So-called 'free trade' and the TPP are anything but free

In recent days, President Obama and much of the Democratic establishment have doubled down in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), especially in light of Donald Trump's measured speech Monday about his plan to cut taxes and renegotiate US trade deals. But it's time to get something straight: This isn't a partisan issue...

The fact is, sweeping trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the TPP and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) only benefit the CEOs of the corporations that are at the negotiating table...

...virtually exactly what happened when Mexico and the US signed NAFTA and US corn growers began selling super-cheap corn into Mexico where small, subsistence-level farmers were previously the major source for that staple in the Mexican economy. Our cheaper corn put over a million Mexican farmers out of work, driving some into the slums of Mexico City, and others across the border into the US in search of work.

It seems like a deal that would advantage one country and screw another, and, interestingly, that's exactly what "free trade" was originally designed to do...

While today "tariffs" have become a dirty word, our trading partners use VAT taxes (value-added taxes) instead of tariffs, with the same effect as tariffs.

The VAT tax in Germany, for example, is 19 percent, so when a US automaker wants to sell a car to a German, there is a 19 percent value -dded tax added onto its price by the German government, effectively a 19 percent import tariff. And when a German-manufactured car is sold to an American in the US, Germany drops the price of the car by that same 19 percent, essentially adding on a 19 percent export subsidy.

German consumers are encouraged to buy German-made cars, because an imported car that cost $25,000 to manufacture would be sold in Germany for $29,750, effectively acting like a "protectionist" import tariff. It also makes German cars relatively more affordable on foreign markets, effectively acting like a "protectionist" export subsidy.

Germany is not alone in this. Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan and most European nations do the same thing. The only developed country without a VAT tax to use as an effective tariff is the US. Nothing protects our workers or manufacturers, which is just fine with the big transnational corporations making billions exporting our jobs...

So-called "free trade" isn't the way of the future; it's a broken model that global elites have pushed since Ronald Reagan, and it's forced tens of thousands of US factories to close and cost millions of Americans their well-paying jobs.

If we want to grow the US middle class and create a prosperous country again, it's time to reject the TPP and withdraw from so-called trade deals to which we are signatory, and it's time to take a page from our trading partners and implement a VAT tax (or return to tariffs) to make US-made goods cost competitive and bring about an American manufacturing renaissance.

Political analyst Dick Morris stated that Obama is trying to circumvent the legislative process via a treaty authority that a future president could not change. It would strip away the power of the Congress to limit immigration. Morris stated:

“I don’t think that people understand that in this deal which is a trade agreement among Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Peru, and Chile, there’s a provision for free flow of workers, just like in the European Union. What It means is unrestricted immigration. It means literally that congress would not have the authority to restrict immigration because a treaty supersedes a statute under our constitution."