to make their goods cheaper and therefore more appealing to consumers in the United States and elsewhere. This leads to reduced demand for goods produced by U.S. manufacturers, both at home and abroad.

Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa went further into the potential damages currency manipulation could wrought on American workers in a piece he authored this week. With the Trans-Pacific Partnership still looming, concerns about future job lost maybe even more important than those from the past.

• Press Associates, Inc. contributed to this report.

Today's Teamster News 03.20.14

Teamster News
CCTA Strike Continues, Management Awaits Offer  Vermont Public Radio   ...Two days into their strike, Chittenden County Transportation Authority bus drivers represented by Teamsters Local 597 said Tuesday they have prepared a counter-offer for management...
Amboy School District Workers Ratify Teamster Contract  Teamsters Joint Council 25   ...Secretaries, aides, cooks and custodians with Amboy Community School District 272 in central Illinois, who are members of Teamsters Local 722, recently ratified a new three-year agreement that includes better wages, paid holidays and stronger contract language...
Teamsters Union: Hernando violated hiring process for fire chief   Hernando Today   ...Dan Oliver, a steward for Teamsters Local 79, said Hernando County violated its own hiring policy by not posting a job opening for public safety director in-house before seeking outside candidates...
Teamsters Union: More rail workers needed to solve grain transportation backlog  The Canadian Press   ...A cold winter and a record crop have been blamed for a grain transportation backlog, but a Teamsters spokesman says that’s not the whole story...
Trade
Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership Deal Would Deepen Income Divide  Truthout   ...“Those at the top have never done better,” President Obama ruefully acknowledged in his January 28 State of the Union speech. “But average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened.”...
China Keeps Moving Forward While America Falls Behind – and We Are Doing Nothing About It!  Trade Reform   ...Our political leaders often deemphasize the downturn in American manufacturing by touting a focus on areas such as new, high tech manufacturing and alternative energy, but it appears China has the same goals and is taking targeted steps to meet them...
Korea Trade Agreement – Exports Actually Decrease  Trade Reform ...Michael Froman, the U.S. Trade Representative, never talks about balance of trade. But the USTR is embarrassed that our exports to Korea actually decreased since the Korea trade and global government agreement was passed. Yes. Exports (not net exports) decreased...
State News
“Right to Work” bill trying to gain steam in Missouri  KBIA   "...I’ve seen folks go down to parts of Mississippi and were working for $12 an hour, union jobs, while up in Missouri they’re making $28 an hour at the time..."
Right-to-work is dangerous fraud (Opinion)  St. Louis Post-Dispatch   ..The right-to-work proposal being considered in the Missouri Legislature is a dangerous fraud.As American citizens, we already have the right to seek employment and to work. But under a right-to-work law, we would continue to work — for less money and fewer benefits than we already have...
Gov. Cuomo Signs Bill Extending Effective Date of New Independent Contractor Law in New York  Independent Contractor Compliance   ...After months of uncertainty, the law of independent contractor misclassification in New York State will change on April 10, 2014. The new law affects transportation and delivery companies in New York that classify certain drivers that deliver commercial goods in the state as independent contractors...
Thirty-nine Moral Monday Georgia activists arrested in daylong Medicaid expansion protests at the Gold Dome  Creative Loafing   ...Nearly 40 Moral Monday Georgia activists today were arrested for interrupting proceedings throughout the Georgia Capitol in an effort to urge Gov. Nathan Deal to expand Medicaid - and block legislation that would strip him of the authority to do so...
Wisconsin Republican Legislator Tears Into His Own Party For Voter Suppression  ThinkProgress   ...it ought to be abundantly clear to everybody in this state that there is no massive voter fraud. The only thing that we do have in this state is we have long lines of people who want to vote. And it seems to me that we should be doing everything we can to make it easier, to help these people get their votes counted...
