The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, (UE), the first new manufacturing union chartered by the CIO in 1936, detailed me to Washington, D.C., at the end of 1992. My assignment from the General Officers was to help devise and head up our response to the burgeoning “free trade” offensive then pounding our membership from all sides.
For the next 21 years, I had a front-row seat to witness the largest push for corporate super-profits in all of human history.
This “free trade” era found a name for the de-industrialization, impoverishment, and environmental destruction of enormous sections of the country—it was called “NAFTA,” the North American Free Trade Agreement.
New economic order
The corporate transformation of production and trade during that period was the launch of a new epoch. The destruction of the socialist world system kicked off an entire reordering of the world manufacturing and trade regime. With U.S. imperialism triumphant and unchallenged, the living standards of the working class were easy pickings.
Corporations and their political hirelings in both major political parties went to work. A veritable rush for the exits ensued as U.S. manufacturing companies systematically fled the United States. And all this came on top of the massive industrial exodus already visited on U.S. communities as far back as the 1970s.
Once guaranteed as an easier and easier means to bring more cheaply-manufactured products back to the U.S., there was a steadily diminishing reason to make them here. The profits first, profits last, and profits uber alles system dictates that reality in an economic machinery completely controlled by private investors.
Trump inevitable
In just a few decades, the working class has been impoverished and subjugated on an unheard-of scale. Entire industrial sectors have been wiped out or carted off to low-wage zones all around the globe. Both U.S. political parties dutifully arranged military protection for these new production centers. An entirely new transportation supply chain was created for the new flood of imports.
Unions, meanwhile, were smashed, and much of the movement outwards of employment was subsidized by ordinary taxpayers. Many millions of jobs—often unionized—were systematically destroyed. Predictably, corporate profits rose to levels never before imagined. Crime, drugs, social disorder, and epidemic misery ballooned.
So, given his talk of bringing back jobs and restoring industry, it wasn’t necessarily a surprise that Donald Trump was elected twice. Yet, leaders of the pitiful Democratic “Party” still can’t seem to figure out how Trump was elected the first time, let alone a second.
“Free trade” in confusion
Much of today’s reporting and writing on “free trade,” tariffs, and trade developments is for simpletons, or borders on the absurd. That goes for much of the “left” press as well, which agonizes over this and that outrage in an era of minute-by-minute outrages. And it can be no other way in an environment where realities and facts barely matter.
What matters are corporate profits and super profits. The Trump regime is now refashioning the past 50 years of trade policies to seek a renewal of corporate profits and to provide a path forward for ever-concentrating monopoly, expanded imperialism, and intensified attacks on living standards.
Trade policies and impacts cannot be understood without viewing them through a class struggle lens. The Carter, Clinton, Bush I & II, Obama, and Biden regimes all subscribed to one degree or another to the veritable religion of “free trade,” broadly defined as a public policy catering to the big business interests who desire to relocate production to low-wage zones—and with guaranteed access to the U.S market. Trump is now slamming on the brakes, but his clumsy attempts to reverse course are shaking the entire economic system.
There will be new winners and losers, both bosses and workers, for sure. But lost in this uproar of confusion is the fact that the current trade policies of the U.S. are overdue for complete remaking. What’s needed is an entirely new trade system which lifts workers worldwide, abolishes the dictatorship of the bosses, and where trade and development decisions are arrived at democratically.
So long as labor and working people are confined to trade deliberations of “free trade” versus “tariffs and protection,” working people will be pitted against one another and ultimately impoverished. And as our fragile environment groans under the strain of wanton corporate pillage, the need for sane development is required more than ever.
Pages from a trade lobbyist’s diary
Over my 21 years as the UE Washington Representative, I was a witness and participant in hundreds of trade deal debates and legislative battles in our big business-owned Congress. Labor lost virtually every fight, facing a bipartisan political machine hell-bent on catering to the corporate trade agenda. Profits mattered to Congress, not working people. At best, any concern for the “national interest” was mere window dressing for the disastrous agenda.
Unlike most writers on the trade subject, I was there. What follows are some glimpses of what went on during these fights. In many of the debates then, as now, facts did not matter. Class interests are what mattered, and the party confused about its class interests is inevitably the loser.
On the evening of the final NAFTA vote in November 1993, I found myself in a workroom in the basement of the House of Representatives chambers. It was for the use of the unions and other organizations still frantically lobbying against NAFTA. About ten other union reps were also there. Ralph Nader was there. The National Farmers Union was there. Dozens of progressive groups were there. Students were there. But the AFL-CIO had already given up and gone home, fearful that Bill Clinton’s fanatic pro-NAFTA “brand” was getting damaged a bit too much.
At this 25th hour of the NAFTA fight, all logic and fact had gone out the window, if they had ever applied at all. Proponents of the job-killing NAFTA scheme were claiming all sorts of wonderful things would happen should it pass.
I had earlier decided to make 100 copies of Karl Marx’s “Speech on Free Trade” for this moment, and pass them out to those of us still there grinding away against all odds. It was a great curiosity and was well-received. After all, what did Marx say about all this? I gave a copy to Ralph Nader, and we have been friends ever since. Just read the ending and you’ll understand the meaning of “free trade.”
