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[UPDATE: 7:04 p.m. CST: We are advised that Congressman Gene Green (D-Houston) is firmly AGAINST the Peru Free Trade Agreement! We applaud Congressman Green for his principled stance on this important issue!--VL]
[In the interest of helping folks understand this issue, I'll be watching the comments the rest of the afternoon and would be glad to answer any questions anyone may have on it.--VL]
The Peru Free Trade Agreement, also known as the Peru-United States Free Trade Agreement (PTPA) will be up for a vote in Congress on Wednesday morning. As usual, it's bad news.
Not a single labor, environmental, faith, family farm or Latino civil rights group supports the PTPA. Why?
How about because it contains those lovely "foreign investor privileges" identical to those found in failed trade agreements of the past, like NAFTA and CAFTA. These create incentives for companies to move factories out of Texas, where labor is cheaper.
Texas doesn't need PTPA. We've already lost 141.7 thousand manufacturing jobs under the Bush Administration. From 2000 to 2006, we've lost 471.1 thousand jobs, according to stats from the AFL-CIO. More than 72,000 jobs lost are directly attributable to poor trade agreements like NAFTA.
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