U.S. And Singapore Sing With Free Trade

[HT:MG]Subject: txt crpt trade -
Six years ago, when tiny Singapore (population 4 million) was up for a free-trade agreement with the U.S., doomsayers were out in force:

“Manufacturing job losses grow every day,” wrote John Sweeney, then-president of the AFL-CIO, in a July 2003 warning to Congress. He called the Singapore pact “deeply troubling” and “disastrous” if it were to be duplicated.

“The trade deficit continues to expand to record levels as a result of harmful trade policies,” Sweeney wrote.

The free trade agreements with Singapore (and Chile) “do not promote the economic interest of the United States,” intoned the Labor Advisory Committee in February 2003. “These agreements repeat the same mistakes of NAFTA and are likely to lead to the same deteriorating trade balances, lost jobs, trampled rights, and inadequate economic development.”

Among the luminaries making these doleful recommendations were such experts on the private sector as the AFSCME public employee union, the National Association of Letter Carriers, the urban planners at Wayne State University, and the American Federation of Teachers.

Still, the Senate ratified the Singapore trade pact 66-32 in May 2003. It went into effect on Jan. 1, 2004.

Five years since, every tocsin caw they made has turned out to be false. New figures from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office reveal a bevy of glowing news about the U.S.-Singapore pact..

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