Fair Trade

The American worker should no longer be the victim of globalization.  America ’s trade agreements are fundamentally flawed by promoting free trade rather than fair trade.  Right now, our trade agreements are motivating companies to move American middle-class jobs overseas to Third World sweatshops and that is wrong.  We should amend our trade agreements to insist that foreign producers either meet American labor and environmental production standards or pay a fair trade tariff if they want access to American markets.  We need not fear fair competition from abroad, but the way things are now are far from fair to the American worker.

Globalization does not have to be synonymous with outsourcing jobs.  As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, we have the opportunity to lead the whole world in the right direction, rather than follow it in the wrong direction.  

I support amending our trade agreements to put a Fair Trade Tariff on foreign imports that do not meet American labor and environmental production standards because a Fair Trade Tariff would:

Protect Our Jobs from Unfair Competition—American workers are losing their jobs because our free trade agreements give multinational corporations unimpeded access to our markets regardless of where and how their products are made.  This means that we lose jobs here if a foreign producer cuts production costs by exploiting workers or polluting the environment.  The Fair Trade Tariff would make foreign products that are not made by the rules we have here no cheaper than American goods…and protect American jobs from unfair competition.

Taxes that Encourage Domestic Investment and Discourage Offshoring-- Corporations will always do whatever it takes to maximize their profits.  We should never expect corporations to do what best for America unless it’s best for their bottom line.  By amending our trade agreements to include a Free Trade Tariff, we can make it more profitable for a corporation to keep a job in America than to move it overseas.  By making a Free Trade Tariff, we can align corporate interests with our national interests.

Defend and Promote our Values— America is being pressured to weaken our worker rights and our environmental protections because it is hard to compete with countries in which these protections do not exist.  Instead of facing pressure to lower our standards to that of foreign countries, A Fair Trade Tariff would pressure foreign countries to rise to our standards.

Help Protect the Environment—without the incentive to produce in an environmentally destructive way overseas, multinational corporations would meet American environmental production standards all over the world. 

Download a .PDF version of this policy paper.