By Doug Cunningham

Rob Scott, Senior International Economist at the Economic Policy Institute, says there's no question that U.S. global trade policies have seriously hurt workers both in the U.S. and abroad. With U.S. political tides turning against those policies, Scott says there's a real opportunity to transform our 21st century global trade policies, especially if a Democratic president is elected in 2008.

[Scott]: "We absolutely have to begin by incorporating labor and environmental standards in the core of trade agreements. And make them enforceable with trade sanctions ,with tariffs. I think we also have to make investments to rebuild our manufacturing capacity, industries that have been devastated by this race to the bottom. And finally, I think we have to rebuild the social safety net."

By Doug Cunningham

As labor struggles to reform trade agreements in the new Congress, the AFL-CIO says the Colombia free trade agreement should be dead until – and if – the country meets an established set of human rights benchmarks. Colombia is the most violent, dangerous country for union organizers and activists. More than two thousand two hundred have been killed there since 1991. The AFL-CIO says Bush should have publicly raised that issue on his recent visit to Colombia. The AFL-CIO says this is beyond re-negotiation. No deal should be struck with Colombia, the labor federation says, until it adequately addresses violence toward trade unionists there. Bush is trying to get an extension on his fast track trade agreement authority and is in talks with Democratic congressional leaders on trade agreement issues.

An attempt by the Bush administration to extend normal trade relations to Vietnam has been defeated in the House. Jesse Russell has more:

With majority support, the measure to extend Permanent Normal Trade Relations to Vietnam was seen as sailing to an easy victory in the House of Representatives. However, it lacked the two-thirds needed to pass as a bill on the suspension calendar. The suspension calendar is generally reserved for non-controversial bills that would be expected to pass through the House if time permitted for them to make it to the floor. After hearing the results, Teamsters General President James Hoffa said that the defeat “demonstrates that many members of Congress from both sides of the aisle and their constituents are tired of trade pacts that sell out workers everywhere.” However, he added that the fact that because the current Republican majority brought the measure to a vote under the suspension calendar showed that they continue to be “asleep at the wheel.” In 2004, the U.S. State Department classified Vietnam’s human rights record as “poor.” One of the primary reasons, and a major concern to organized labor in the United States, is the lack of a right of freedom of association. That right is what allows workers to organize and collectively bargain. In addition, Vietnam has had an ongoing problem with child labor law violations, although the government has taken steps in recent years to address these international concerns.

By Doug Cunningham

[Mark Glyptis 1 ]: "Tariffs work, and in this case are working."

That was Mark Glyptis of the Independent Steelworkers Union in West Virginia. The union won a trade case that imposes 95 percent tariffs for five more years on Japanese companies that were “dumping” steel on the U.S. market below cost.

[Glyptis 2]: "It's a major victory for the Independent Steelworkers union
and the tin producers of this country. If we didn't win this the Japanese would undoubtedly start once again dumping their product into our market, taking our jobs."

By Doug Cunningham

The AFL-CIO and the U.S. Business and Industry Council are co-hosting a conference on the U.S. trade crisis today in Washington, D.C. AFL-CIO Policy Director Thea Lee says a foreign trade deficit of more than $720 billion a year is unsustainable.

[Thea Lee] : “This isn't just labor, but it's also business and agriculture that are all being hurt by our trade policies."

Lee says the AFL-CIO has specific trade proposals to shake things up and attack the trade deficit.

[Lee 2] : “One is an across the board temporary import surcharge. That is a tariff. And it's actually legal under WTO rules. Under World Trade Organization rules, Article 12, provides when countries have a serious and chronic balance of payments problem they are allowed to use a trade surcharge to address that."

By Doug Cunningham

The labor rights group Jobs With Justice organized events in several cities around the U.S. for Global Justice Week in response to the WTO meeting in Hong Kong. The events protest what trade policies are doing to working families. Carlos Fernandez of Chicago's Jobs With Justice says the public here in the U.S. realizes global trade enriches multinationals at the expense of workers. And he says the next stage of turning that awareness into power to change trade policies is coming as soon as next year.

