Trade pacts would bring jobs
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), center, accompanied by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, right, and Sen. Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.), at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 30, 2011, charge the Obama Administration with political tactics that undermine pending trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. Credit: AP
Trade and let trade. That's what three pending agreements on commerce with South Korea, Colombia and Panama hope to accomplish. But the original bipartisan deal to pass the much needed agreements, which are tied to a plan to retrain workers, is being held hostage in the House Ways and Means Committee as part of the larger fight over raising the debt ceiling.
A small group of Republicans objects to funding for the Trade Assistance Adjustment Act, which provides longer unemployment benefits and retraining to workers who can prove they lost their jobs to foreign competition.
But Democrats won't vote for the trade agreements unless the worker aid program is packaged with them. As each day passes, the United States loses world market share to its European and Asian rivals because of high taxes placed on American products in other countries.
Approving the trade agreements would bring an immediate reduction in those tariffs, increasing the nation's exports. And that would create more jobs here -- as many as 70,000 from the Korea deal alone -- just what the ailing economy needs.
For New York, which ranks third among states in exports and where 2.5 million jobs depend on trade, the deals would be especially beneficial. Companies such as Caltex Polymers Inc., which produces plastics in Hauppauge and faces an 8 percent tariff in Korea, would get more business if the duties were eliminated.
More business should be enough for Congress to rise above the political pettiness and reach an agreement.