Costly Loans Are Drawing Attention From States  New York Times   ...States are increasing efforts to shield vulnerable Americans from short-term loans with interest rates that can exceed 300 percent...
Minnesota GOP Lawmaker Says Sick Leave, Equal Pay Bills Make Women 'Look Like Whiners' Huffington Post   ...A package of bills in Minnesota that would enhance women's economic security by raising the minimum wage, providing paid family and sick leave and addressing the gender pay gap makes women "look like whiners," said State Rep. Andrea Kieffer (R) last week...
War on Workers
McDonald's Reviews Wage Theft Claims As Workers In 30 Cities Protest For Overtime Pay  Forbes   ...Tuesday’s protest in midtown Manhattan was one of dozens planned in 30 cities across the U.S., coming as McDonald’s faces class-action lawsuits in New York, California and Michigan for what workers describe as “wage theft...”
Fast-food workers get new ally in New York City fight for fair pay  The Guardian   ...A hotline for fast-food workers to anonymously report allegations of illegal or unjust pay practices by their bosses would be set up in New York under plans to build on a national campaign to improve conditions for American workers...
Supremes Could Decide Sky's the Limit for Campaign Donations  Public News Service   ...Another major Supreme Court decision on campaign finance could come as early as next week. In McCutcheon v. Federal Elections Commission, Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon said his First Amendment rights are violated when he cannot give a $2,600 donation to as many parties and candidates for federal office as he pleases. Many groups working to get money out of politics hope the high court rules against McCutcheon...
Reports of the Death of a National License-Plate Tracking Database Have Been Greatly Exaggerated  The Intercept   ... the databases are growing at a furious pace due to rapidly improving technology and ample federal grant money for more cameras and more computers. Tens if not hundreds of millions of observations per month are streaming into bulging electronic archives, often remaining there indefinitely, for a vast array of clients in both the public and private sector...
Expand Overtime Pay? GOP Says No  In These Times   ...Republicans apparently don’t believe that Americans who work longer hours should get paid more...
Meet the ‘Missing Workers’  In These Times   ...More than 5 million Americans have given up hope of a job. Who are they?...
7-11 Clerk Says She Was Fired For Giving Freezing Homeless Man A $1 Cup Of Coffee ThinkProgress   ...The worker felt compelled to help him after her own recent brush with homelessness...
Woman Whose Boss Told Her ‘It’s Best You Go Home With Your Babies’ Won’t Get Discrimination Trial  ThinkProgress   ...Angela Ames was on her first morning back from maternity leave and couldn’t gain access to the lactation room when her department head told her, “I think it’s best that you go home to be with your babies,” handing her a pen and paper and dictating the contents of a resignation letter...
Hershey Investors Suing Over Child Labor Can Pursue Files  Bloomberg   ...Hershey Co., the largest chocolate maker in the U.S., was ordered to face a lawsuit by investors seeking to force it to turn over records about cocoa from African farms that may use illegal child labor...
The Law that Launched a Boondoggle: Gold for Executives, Contempt for Taxpayers  CounterPunch   ...Jamie Dimon took high heat over his 74% mega-raise, but he’s not at fault. The blame goes to a 1993 boondoggle for bigwigs—a boondoggle that’s cost taxpayers by the billions ever since. Congress should call a halt, and the country’s mood could push it to do just that...
Miscellaneous
IRS says security breach affected 20,000 employees, but no taxpayer records  Reuters   ...The personal data of about 20,000 U.S. Internal Revenue Service employees going back to 2007 or earlier may have been exposed on the Internet, but no general taxpayer information or records were part of the security breach, the agency said on Tuesday...
Toyota and Justice Department said to reach $1.2 billion settlement in criminal case  Los Angeles Times   ...Toyota Motor Co. and the Justice Department have agreed on a $1.2-billion settlement to close a criminal probe into whether the automaker handled cases of sudden acceleration...
Google Won’t Face Group E-Mail Privacy Lawsuit: Judge  Bloomberg News   ...Google Inc. won a major victory in its fight against claims it illegally scanned private e-mail messages to and from Gmail accounts, defeating a bid to unify lawsuits in a single group case on behalf of hundreds of millions of Internet users...