[Carlos Fernandez] : "This week of action is looking forward to the next year. The next year and a half is going to be really where we turn the tide of opinion into actual power to change how trade works."

By Doug Cunningham

Union Network International - a global labor organization with more than 15 million members from 140 countries - just wrapped up its World Congress in Chicago. Formed in 2000 to strengthen global unions so workers can effectively bargain with multinational corporations, UNI leaves Chicago with an agenda to globalize the labor movement. UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings.

[Philip Jennings 1] : "We are going to go for union growth not just here i n the states but everywhere else in the world. And the global union movement is fighting back even though we are in challenging times. And we intend to succeed. It's our job to make sure that the working people's voices is heard in the places that matter - from the United Nations to the boardrooms of those distant and difficult multinational companies."

By Doug Cunningham

Cheap Chinese textile imports into the U.S. have cost an estimated 26,000 U.S. jobs so far this year. Nineteen textile plants have closed down. A quota system controlling textile imports that was in place for thirty years expired January first and a flood of imports, mostly from China, followed. Now even the Bush administration is trying to slow down the flow of textiles from China. U.S. government reps are talking to the Chinese about reducing their clothing exports. UNITE-HERE, representing textile workers, has long tried to get government action against these imports. A World Trade Agreement provision allows the U.S. and other countries to re-impose textile limits on China to limit the flood. The National Council of Textile Organizations says that by using its currrencyt as a weapon and by heavily subsidizing it's textile industry China has effectively declared a textile trade war in the U.S.

By Doug Cunningham

As Wednesday’s session of the AFL-CIO Chicago convention drew to a close the delegates were told that there was a bulletin from Capitol Hill on CAFTA. The Republican leadership in the House was pushing for a vote Wednesday night on the Central American Free Trade agreement. In a defeat for workers the U.S. House approved CAFTA by a 217-215 vote just after midnight Wednesday. That was despite a huge effort by labor and allied progressive groups to stop it.

By Doug Cunningham

The Sierra Club is in the fight against CAFTA and with the U.S. House expected to act soon on CAFTA Sierra Club chapters nationwide are actively lobbying against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Brett Hulsey is with a Midwestern chapter of the Sierra Club. Hulsey believes a turning point is being reached on trade issues.

[Brett Hulsey ] : "Even Republicans are starting to realize that these trade agreements ship our jobs overseas, they lower our environmental standards and they threaten our health and safety."

Hulsey says that CAFTA could be used to attack U.S.

By Doug Cunningham

As incredible as it seems trade agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, currently in the U.S. House are not only helping outsource U.S. jobs, but U.S. farmers, too. Sue Beitlich is President of the Wisconsin Farmers Union. The Farmers Union nationally opposes CAFTA.

[Sue Beitlich 1] : "The true beneficiaries of these types of trade agreements are the international commodity marketing firms. By opening up these new markets it's very profitable for them, but it's not profitable for farmers around the globe."

For the first time, Beitlich says, the U.S. has become a net importer of food. And you and I can't even read food labels to see the country of origin of our food because Congress so far is refusing to require country of origin food labeling. Farmers, Beitlich says, won't be helped by CAFTA.

From farm goods to electronics, the U.S. rang up a record trade deficit in 2004 by importing more products than ever before. The trade deficit shot up 24.4 percent over 2003, with China clocking the largest imbalance ever recorded with a single country. The imbalance between the United States and China is $162 billion, 30.5 percent more than the previous year. According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute China is exporting more products that use high skilled labor, such as electronics and computers, than ever before. The country is exporting less low-value labor intensive products, such as shoes and plastic products. In 2003, the U.S. trade deficit with China was already twice as large as exports. On a worldwide scale, the Commerce Department reports that American's have also begun accruing a deficit in food products, such as cheese and wine.

Unlike the US Justice Department, the European Union's Court of First Instance upheld a record $600 million dollar fine against Microsoft for holding a monopoly in personal computer software. In addition, the computer software giant will be required to reveal its Windows operating source code to the European Union and allow third party media players. In response to the ruling, Microsoft will offer a European version of the Windows operating system in January.

