Obama Discovers Free Trade

Pictured are South Korean President Lee Myun-bak and some guy from Chicago arriving for a press conference after the passage of a US/South Korean free trade agreement. Congress passed the agreement just six days after the Chicago guy (Barack Obama, I think) sent the proposal to the House and Senate.

And a mere two and a half years after the proposal first got to the Chicago guy's desk. Since the agreement involves economics, finance, diplomacy and math, it took Obama the two and a half years to get around to reading it. Boring stuff compared to community organizing, hope and chump change. People close to Obama are already having second thoughts, since such an agreement has angered the unions who say that free trade agreements are bad for jobs, workers' rights and our economy." Obama may have sought to pick up a few votes among independents and moderates who had previously thought he was a pure socialist/protectionist. It could cost him more votes and more campaign funds from the unions than he'll gain from supporting capitalism.

It should be interesting to see how this affects the Occupy Wall Street loonies who already have a baker's dozen of disjointed and incoherent objections to investment and other people's wealth. The US Chamber of Commerce issued a statement saying "The passage represents victory for American workers, American competitiveness, and American leadership." Not so opines AFL-CIO chief thug Richard Trumka, who said free trade agreements are "the wrong medicine at the wrong time and put corporations over people and profits over prosperity." Obviously, Trumka has been reading the signs being held up by the Occupy Wall Streeters.

Instead of TARP, bailouts, and government takeovers of private corporations Obama could have been signing the free trade agreements which actually create jobs and money. They all hit his desk at approximately the same time. But since Democrats are far better at spending other people's money than creating and earning it, Obama chose to lavish borrowed money on public employees, government projects, and union organizations which eat wealth rather than create it.

Republicans and even economists had been urging Obama to pay attention to creating real wealth almost since the day he first took office and the ice caps stopped melting and the oceans stopped rising. Unlike those wonderful projects that Obama threw billions at, the free trade agreements were shovel-ready from day one of the Obama administration. Three agreements were languishing on the Chicago guy's desk. Those proposals opened lines of free movement of goods and money rather than pumping government-printed money into unprofitable ventures, government employment, and crony socialism. South Korea, Colombia and Panama have been waiting all this time for Obama to read the damned agreements, submit them to Congress, and sign them.

The International Trade Commission has estimated that the South Korea agreement alone would result in an increase in American exports by $10 billion to $11 billion in the first year. US Trade Representative Ron Kirk says the deal will "secure at least 70,000 American jobs" and many more in subsidiary industries now freed of crippling tariffs. The US Chamber of Commerce estimated that had the agreements not been approved soon, Obama's unemployment lines would have gotten longer by another 300,000 jobs. But Trumka and his Keynesians estimate that it would cost 159,000 jobs (union jobs?).

It may be some time before we know what the actual impetus was for the guy from Chicago taking his feet off the Oval Office desk and submitting the agreements to Congress. Republicans, surely, but many blue dog Democrats as well. Maybe he just decided that nothing else was working, so let's try free trade and capitalism. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA, and his other half Hillary effusively praised the three new agreements. We can be sure of one thing. It wasn't Van Jones.