Today's Teamster News 02.11.14

Contract Negotiations Continue at Bay Valley Foods  23 WIFR   ...It's back to the bargaining table Sunday for union leaders and representatives of Bay Valley Foods in Dixon, Illinois. Teamsters Local 722 are on strike, but they and the company met with a federal mediator Friday to try to work out a deal...
North Carolina’s Moral Monday Movement Kicks Off 2014 With a Massive Rally in Raleigh  The Nation   ...Tens of thousands of activists—from all backgrounds, races and causes—marched from Shaw to the North Carolina State Capitol, where they held an exuberant rally protesting the right-wing policies of the North Carolina government...
Missouri is leading the country for technology start-ups  KPLR St. Louis   ...For the second year running, Missouri leads the country in the percentage increase in technology jobs. Most of that is due to the growing boom in technology start-ups in St. Louis. And most of that is being done in spite of state lawmakers in Missouri who are pushing right-to-work, tax cuts, and more recycled voodoo economics...
Committee sides with special interests over families  The St. Louis Powercast   ...The party-line vote on HB1053, HB1143, HB1306 and HB1617 was the latest to move the tired agenda backed by extremists and out-of-state interest groups including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)...
Tennessee legislators threaten to withhold incentives if VW workers choose UAW  Lansing State Journal   ...Not only are Republican legislators accusing Volkswagen of backing the UAW, some of their leaders on Monday threatened to withhold tax incentives for future expansion of the three-year-old assembly plant in Chattanooga if workers vote this week to join the UAW...
Why Volkswagen is helping a union organize its own plant  Washington Post   ...The German company is campaigning for the UAW, not against it, in a kind of employer-union partnership America has seldom seen. What gives?...
Lights Out for NSA? Maryland Lawmakers Push to Cut Water, Electricity to Spy Agency Headquarters  US News   ...The National Security Agency’s headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md., will go dark if a cohort of Maryland lawmakers has its way. Eight Republicans in the 141-member Maryland House of Delegates introduced legislation Thursday that would deny the electronic spy agency “material support, participation or assistance in any form” from the state, its political subdivisions or companies with state contracts...
Barclays to cut 12,000 jobs, pays bigger bonuses  Reuters   ...Barclays said it would axe up to 12,000 jobs this year even as it raised bonuses for investment bankers, prompting fury among politicians and unions who said it had not learned the lessons of the financial crisis. Stepping up efforts to cut costs, Barclays said up to 9 percent of employees could go, including 7,000 in Britain...
Union-Backed Candidate Wins First Round in El Salvador Election  Truthout   ...At the end of January, representatives from 83 unions across El Salvador gathered in the Casa Sindical (a shared union hall) in San Salvador to greet a delegation of international election observers to ensure that the presidential election would be free of fraud, violence, and intimidation...
The Threat Of Defaulting On U.S. Debt And Other Crises Have Cost 750,000 Jobs  ThinkProgress ...The threat of defaulting on American federal debt thanks to lawmakers bickering over raising the debt ceiling — a situation that has now taken place twice, once in the summer of 2011 and again toward the end of last year — and other instances of governing by crisis increased unemployment by 0.5 percent, or in other words, meant the loss of 750,000 jobs, according to a new report...
Workers threaten strike at World Cup stadium  Associated Press   ...Workers at a World Cup stadium in the jungle city of Manaus are threatening to go on strike to demand better conditions following a third recent construction-related death at the venue...
Walmart’s Labor Practices Backfire  ThinkProgress   ...An equities research firm, downgraded Walmart in a new research report, citing understaffing, among other problems...
Man Fired After Employer Learns of Trespassing Misdemeanor 40 Years Ago  AlterNet   ...Donel Fuller is just one out of potentially millions discriminated against because of a criminal history. But the Ban the Box campaign is changing that...
The Company Behind West Virginia's Chemical Spill Skips Congressional Hearing  Huffington Post ...The company that owns the facility that leaked 10,000 gallons of chemicals into the water supply of hundreds of thousands of West Virginians last month was a no-show at a congressional hearing on the spill Monday...
Tipping the Scales of Inequality (Opinion)  Truthout  ...Stagnating wages for tipped workers is part of a bigger story of rising inequality in America...
5 “entitlements” for the wealthy that make things worse for everyone else   Salon   ...From $1 trillion in subsidies to a tax system rigged in their favor, the rich are getting a bargain at our expense...
Gov. Rick Scott’s Administration Gets Between Florida College Students and Voting  truthdig   ...Secretary of State Ken Detzner blocked an effort to ease the congestion of voters at polling places by using the University of Florida’s student union facility...

TPP opposition is growing around the world

Cracks continue to appear in support for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Big businesses’ favorite trade pact is now raising concerns from three Chilean senators, who are asking President Sebastián Piñera to open up the agreement to public debate.  Those questions come just one week before a meeting of trade representatives from Pacific Rim nations in Brunei, which they hope will seal this very bad deal.

The request comes as more and more nations are raising questions about whether the TPP will benefit working families rather than big corporations. Attendees at a Malaysian forum on the “free trade” agreement earlier this month openly questioned whether the deal would benefits their workers or just multinational corporations. They too are concerned what it would mean for jobs in their country.

Others have also spoken out against this unfair trade deal. The former prime minister of Malaysia announced his opposition to the deal in July. In the United States, nearly 170 House lawmakers raised concerns about textile provisions contained in the TPP last month. And 36 House freshmen urged the Obama administration to oppose the TPP in June.