Recently, US farmers won a major victory as meat packers failed to weaken a program requiring country-of-origin labeling of meat and produce. Meat and supermarket lobbyists were unsuccessful in putting a provision into a congressional spending bill that would have made food labels voluntary instead of mandatory by September 2006.

Dave Frederickson, President of the National Farmers Union, says country-of-origin label would help US farmers.

[Frederickson1] "Many of the larger packers across the country oppose it and they oppose it because they like to blend product. In other product from one country blended with product from the USA. So, you can take a piece of stringy beef from some other country and blend it with a good product from the United States and come up with a mediocre product."

Crude oil prices fell to a two month low on Tuesday in part due to the Nigerian oil workers union halting a planned general strike. The Nigerian government made an 11th hour concession to increase domestic fuel subsidies by seven percent.

Niyi Shomade (Nee-yee Show-ma-day) is a Nigerian environmentalist. He says impoverished Nigerians can't afford fuel because of IMF and World Bank polices. Seventy percent of Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day.

[Shomade1] "The IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs tells us to reduce our so-called subsidies. The problem is when you do the research, you find that the cost of petroleum in Nigeria compared to what we're selling it at is actually very low. We're the fifth largest oil producer in the world, yet we're paying very high prices for gasoline."

A national oil strike that would have crippled the world's seventh largest oil exporter has been temporarily averted. Nigeria's main labor union has decided to give that countries government a second chance after it promised to lower domestic fuel prices. Nigeria exports 2.5 million barrels of oil a day and is the fifth-leading supplier of U.S. oil imports. The Nigerian oil workers union had pledged to specifically target Shell Oil in their protest. In other news from Africa, cocoa workers on the Ivory Coast are concerned about their livelihood. The ports in the Ivory Coast ship 40 percent of the world's cocoa and the threat of continued unrest and upheaval has worried traders during the markets main harvest season. Anti-French riots had recently closed the ports for six days.

Nigerian oil workers who plan to completely shut down that countries ability to export oil, have been threatened with job loss. Nigerian Labor Minister Hassan Lawal says workers who participate in the nation wide strike, "not only forfeit their pay, but also lose their right to continuous employment." Nigeria is the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports and exports more than 2.5 million barrels a day. The country's oil refineries are disrepair and cannot produce enough fuel to meet domestic demand, forcing the government to import oil and sell it at a loss.

Garment workers union, UNITE-HERE, along with a coalition of trade associations filed its eight petition on Tuesday seeking safeguard restrictions against textiles from China. The petitions claim domestic textile production is being squashed by Chinese imports.

Lloyd Wood, director of media relations for the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition.

[Wood1] "After China joined the WTO Chinese-US import market share increased from less than 10 percent in 2001 to more than 70 percent as of June 2004. So, what we saw was when China had quota free access to the US market, they literally overwhelmed every other player in the market."

Nigerian oil workers who plan to completely shut down that countries ability to export oil, have been threatened with job loss. Nigerian Labor Minister Hassan Lawal says workers who participate in the nation wide strike, "not only forfeit their pay, but also lose their right to continuous employment." Nigeria is the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports and exports more than 2.5 million barrels a day. The country's oil refineries are disrepair and cannot produce enough fuel to meet domestic demand, forcing the government to import oil and sell it at a loss.

Thousands of Nigerians took to the streets in Lagos on Wednesday, to support an upcoming general strike against fuel price hikes. Adams Oshiomhole, president of the Nigeria Labor Congress addressed the throng of supporters saying that on November 16 the people were going to, "begin the fight against poverty, unemployment and dictatorship." The union is calling for a complete shut-down in the production of the fifth-biggest source of oil for the United States. At the rally, Joseph Eva a leader of a group that represents the Ijaw tribe in the Niger-delta "threatened that any oil worker seen at a flow station would be attacked or kidnapped." The union also announced it's intention to specifically target the Royal Dutch/Shell Group.