Democrats

Koreans Fight Free Trade With The United States

November 11, 2007 ⋅  E-Mail Article ⋅  Print Article ⋅ Post a comment

South Korean citizens are displaying what Americans have known but are now suffering the effects of, Free Trade kills an economy. South Korean workers are clashing with police over a potential Free Trade Deal with the United States. All Free Trade has done for America is export our domestic jobs and imported unemployment and housing foreclosures. Sure we now have cheap televisions but look at the price we have paid, numerous unemployed factory and manufacturing workers and a devastated textile business.

Free Trade with Mexico was bad enough but normalized trade with China and India has devastated the American economy. If you don’t think so then tell me what our foremost exports, other than jobs, are to India and China. What are we selling them more of now than we were twenty years ago? Nothing, that is right, nothing. Big business says you have to accept outsourcing and jobsourcing and globalization but these are the same idiots who are making decisions which are causing global destruction and potential recession, should we really trust these idiots? In Seoul, South Korea tens of thousands of South Korean farmers and workers fought with riot police during a large rally against a potential free trade agreement with the United States.

The scene of rioting showed protesters fighting with riot police wearing helmets and shields, attacking them with the sticks, throwing stones and trying to turn over police buses which were staged as road blocks and detours as the government in South Korea tried to block the protest site in central Seoul. South Korean Police could be seen utilizing water cannons as a way to demoralize protesters, in some instances the South Korean police utilized fire extinguishers on the protestors.

Maybe Americans should have protested a little more like their South Korean counterparts back in the days of the discussions of Free Trade Agreements and maybe if they had America would be a more employed country right now with a thriving economy and not a scared economy.

Try to tell me you and all of your family and friends are not worried about your job each week and I will call you a liar. We need to repeal these Free Trade Agreements and strike new deals, ones where we are on a fair global playing field and not one where everyone wants to export all of their cheap goods to us and yet import nothing. Organizers in South Korea stated that approximately 50,000 people participated in the protest. Let’s hope we have action like that in our country when it comes time to renew or discuss the economic future of America.

The protesters chanted slogans against the free trade deal. Woo Moon-sook, who is a spokeswoman for the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions stated, ‘ We will thwart the passage of the FTA as it would deepen the polarization of our society.’ The South Korean deal is said to potentially be the largest Free Trade Agreement for the United States since the North American Free Trade Agreement completed in the 1990’s.

The Koreans are worried that what happened to America because of China will in turn happen to them. Korean farmers are worried that other kinds of American agricultural produce will pour into the country and threaten the livelihood of the Korean farmers in much the same way Chinese manufacturing has devastated the American manufacturing base and in large part the American textile base.

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