It’s NAFTA x3 as Free Trade Deals Sweep Through Congress

By Michelle Chen | Sourced from Colorlines 

Dec 10, 2005 - Portland

One day in September, Isidro Rivera Barrera, a contract worker and labor organizer who was campaigning at an Ecopetrol refining facility in Barrancabermeja, Colombia, was reportedly gunned down outside his home. His death was met with the usual silence—just business as usual in a country with one of the world’s worst human rights records for attacks on trade unionists. But now, the hushed suffering of Colombian workers reverberates in the U.S. Capitol, which has just passed a deal to bring even more business-as-usual to Colombia.

Congress last week approved three long-pending trade deals with Panama, South Korea and Colombia. The rationale behind each of them is dubious; there’s little evidence that the agreements will lift up the U.S. economy and plenty that they could lead to massive job loss in key sectors. But free trade deals have always been less about creating jobs than exporting neoliberal ideology to the Global South, thereby accelerating poor nations' cascade toward low labor standards, environmental exploitation and deregulation.

Article: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/681910/it%E2%80%99s_nafta_x3_as_free_trade_deals_sweep_through_congress/