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Health & Fitness

Why and How to Stop the "Fast Track" to Free Trade Ruin of America

Americans face a national emergency that is almost completely ignored in the news.

Today, Senator Max Baucus and Representative Dave Camp filed the "Fast Track" bill to ram secretly negotiated trade and global governance agreements through Congress.  Every American concerned about the future of our economy and democracy should educate themselves about these dangerous impending trade agreement and urge their Senators and Representative in Washington DC to OPPOSE them.

I certainly agree with Mike Stumo at Trade Reform blog when he writes of the press release announcing this Fast Track bill:  "Notice the Orwellian news speak.  Everything has a happy name.  These agreements that offshore our democracy and cause massive, economy shrinking trade deficits are called “job creating trade agreements."

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Learn more about the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade treaty here:

http://www.citizen.org/TPP

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For those who want to see it for themselves, here is the full 100-page text of the "fast track" Trade Promotion Authority bill:

http://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/TPA%20bill%20text.pdf

Below is a draft text that you can edit and send to your Congressman and both Senators.

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Subject: Vote NO on Fast Track and the TPP

Dear Senator NAME [or Representative NAME],

Please vote NO on the "fast track trade promotion authority" legislation, and vote NO on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade treaty proposed by President Obama.

The loss of over 5.5 million US manufacturing jobs and over 54,000 US factories since 2000 shows that our Free Trade policies have been a disaster.  Again and again these trade agreements resulted in loss of jobs, particularly in higher-wage sectors of our economy like manufacturing, and big increases in the trade deficit. Increasing exports is not a goal in itself, since these policies have resulted in more increase in imports than exports, resulting in huge trade deficits that represent the loss of American wealth and manufacturing capacity and jobs and tax base.  Rather than exports, the measure should be our NET BALANCE of trade, which has been ruined by Free Trade.

Congress should replace Free Trade with Balanced Trade, exercising our own sovereignty to control the flow of imports and require the globalized corporations to invest and manufacture and hire in America if they are to sell their wares in America. By using a system of Import Certificates (import licenses) issued in the same value as our exports, as described by Warren Buffett in his Fortune Mag article in 2003, we could divert our annual $530 Billion trade deficits into an increased $530 Billion demand for US-made goods, creating millions of US manufacturing jobs and millions more in other sectors through the multiplier-effect manufacturing has.

That’s exactly what a Balanced Trade Import Certificate system would do, and it would cut through all the other tax and currency and regulatory and wage level and state-enterprise and subsidy and tariff factors that together have added up to the offshoring of our manufacturing.

Sincerely, YOUR NAME

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