Back in Chile, lawmakers want to know whether the Pacific Rim trade pact would be fair to workers. There is good reason for concern. They note the secrecy surrounding the TPP is raising worries that there may be little for Chile to gain from signing onto the agreement.

In the U.S., trade deals very similar to the TPP resulted in lost jobs, shuttered plants and hollowed-out communities.

Five million manufacturing jobs have been lost since NAFTA. And an Economic Policy institute report released last month showed a similar deal with South Korea that took effect a little over a year ago has already cost 40,000 American jobs.

Buffalo, N.Y., resident Peter Ciurczak, in a letter to the editor appearing in The Buffalo News earlier this week, summed up the TPP perfectly:

What has been revealed about this agreement is very distressing.

Exactly.

Today's Teamster News 04.16.12

Is Your Unemployment Chart Upside Down?  zero hedge   ...The number of people not in the labor force is now at an all time high, as nearly 88 million people are not participating (must be everyone is just able to retire?)...
Still on Life Support  Financial Armageddon   ...The world economy “remains on life support” from central banks and has deteriorated since last autumn, the latest Brookings Institution-Financial Times tracking index shows, despite some recent signs of stabilisation...
Increasingly in Europe, Suicides ‘by Economic Crisis’  New York Times   ...The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”...
Judge blasts tax plan ballot descriptions  Columbia Daily Tribune   ...A court ruling against conservative activist Rex Sinquefield's plan to overhaul Missouri's taxes has left opponents confident they have all but ended its chances to get on this year's ballot...
Will the Real Candidates in the Recall Elections Please Stand Up?  Daily Kos   ... the reason Kohl-Riggs wants his name on the GOP ballot is because he wants to force Republicans to vote for Gov. Scott Walker in the primary instead of meddling in the Democratic primary...
Energy companies: We need truckers  Newark Advocate   ...One out of 10 jobs directly created by shale development is filled by a licensed truck driver, according to a recent study of Pennsylvania's shale rush by the Marcellus Shale Education and Training Center. Penn State University found the average driver in this field was making $44,700 in wages in 2010, or what amounts to more than $21 per hour...

Today's Teamster News 04.06.12

The Invisible Army  The New Yorker   ...The expansion of private-security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is well known. But armed security personnel account for only about sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force. The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands. ... Many of them recount having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses... Capitalism’s Dirty Secret: Corporations Don’t Create Jobs, They Destroy Them  naked capitalism   ...For the last four decades, U.S. corporations have been sinking our economy through the off-shoring of jobs, the squeezing of wages, and a magician’s hat full of bluffs and tricks designed to extort subsidies and sweetheart deals from local and state governments that often result in mass layoffs and empty treasuries...
Americans brace for next foreclosure wave  Reuters   ...a painful part two of the slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures...
Attorney: Fake Democrats in Wisconsin committing criminal election fraud  Raw Story   ...Six fake Democrats running in upcoming recall primaries to push back the election date in Wisconsin are violating the law, according to an election attorney...
Gregg now calls for repeal of right to work  Journal Gazette   ...at an Indianapolis stop he said if he is elected governor of Indiana, the new right-to-work law will be repealed...
Teamsters Hold Election April 13  Summerville Patch   ...as the state seeks to privatize school bus services, two of three of the privatized fleets in South Carolina have joined Teamsters 509. Now, a third district could have union representation for bus drivers...

Today's Teamster News 02.12.12

Legislature at midterm: several splits emerge (opinion)  Bradenton Herald   ...Senate President Mike Haridopolos, Gov. Scott and others continue to push hard for privatization of 27 prisons, but legislation ran into a roadblock when other GOP lawmakers contested the figures on potential savings. The millions of dollars in campaign contributions from for-profit prison companies appear wasted this year as Senate passage looks shaky with a split vote. However, Haridopolos is forging ahead with a vote this week...
Unions expect right-to-work will cost them members  Associated Press   ...How many members decide to become "free riders," as non-dues payers are called, will determine whether the passage of the right-to-work law here turns out to be a mostly symbolic setback for organized labor or a grave financial and political blow...
Seattle port truckers on strike  Workers World   ...Drivers told Workers World that the strike, now a week old, has grown from 120 workers to 500 or 600. What started at four or five companies now affects a dozen, they said...
Secret Conservative Report Reveals Scott Walker as a Dire Fiscal Failure  politicus.usa   ...today we find out that not only did Walker leave Milwaukee in such dire straights that it should have filed for bankruptcy (perhaps this is why Walker took all of the files and even computers from the office when he left?) after increasing spending by 35%, but the people suffered as well, with annual income drops continuing to plummet under Walker during his entire eight year tenure...
Fewest Young Adults in 60 Years Have Jobs  Time   ...only 54.3% of young adults aged 18 to 24 have a job...
Union Pacific plans billions in infrastructure investment  Wichita Eagle   ...The Omaha-based company said it expects to add between 4,000 and 4,500 workers in 2012, depending on the performance of the economy. It also said it would spend $3.6 billion on infrastructure this year, which would be a record amount. Between 2000 and 2011 the company spent $31 billion...

