McCain on Trade: What planet is he on?
Eighty percent of Americans are sure this country is on the wrong road economically. Sen. John McCain acknowledges this, yet believes it has nothing to do with foreclosures, 4 dollar gas, or the health care crisis; instead he blames Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for their opposition to a widely criticized free trade agreement with Columbia.
Seth Michaels wrote an enlightening article for the AFL-CIO Now blog on the reasons behind McCain's ardent support for the trade agreement.
Maybe McCain is spending too much time listening to the lobbyists who run and fund his campaign -- one top backer actually lobbies for Colombia's government. Clearly, he's not listening to the millions of working families who are unhappy about lost jobs, shuttered factories, foreclosures and rising costs.
Nor is he thinking about the exploited Colombian workers who face intimidation, threats and even murder if they try to secure their rights at work. Last year, 39 trade unionists were killed in anti-union violence in Colombia, and 24 have been killed already this year -- more than one a week.
Michaels was echoing the President of AFL-CIO, John Sweeney, in accusing McCain of being out of touch. Sweeney emphasized Columbia's history of human rights abuse.
John McCain glossed over horrific human rights abuses and the deaths of hundreds of Colombian union activists today when he urged Congress to pass the Bush administration's ill-conceived Colombian trade pact. Workers in Colombia are targeted for violence and blocked from joining unions to lift their lives and prevent exploitation, making fair trade impossible. In fact, Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world to be a union member. The fact that McCain believes not passing Bush's bad trade deal with Colombia is the reason Americans think we're on the wrong track is a measure of how out of touch he's become with working people's concerns.
McCain is clearly happy following the paths of trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and the agreements with Peru and Chile straight into Columbia without acknowledging the problems with previous agreements or the issues of the Columbian people, creating an obviously fallible campaign argument in the process.
So, no Mr. Senator, 80 percent of Americans do not think we are on the wrong track because of democratic opposition to the Columbian trade agreement. You could figure it out, Senator McCain, by starting with a good, hard look in the mirror.
