How you guys think about us-korea fta?

[Machjo]

Thats fine for those of you that get a cheque from the government every month but those of us that have to work for a living would soon have no jobs to make money to buy anything with. Nevermind paying the mortgage and food. The only reason NAFTA works as well as it does is because Canada and the US have roughly the same standard of living. Try and buy a tire made in North America. THe last pair of lower priced snow tires I bought were made in Thailand but they were only about $40 cheaper than Michelins.
Even with NAFTA we are getting screwed over with lumber. Many mills in B.C. have shut down and the logs are going to Washington where they have built some hightec mills that pay between$12-14/hr. with **** for bennies. That is about 1/3 of our labour rate in a union mill. Now we all know that you cannot feed a family and pay a mortgage on $14/hr in BC. And you want us to compete with people that work for a bowl of rice a day?

I don't work for the government by the way, but at the same time I should have the freedom to spend my money where I want to buy the best product available at the best price available. All free trade does is slow down the inevitable. By the way, why are you so worried about your job under free trade yet I'm looking forward to free trade even though my salary is entirely private sector?

Hmmm...Again, I'd be more than happy to pay my taxes to retrain you for a better job if you lose yours under free trade. Don't expect a hand out of course, but I'd have no qualms about my taxes giving you a hand up.

 

[taxslave]

I forgot the other important point to free trade with third world countries. We have stringent and expensive health and safety laws and they have?... a line of poor willing to risk life and limb (literally) for that bowl of rice a day.

 

[Machjo]

All the education in the world isn't going to get McDonalds, Wendy's, Hortons or the call centres to pay the same sort of wages traded-away industry did. You just get a lot of well-educated and bored people.

No, but it will attract new companies.

Remember how right after NAFTA, many companies moved to Mexico and then regretted it. Sure the salaries were low, but then the companies had to spend mucho money on training their workers, and some even raked back their initial shift to Mexico. Low-skilled businesses went anyway, but many high tech ones had to stay here.

So if we upgrade our workers' stills, we then make Canada more attractive not to low-paying companies like the ones you like to mention, but rather to more advanced ones.

I forgot the other important point to free trade with third world countries. We have stringent and expensive health and safety laws and they have?... a line of poor willing to risk life and limb (literally) for that bowl of rice a day.

And if what you say is true, they'd be so swamped with wok soon enough that they'll companies would soon have to compete for their labour shortage, thus naturally pushing their salaries up. Again, even with protectionism this will happen anyway. Protectionism just slows the project down.

 

[Trotz]

I forgot the other important point to free trade with third world countries. We have stringent and expensive health and safety laws and they have?... a line of poor willing to risk life and limb (literally) for that bowl of rice a day.

Agreed.
Means of subsistence

1950s --> automobile, 2.1 kids (average) and suburb home (without debt)
2010 --> automobile, 1.5 kid and a condo (with debt)
2060 --> no automobile (it's more "green", according to the banker with his own automobile), 0.5 kids and a rented bedroom.

Even though people then should be getting loads of inheritance, that inheritance will be tied into currency (which will lose all value because of inflation!) and the bankers will find a way to swindle the inherited property.


Of course I believe the state propaganda machine will be stronger as well, anyone who challenges the status quo will be called a racist/fascist or fracist which will be easier to remember for the idiocratic populations. I.E. "DON'T YOU KNOW, YOU BIGOT, THAT PEOPLE IN POORWACKISTAN GET A MUD HUT AS OPPOSE TO A RENTED BEDROOM AND *HAPPY-PILLS!?"

*Happy Bills being reflective of the 2060s, when most of the population is on mind-altering substances, i.e. anti-depression pills.

Ironically, this is coming from someone who probably won't be affected by globalism but being a good nationalist (as per the 1848 Liberal Nationalists who went after the bankers) I am not comfortable with the idea of Canadian Proletariat working for slave wages.

 

[tay]

On Fifth Anniversary of U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, Deficit With Korea Has Doubled as U.S. Exports Fell, Imports Soared

President Trump Appoints a Leading Promoter of Korea Pact as White House Special Assistant for Trade and Goes Silent on Deal After Decrying ‘Job-Killing Trade Deal With South Korea’ on Stump.

WASHINGTON, D.C. –President Donald Trump has been conspicuously silent about the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) since taking office, so whether the administration comments on the pact’s March 15 fifth anniversary is being closely watched. Trump spotlighted the "job-killing trade deal with South Korea" in his nomination acceptance speech and on the stump, where he also often noted "this deal doubled our trade deficit with South Korea and destroyed nearly 100,000 American jobs."

Trump’s approach to the pact was called into question when he appointed one of the Korea FTA’s most persistent promoters, Andrew Quinn, to be special assistant to the president for international trade, investment and development. When the deal was initially completed in 2007, Quinn, who played a role in FTA negotiations as counselor for economic affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, declared: "It's a great agreement" that "demonstrated the effectiveness of the model, i.e., a comprehensive high-standard agreement."

When Quinn later served in the Obama White House National Security Council as director for Asian economic affairs from September 2010 to August 2012, he worked on the ratification of the Korea FTA. He most recently served in the Obama administration as the deputy lead negotiator for the TPP.

