More Kimchee
$35 billion in export sales. That’s how much we are hurting ourselves.
Seems Like There's Business
The U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement is still waiting for implementation by the Obama Administration and the Congress, a refusal to act that I have posted about several times. Trade Partnership Worldwide has released a study for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that quantifies how much Washington’s inaction hurts the United States when faced with competition from Korea’s new FTA with the European Union and the prospect that there will soon be a Korea-Canada FTA. The study was done by Laura Baughman of Trade Partnership and Joseph Francois of the University of Linz.
The bottom line, say Baughman and Francois, is that America’s failure to implement the U.S.-Korea FTA will cost the United States $35.1 billion in exports, which will reduce GDP by $40.4 billion and cause a net reduction in the welfare of U.S. citizens of $25.2 billion. What’s that mean in jobs? More than 345,000 jobs lost. Any way you look at it, we are losing big money.
For an administration and a Congress that claim they are concerned about jobs, failure to put this agreement in place reveals a curious lack of interest in putting Americans to work. It must be more important to put Europeans and Canadians to work. Am I missing something here?