Years before the NAFTA vote, the General Electric Company (GE) told UE that, “Ideally, we would put every (manufacturing) plant we have on a barge, and push it around from port to port, always seeking the lowest wages.” I made sure that nearly every member of Congress knew this. Despite my puny efforts, nine-tenths of all Congressional members and Senators remained in love with GE for one reason or another. They willingly and eagerly lapped-up GE’s lies and propaganda about all the good jobs which would flow from a deal like NAFTA. If they actually believed GE’s lies, they should have sought refunds from their respective colleges. None did.
In 1998, I was booted off the U.S. Department of Labor Advisory Committee for Trade Policy. This thoroughly ineffective group met monthly and featured all sorts of labor lobbyists and union leaders who enjoyed looking influential. Depending on your rank you might also get a low-level lunch with one of the Clinton regime’s staff—to once more demonstrate your “insider” status. UE had been invited to sit on this committee in the 1980s when the labor movement was still in a mood to place small demands on the Bush administration.
The demand was that labor should pick its own committee participants, and not the feds. So, UE and several other independent unions were appointed. My expulsion offense? I refused to fill out the unbelievably intrusive “security clearance” application suddenly required of all members of the committee—as in being compelled to complete the same Form 86 that you would complete if you were applying for a job with the CIA.
This Trade Advisory Committee dealt with absolutely nothing that could have remotely been considered “classified.” The real explanation lay in Clinton’s desire to show that he somehow could “stand up to big labor.” Clinton was badgered incessantly by Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich for allowing “communists” into his administration. It was an absurd claim also parroted by the lunatic-fringe right-wing Washington Times newspaper.
I worked in vain to rally the unions to resist this shameful repressive move. After several months, the AFL-CIO staff convenor of the committee told me that, “You are the only one who has complained. Fill out the form or you will be removed.” Some unkind words passed my lips, and I was proudly removed. The incoming Bush regime in 2001 unceremoniously shut down the committee anyway. Good riddance.
At a trade policy conference held in Mexico City, in 1994, I opined that UE stood strongly against the use of trade policy as a form of economic warfare against countries designated somehow as “undesirable” by U.S. imperialism. UE consistently has opposed the use of the Cuban trade embargo to wage relentless war against the tiny island nation. UE also has exposed numerous examples of trade policy being used to wage overt and covert war both at home and abroad. For this short comment, I was given an extended standing ovation from the 500 delegates representing unions all across the hemisphere.
For contrast, at an AFL-CIO post-NAFTA trade conference later that year, I was invited to explain UE’s cross-border organizing work with independent Mexican unions. I did that, and the only question asked of me was by a veteran AFL-CIO staff member and redbaiter extraordinaire. He gave a disjointed speech defending the Cuban trade embargo and lambasted “communists.” I responded that it was shameful to allow labor’s foreign policy to be determined by the U.S. intelligence community and walked out.
In 2013, at a staged Washington conference labeled as being held by The Atlantic magazine but subsidized by GE, labor journalist Mike Elk and I, tag-team-style, confronted GE CEO Jeff Immelt over the fact that the company had closed countless U.S. plants since NAFTA had passed, and closed another 40 after President Obama put Immelt in charge of his farcical “Jobs and Competitiveness Council.”
Immelt deftly deflected us both, and not one of the more than 75 media reporters chasing Immelt would even take a copy of my GE plant closing list when I offered it to them.
The AFL-CIO fully embraced the fraudulent Obama jobs creation committee scam to its last day, apparently forgetting the millions of jobs destroyed by NAFTA as well as the huge role played by GE in jamming NAFTA and every other free trade deal through Congress. In the end, the jobs council was axed suddenly by the Obama White House, once again leaving the labor federation abandoned and humiliated by the White House.
Not long after my encounter, Immelt was quoted widely as saying that he yelled, “China! China! China!” whenever he met with his plant managers, browbeating them to move even more of GE’s U.S. production abroad. GE’s momentum to flee the U.S. gained speed up to the point the company collapsed—and required an enormous taxpayer bailout in the wake of the Great Recession. In June 2018, GE was de-listed by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, marking the end of one of the mightiest “free trade” promoting companies in U.S. history.
During my tenure as UE’s Political Representative, we lost well more than 250 workplaces to plant closings and mass layoffs. The union was literally gutted from coast to coast. In all of my work to respond to these closings and layoffs, the dominant explanation was that the company was moving the work to either Mexico or China. Hundreds of times I asked our members if they had ever seen a Mexican or Chinese boss poking around their plant and sizing up the place for a move. Not once did anyone report this. In every single case, their U.S. owners and managers were offshoring the operations. Correctly identifying the thief was required in a union like UE.
Shortly after NAFTA passed, UE Local 271 at the Dynapert company faced a plant closing announcement by its owner, the Black and Decker company. The Massachusetts firm was the next-to-last company in the U.S. that manufactured the sophisticated machines needed to make computer boards. Black and Decker wanted to sell this critical plant to a new owner who had already announced its intention to close the operation. After a herculean effort, UE won a federal review of the case.