It isn't the deficit, stupid. It's the economy.

Economists are warning that the U.S. government is doing exactly the wrong thing to create jobs. They say austerity -- which isn't working so well in Europe -- won't work here either.

James Fallows writes,

Since winning control of the House, the Republican leadership has been brilliantly successful in convincing some of the public, enough of the news media, and at crucial points the Obama Administration that the main threat to America is future deficits. Thus the debt-ceiling collision; thus the agreed-on cutbacks; thus the frenzy through these past few months about deficit projections.

Meanwhile, what business people, ratings agencies, financiers, investors, central bankers, and even most Republican economists (with a predictable exception) consider the real emergencies for the country -- stagnant growth, very high unemployment, the prospect of worldwide recession yet again, which among other bad effects would drive deficits even higher -- will only get worse because of the new austerity drive. These officials are all trying to wave the GOP leaders off their commitment, but the politicians don't notice, don't care, or don't grasp the point.

Even Ronald Reagan's chief economic adviser, Martin Feldstein, says we have to raise taxes. Reports the New York Times,  Feldstein

...was among the first in 2008 to call for stimulus spending and recently has advocated raising revenue. He would do so by limiting “tax expenditures,” the costly tax breaks for corporations and individuals that include the mortgage-interest deduction — an idea recommended in December by a majority of Mr. Obama’s fiscal commission and lately by the president.

Bill Gross, who runs a giant bond trading firm, wrote a column in the Washington Post recently saying Republicans and some Democrats are ignoring widely accepted economic theory. Gross wrote,

Washington hassles over debt ceilings instead of job creation in the mistaken belief that a balanced budget will produce a balanced economy. It will not.

We are so screwed.

40 facts about the wipeout of the middle class

Forty more scary charts from Business Insider. Look at the one above. It shows that wages as a percent of Gross Domestic Product are the lowest in 50 years.

There are others -- scary, yes, but they also tell you what you already know. See them here.

• The number of Americans NOT in the labor force is at an all-time high.
• Only 66.8 percent of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level ever recorded in U.S. history.
• There are are 20 percent fewer middle class jobs now than there were in 2000.

Today's Teamster News 05.01.11

Pink slips are United Nation's gift to staffers  New York Daily News   ...Sunday is International Workers' Day - also known as May Day - and people around the world are rallying to protest attacks on workers' and immigrants' rights...
Panel OKs a petition to recall Gov. Rick Snyder  Detroit Free Press   ...clearing the way for the group Michigan Citizens United to begin collecting signatures. The group must get signatures from 807,000 registered voters within a 90-day period to force a recall election...
Walker, Ryan and 'shock and awe' politics  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   ...Scott Walker and Paul Ryan have upended state and national politics this year, offering deeply controversial ideas that drew little discussion in the last campaign but threaten to reshape the next one...
New contract ends Dichello, Teamsters labor dispute  WTNH.com   ...The agreement between Dichello Distributors, Inc. of Orange and Teamsters Local 443 ends a strike/lockout that began in March...
Doomed workers kept in the dark  Kennebec Journal   ...About 70 workers, mostly members of the Teamsters Union Local 340, listened as they were told the latest information about the company's status and instructed how to apply for unemployment benefits...
SB5 foes look for big turnout  Chillicothe Gazette   ...Organizers hope Ross County's second protest against Senate Bill 5 on Sunday will be bigger than their last one...
No ordinary year in the Statehouse  South Bend Tribune   ...legislation will bar state workers from collective bargaining, allow the governor to authorize new toll roads, lower the corporate income tax rate from 8.5 percent to 6.5 percent over four years, and balance the state's unemployment insurance fund by raising premiums and cutting benefits...
LePage vetting process under scrutiny  Kennebec Journal   ...The resignations of three officials in two weeks is raising questions about LePage's management abilities... 
Rick Scott to leadership: Get my tax cuts done  Florida Times-Union   ...Scott wants nearly $2 billion in tax and fee cuts this year. Legislative leaders have said that will be a tough pull considering the state is dealing with a $3.8 billion budget gap...