RedComrade
8th March 2004, 01:25
The following is a speech I wrote for class, I hope it may be somewhat educational, thoughts and feedback are appreciated as always:
Imagine yourself home alone when all of the sudden a thief breaks in. He takes your jewelry and cash, good silver and electronics. Now, rather than get in trouble, he shows up with police protection the next day and tells you this time he has come for your entire house. Sound a little fishy perhaps? Well for over ten years this same type of theft has been going on on a massive scale, only this time instead of actually taking the goods themselves the thieves are stealing our means to obtain them, yes that’s right, since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement on January 1, 1994 over 3 million American manufacturing jobs have been stolen right out from under our noses, it is with the purpose of convincing you to resist this vicious theft that I come to speak before you today.
Now some of you may be wondering just what Im talking about, what is the North American Free Trade Agreement which will hence forth be referred to as NAFTA. NAFTA was an agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada that eliminated all tariffs on goods imported from each others countries. A tariff is a tax on a product made in another country. Because it is cheaper to manufacture products in Mexico, indeed according to the Mexican government itself workers are paid just a 6th of the wages American workers are all of our factories are packing up and heading south of the border. Those tariffs that were removed with NAFTA were the only thing that made the production costs between our two nations even and kept our manufacturing jobs within our borders.
It certainly seems strange looking back at the time before NAFTA was passed when the rich politicians and factory owners argued that NAFTA would bring thousands of high-paying jobs to the United States. The results have been exactly the opposite. According to the NAFTA-TAA, a government organization created to deal with job losses directly attributable to NAFTA, over 550,000 American workers were eligible for compensation from job losses directly attributable to NAFTA. This fails to take into account hundreds of thousands who were similarly affected, since the agreement was signed over 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost. This means that for every 6 workers in the manufacturing sector 1 has lost their job, if you have parents working at Donnellys, Nucor, or any other factory this could very easily be your family denied an income.
Perhaps the most persistant argument for NAFTA was that it would diminish trade deficits between the U.S and Mexico. Once again it did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to. In the ten years of NAFTA so far trade deficits with Mexico have sky-rocketed from just over 15 billion dollars to a whopping 37 billion dollar deficit. Since its inception the combined trade deficits between the U.S and Mexico and Canada have come to make up over 20% of all U.S trade deficits!
Another oft-heard claim from the NAFTA supporters was that it would help to even out the wage differences between Mexican and American workers, it does make since that workers should be paid the same regardless of nationality if theyre doing the same job right? Well according to a Congressional Service Report in 1993 the average Mexican workers pay was 14.5% of an American worker’s wages, thanks to NAFTA it is now only 11.5% of an American workers pay. As wages drop lower and lower south of the border more and more companies are packing up and going to Mexico.
With all of it’s other malicious flaws it is no surprise that NAFTA is at the forefront in the war on labor unions. In a Cornell University study of over 400 unionization campaigns it was found that the owners threatened to close and move the plant to another country over 70% of the time. Nearly a third of these threats made by the employer were to move to Mexico.
As we look back on the many results of NAFTA we must not allow ourselves to grow complacent. What the politicians and rich people who sold us this lie have done is nothing less then theft. When we lost 3 million jobs we were robbed, when our trade deficits skyrocketed we were robbed, when our fellow workers on the other side of the border saw an increase in their income inequalities we were robbed, when they took away our sacred right to organize in the Unions we were robbed. With all this lying and robbing going on I think its high time ordinary Americans such as ourselves do something about this, because every night one of our own workers right here at Donnellys or Nucor or any other American factory lays down to sleep we can never know if they’ll wake up with a job in the morning, that is as long as NAFTA is in place.
Imagine yourself home alone when all of the sudden a thief breaks in. He takes your jewelry and cash, good silver and electronics. Now, rather than get in trouble, he shows up with police protection the next day and tells you this time he has come for your entire house. Sound a little fishy perhaps? Well for over ten years this same type of theft has been going on on a massive scale, only this time instead of actually taking the goods themselves the thieves are stealing our means to obtain them, yes that’s right, since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement on January 1, 1994 over 3 million American manufacturing jobs have been stolen right out from under our noses, it is with the purpose of convincing you to resist this vicious theft that I come to speak before you today.
Now some of you may be wondering just what Im talking about, what is the North American Free Trade Agreement which will hence forth be referred to as NAFTA. NAFTA was an agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada that eliminated all tariffs on goods imported from each others countries. A tariff is a tax on a product made in another country. Because it is cheaper to manufacture products in Mexico, indeed according to the Mexican government itself workers are paid just a 6th of the wages American workers are all of our factories are packing up and heading south of the border. Those tariffs that were removed with NAFTA were the only thing that made the production costs between our two nations even and kept our manufacturing jobs within our borders.
It certainly seems strange looking back at the time before NAFTA was passed when the rich politicians and factory owners argued that NAFTA would bring thousands of high-paying jobs to the United States. The results have been exactly the opposite. According to the NAFTA-TAA, a government organization created to deal with job losses directly attributable to NAFTA, over 550,000 American workers were eligible for compensation from job losses directly attributable to NAFTA. This fails to take into account hundreds of thousands who were similarly affected, since the agreement was signed over 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost. This means that for every 6 workers in the manufacturing sector 1 has lost their job, if you have parents working at Donnellys, Nucor, or any other factory this could very easily be your family denied an income.
Perhaps the most persistant argument for NAFTA was that it would diminish trade deficits between the U.S and Mexico. Once again it did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to. In the ten years of NAFTA so far trade deficits with Mexico have sky-rocketed from just over 15 billion dollars to a whopping 37 billion dollar deficit. Since its inception the combined trade deficits between the U.S and Mexico and Canada have come to make up over 20% of all U.S trade deficits!
Another oft-heard claim from the NAFTA supporters was that it would help to even out the wage differences between Mexican and American workers, it does make since that workers should be paid the same regardless of nationality if theyre doing the same job right? Well according to a Congressional Service Report in 1993 the average Mexican workers pay was 14.5% of an American worker’s wages, thanks to NAFTA it is now only 11.5% of an American workers pay. As wages drop lower and lower south of the border more and more companies are packing up and going to Mexico.
With all of it’s other malicious flaws it is no surprise that NAFTA is at the forefront in the war on labor unions. In a Cornell University study of over 400 unionization campaigns it was found that the owners threatened to close and move the plant to another country over 70% of the time. Nearly a third of these threats made by the employer were to move to Mexico.
As we look back on the many results of NAFTA we must not allow ourselves to grow complacent. What the politicians and rich people who sold us this lie have done is nothing less then theft. When we lost 3 million jobs we were robbed, when our trade deficits skyrocketed we were robbed, when our fellow workers on the other side of the border saw an increase in their income inequalities we were robbed, when they took away our sacred right to organize in the Unions we were robbed. With all this lying and robbing going on I think its high time ordinary Americans such as ourselves do something about this, because every night one of our own workers right here at Donnellys or Nucor or any other American factory lays down to sleep we can never know if they’ll wake up with a job in the morning, that is as long as NAFTA is in place.