The Clinton regime ultimately ruled that the plant sale and closing could proceed despite the fact that the new company would hold a 100% monopoly position in the U.S. Clinton appointees interpreted NAFTA as shifting the measurement of monopoly from a national to international realm. The lone corporate holder of the monopoly to build these critical machines later closed itself, with all production offshored. There was no resistance from the Clinton regulators to this complete loss of this indispensable machine tool sector.
For the better part of a decade, UE rank-and-file members conducted surveys of their U.S. Representatives and Senators. A simple question was asked: “Can you provide the name of a company and the address of a plant in your district or state that was opened directly as a result of the 1993 passage of NAFTA?” The most frequent answer was, “We will get back to you.” Virtually no one ever did. The better Democrats would confess, “There are none.”
But once, a pro-NAFTA Democratic Senator claimed that his state saw a new plastic waste tub manufacturer open and hired “a lot” of new workers thanks to the deal. My simple investigation showed that the plant had been poached from Quebec and replaced an even larger plant that had been unionized. Wages were less than half at the U.S. facility ,and benefits were nonexistent. Once, an Iowa Republican Representative lay in wait for our visit and surprised us with one example: A new soybean export plant in his district had opened, hiring a grand total of 16 new workers.
During the NAFTA battle, the main U.S. corporate lobby group was an outfit labeled as “USA for NAFTA.” Countless corporate leaders from all the big companies flooded Capitol Hill for 18 months straight. Hundreds of these high-level bosses jammed every Congressional and Senate office on a daily basis—with the exception of Vermont’s Bernie Sanders. They ridiculed him as the “Maytag Repairman” of trade, harkening back to the TV commercial featuring the lonely repairman with nothing to fix. In the middle of that corporate crush, I ran across J. Peter Grace, head of the massive W. R. Grace chemical conglomerate.
I introduced myself and offered to exchange handouts, which he graciously did. Grace, a lifetime Democrat, was a fanatic pro-NAFTA free trader among other things. He took my UE fact sheet on NAFTA detailing the expanding industrial destruction. We parted, and I saw that he had given me a glossy and expensive booklet promoting NAFTA put out by the USA for NAFTA coalition. It was a state-by-state listing of new jobs promised by companies if NAFTA passed. I sat down, counted up the specific job claims, and they came to barely 300 promised jobs.
I approached the AFL-CIO to consider a press conference to expose this jobs fraud campaign by Grace and USA for NAFTA, but they declined. Peter Grace had been a longtime supporter of the AFL-CIO’s anti-communist “foreign policy” work, even chairing the notorious “American Institute for Free Labor Development” (AIFLD) some years before. No other manufacturing union would host such a press conference “if the AFL-CIO is against it.”
Likewise, during the last-ditch anti-NAFTA lobbying blitz, I ran across then-UAW President Owen Bieber. Like the rest of labor, we were reduced to going door-to-door in the House of Representatives seeking the handful of votes needed to stop the trade deal. We met in front of the office of Democratic House member Tom Sawyer from Akron, Ohio, a city blasted numerous times by job-killing trade policies.
We were joined by UAW’s then top lobbyist, Alan Reuther, and squeezed our way into the office. Bieber began a quiet and professorial explanation of how NAFTA was not going to be helpful for the industries represented by the Auto Workers Union. Reuther chimed in on the same calm wavelength. Having had enough, I blasted Sawyer with the obvious: “Hasn’t Ohio, and your town Akron, seen enough job loss from all this? You want to let this thing pass and kill what’s left of the good jobs?” Bieber and Reuther smiled, but I stormed out leaving them to deal with Sawyer. After a few minutes they emerged, Bieber complimented me on my rant, and said “He might do the right thing.”
“Your UE union must be a pretty good union” he added in thanks. I agreed. Sawyer then voted for NAFTA. The United Auto Workers have lost more than one million members during the “free trade” era.
During UE’s work to oppose the U.S.-South Korea free trade deal in 2012, I ran across U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Al Franken, Democrat from Minnesota. Sanders was annoyed with Franken’s support for the deal and his refusal to even discuss the facts of the matter. Sanders introduced me to Franken. “Al, this is Chris Townsend from UE. His union has members in your state. Chris, why don’t you tell him what free trade has done for your members in Minnesota?”
I offered the simple facts; “Senator, when I joined UE in 1988, we had about 1,500 UE members working in Minnesota for various manufacturing plants. Today (2012), we are down to 13 members in one recycling shop. I would say we have had about all the fucking free trade we can stand.” With that, Franken scowled, briskly exited, and promptly voted for the Korea free trade deal later that evening.
These reports all bolster my point. Trade, tariffs, free trade, protection—all of it must be understood from the point of view of “them and us.” The simple outstanding question for workers is whether or not we have the guts and the class consciousness to devise a way somehow, someday, to put an end to this deadly and disastrous system called “capitalism.”
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.
This is a slightly edited version of a previously-published article; it has been formatted to conform to People’s World style.
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