It’s Bad Trade Deals, Stupid
Pundits, pollsters and the media are finally waking up to a simple truth that working families have been voicing for decades: so-called “free trade deals” actually cost our country millions of good American jobs and leave behind devastated communities.
Bernie Sanders’s victory in Michigan — what the chattering classes are calling the biggest upset this campaign season — perfectly illustrates how Americans are sick and tired of secret trade agreements that put big corporations ahead of good jobs and public interest, and they’re going to the ballot box to hold politicians accountable. It’s no mistake that the thousands of Communications Workers of America (CWA) activists and allies who have been mobilizing against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are now organizing for Sanders, the candidate for president of the United States with a consistent record of battling against trade deals that ship jobs overseas.
Just look at Michigan’s exit polls:
- According to CNN, the state’s Democratic primary voters said, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, that trade with other countries takes away US jobs instead of creating them. Sanders won the votes of a majority of those who agreed with that view.
- Exit polls conducted for The Associated Press found, “More than half the voters in both parties described trade as a job killer. Of those, six in 10 Democrats supported Sanders.”
The message was loud and clear. So much so that the competition is currently scrambling to put their own stamp on the once-humdrum issue of trade policy.
Sanders’s staunch opposition to bad trade deals — especially when it seemed like no one else was paying attention — is a huge reason why our membership voted decisively to endorse him for president. Sanders fought against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which displaced more than 850,000 US jobs. He fought against special trade status with China, which led to the loss of 3.2 million American jobs. Sanders was the first candidate to speak out against the TPP, a misguided trade agreement that encourages the offshoring of good jobs and would increase wage inequality.
Days before the primary, CWA Local 4108 Executive Vice President Marty Szeliga introduced Sanders at a rally in Traverse City, Michigan. It was the first time in decades that a Democratic presidential candidate had campaigned in the city.
There, the senator admitted that trade was not a “sexy topic.” But the crowd roared with approval when he proclaimed, “If the people of Michigan want to make a decision about which candidate stood with workers against corporate America and against these disastrous trade agreements, that candidate is Bernie Sanders.”
We’ll continue to stand behind Sanders as he takes his message around the industrial Midwest. Anti-free trade winds are blowing into battleground states across the country.
On March 15, voters in five more states go to the polls. CWA has been on the front lines battling bad trade deals — particularly the TPP — for years, and we’ve built strong grassroots coalitions where each of these contests are taking place. Our partners include environmental, faith, labor, progressive, student, health care, food safety and community advocates. Together we’ve held massive protests, passed city council resolutions calling for greater transparency in trade policymaking and turned up the heat on members of Congress. Now we’re mobilizing those same activists and allies to canvass neighborhoods, volunteer at phone banks, organize worksite actions and rally behind Sanders.
As the candidate himself recently said, “We need a trade policy today which tells corporate America, you know what, you’ve got to start investing in this country, not just in China and just in Mexico.”
Even Donald Trump rails against bad trade deals, although falsely, when you consider that he makes his products in other countries like Mexico. Trump has figured out lately that the American people are fed up with bad trade deals, while Bernie Sanders actually has been fighting against unfair trade for thirty years, not just giving it lip service because it gets votes.
