Poisonous baby bottles? Blame Clinton.....

Despite its name, the primary purpose of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was not to facilitate trade among separate sovereign societies. Rather, it was to promote an integrated continental economy and establish the rules to govern it. It was intended to include only the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Clinton approved China to join NAFTA.

Twelve years later, it is clear that the costs to workers outweighed the benefits in all three nations.

The 1 million jobs displaced by NAFTA trade, primarily in manufacturing, would have paid $800 per week or more in 2004. The average job in the rest of the economy paid only $683 per week, 16% to 19% less than trade-related jobs. Growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have pushed more than 1 million workers out of higher-wage jobs and into lower-wage positions in non-trade related industries. Thus, the displacement of 1 million jobs from traded to non-traded goods industries reduced wage payments to U.S. workers by $7.6 billion in 2004 alone.

NAFTA alone is responsible for the loss of at least 1,000,000 good paying U.S. jobs, mostly in manufacturing while at the same time wages continue to be driven down.

Other job killing Clinton initiatives, besides NAFTA and the U.S. joining the WTO, include Clinton praising the approval of China into the WTO with the statement "This landmark act will extend our economic prosperity at home while increasing the prospects for more openness in China".

Again, Clinton lied and continued his ruthless manipulation of the American worker. There was no extension of economic prosperity in the U.S. resulting from America joining the WTO and approving the entry of China into the organization. In an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis, the results of trade with China equated to staggering job losses in America.

Contrary to the predictions of its supporters, China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) has failed to reduce its trade surplus with the United States or increase overall U.S. employment. The rise in the U.S. trade deficit with China between 1997 and 2006 has displaced production that could have supported 2,166,000 U.S. jobs. Most of these jobs (1.8 million) have been lost since China entered the WTO in 2001.Between 2001 and 2006, jobs were displaced in every state and the District of Columbia. Nearly three-quarters of the jobs displaced were in manufacturing industries. Simply put, the promised benefits of trade liberalization with China have been unfulfilled.

Many economists blame the catastrophic trade imbalances between China and the U.S. as no more than China deliberately keeping its currency devalued while imposing slave wage rates. EPI suggests that this equates to a 40% Chinese subsidy on exports.

As a matter of policy, China tightly pegs its currency's value to that of the dollar at a rate that encourages a large bilateral surplus with the United States. Maintaining this peg required the purchase of about $200 billion in U.S. Treasury Bills and other securities in 2006 alone.1 This intervention makes the yuan artificially cheap and provides an effective subsidy on Chinese exports; best estimates are that the rate of this effective subsidy is roughly 40%. China also engages in extensive suppression of labor rights; it has been estimated that wages in China would be 47% to 85% higher in the absence of labor repression.

As the Chinese cleverly manipulate their currency to give subsidized Chinese products price advantages in foreign markets, this is at the expense of the American worker. More importantly, there is no way that the American worker can possibly compete with the slave wages in China.

China's inhuman labor practices are legendary. Recently, UPI reported an incident about 31 Chinese workers who were forced to work as slaves in a brick factory owner by a Communist Party official. They were emaciated and were fed nothing but bread and water. The workers had burns all over their bodies from being forced to carry bricks that had not cooled.