"Our trade deficit with Korea doubled under this deal, so it’s not surprising Trump spotlighted it as a job-killer during his campaign. But voters who supported him because they thought he’d do something to reverse the damage of this and other deals will be furious if he fails to act, and more so when they learn that the very ‘insiders’ he criticized on the stump are calling the shots," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

The agreement, sold by the Obama administration with a "more export, more jobs" slogan, had already resulted in the doubling of the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea by its fourth year, as U.S. exports declined 10 percent ($4.5 billion) and imports from Korea increased 18 percent ($10.8 billion), resulting in a trade deficit of $31.6 billion relative to one of $15.9 billion in the 12 months before the pact went into effect on March 15, 2012.

Meanwhile, the U.S. service sector trade surplus with Korea has increased by only $2 billion from 2011 to 2015, a growth rate of 29 percent that is notably 64 percent slower than our services surplus growth over the four years before the FTA went into effect. In the 10 months of available trade data since the FTAs full fourth year, the goods deficit with Korea has totaled $25.5 billion compared with $25.3 billion in the comparable period a year ago. Goods trade data for the full fifth year of the deal will be released May 4 and service sector data in October.

The division among Trump staff over trade policy was on display in the only Trump administration comment on the Korea FTA, which came in the March 1 President’s Trade Agenda report that reflects the views of Trump’s nominee for U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer: "Further, the largest trade deal implemented during the Obama Administration – our free trade agreement with South Korea – has coincided with a dramatic increase in our trade deficit with that country. From 2011 (the last full year before the U.S.-Korea FTA went into effect) to 2016, the total value of U.S. goods exported to South Korea fell by $1.2 billion. Meanwhile, U.S. imports of goods from South Korea grew by more than $13 billion. As a result, our trade deficit in goods with South Korea more than doubled. Needless to say, this is not the outcome the American people expected from that agreement. Plainly, the time has come for a major review of how we approach trade agreements. For decades now, the United States has signed one major trade deal after another – and, as shown above, the results have often not lived up to expectations."

Despite the Korea FTA including more than 10,000 tariff cuts, 80 percent of which began on Day One:

 The U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea increased 99 percent, or $15.4 billion, in the first four years of the Korea FTA (comparing the year before it took effect to the fourth year data) and in the 10 months of its fifth year is on track to beat the fourth year deficit. Nearly 80 percent of the deficit is in the automotive sector. Record-breaking U.S. trade deficits with Korea have become the new normal under the FTA – in 47 of the 48 months since the Korea FTA took effect, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has exceeded the average monthly trade deficit in the four years before the deal.

 Since the FTA took effect, U.S. average monthly exports to Korea have fallen in 10 of the 15 U.S. sectors that export the most to Korea, relative to the year before the FTA. Exports of machinery and computer/electronic products, collectively comprising 27.8 percent of U.S. exports to Korea, have fallen 21.6 and 8.2 percent respectively under the FTA.

 more

http://www.citizen.org/documents/Tr...s-deficit-doubles-at-pact-5th-anniversary.pdf

 

[Curious Cdn]

The Americans are about to pour $ trillions into Korea anyway, as they will have to build up, support and supply the army and fleet required to remove Kim Jong Un (and, perhaps engage with the Chinese, in the process). There don't seem to be many other options.

 

[petros]

Sell your Hyundai back to them.

 

[tay]

Trump Threatens to terminate free trade deal, wants payment for THAAD missile defense system


President Donald Trump said that he will either renegotiate or terminate a "horrible" trade deal with South Korea, Reuters reported late Thursday.

The president also said he wants South Korea to pay for the $1 billion THAAD missile defense system, Reuters said.

Responses to Trump's comments soon arose, with an official from South Korea's automakers association telling Reuters that the group is now concerned about "the uncertainty" of the free trade agreement.

Shares in Hyundai Motor fell as much as 2.4 percent following Trump's comments. South Korea's won turned weaker on the comments.

Khoon Goh, head of Asia research at ANZ, told CNBC such a reaction is expected given " massive amounts of foreign inflows" into Asia, particularly Korea and Taiwan, over the last month "as trade tensions between the U.S. and China have eased off."

"So investors are thinking that perhaps the worst on trade tensions with Asia is not going to happen," he said. "And all of a sudden, this has come from a bit of a left field, so I think what we're going to see now is markets perhaps need to start pricing a little bit more potential of trade tensions between the U.S. and Korea."

The South Korean Defense Ministry said that there was no change to its position that the U.S. would bear the cost of THAAD deployment, Yonhap news agency reported. Earlier this week, Yonhap said the U.S. military had begun transferring parts of THAAD into a planned deployment site in South Korea.

The system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, is designed to protect South Korea and Japan from missile attack, and it could be operational as soon as summer 2017. North Korea and its unpredictable leader Kim Jong Un possess nuclear weapons and make a habit of regularly threatening neighbors.

THAAD uses radar to track when a ballistic missile is launched and then intercepts and destroys the missile before it descends onto its target.

Some have theorized that THAAD may be an effective way to pressure China to help deescalate tensions with North Korea.

"We planted this high-end air defense system in South Korea that has obvious implications for the Chinese because the radar fans go all the way through Manchuria," former CIA Director Michael Hayden said this month, explaining that such a move will force Beijing to address the "bad toothache" of Pyongyang

Trump threatens to terminate free trade deal with South Korea, says he wants Seoul to pay for THAAD