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O PINION
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Fair Trade Is a Racial Justice Issue
Another
wrong-headed
trade pact
by i saiah
J. P oole
The work of re-
pairing the racial fis-
sures that broke wide
open in Ferguson,
Mo., last year goes
beyond the shooting
death of unarmed teenager Mi-
chael Brown.
It also goes beyond ending
the practices highlighted in a
Justice Department report that
criticized Ferguson cops and
courts for shaking down the
city’s poor, black residents for
revenue.
What else will it take? Good
jobs.
Unfortunately, an upcoming
Senate bill could make the un-
derlying economic crisis faced
by communities like Ferguson
even worse. That legislation
would “fast track” the passage
of the Trans-Pacific Partner-
ship trade and investment pact
through Congress.
What’s the connection to
racial unrest? Simply put, it’s
the lack of economic opportu-
nity that results when bad trade
deals lead to the disap-
pearance of good-pay-
ing jobs.
Hundreds of thou-
sands of blue-collar
jobs vanished after the
North American Free
Trade Agreement, or
NAFTA, was signed in
1994. And towns like Ferguson
were hit especially hard.
The St. Louis metropolitan
area, home to 206,000 man-
ufacturing jobs in 1990, only
had about 113,000 left by the
end of 2014, according to the
Labor Department. During that
same period, the region saw no
net growth in trade, transporta-
tion, or utility-sector jobs.
“We used to have a ton of
light manufacturing, light in-
dustrial jobs,” said John L.
Davidson, a St. Louis banking
lawyer who writes a blog about
economic issues. But now,
“there are no jobs out there.”
The trade deal left the St.
Louis region with a mortally
wounded tax base intertwined
with deep-seated racial bias.
In Ferguson, local officials
scrambled to balance munic-
ipal budgets through law en-
forcement, fines, and court
fees, the Justice Department’s
report found.
That report quotes a 2010
email from the city’s finance
director to the police chief that
warns, “It will be hard to sig-
nificantly raise collections next
year” without ramped-up tick-
et writing. “Given that we are
looking at a substantial sales
tax shortfall, this is not an in-
significant issue.”
That was the justification for
subjecting the residents Fer-
guson — 25 percent of whom
live below the poverty line —
to usurious fines and penalties.
These fell hardest on the city’s
black majority.
People were levied fines
they couldn’t afford for even
minor offenses. Not cutting the
grass low enough in front of
your home, for example, could
mean a $102 ticket. And when
the victims couldn’t pay quick-
ly, the late penalties piled up
fast.
To many civil rights leaders,
bringing well-paying jobs back
to African-American commu-
nities is crucial to repairing the
damage done by racially dis-
criminatory policies.
“The question of good jobs
in minority communities is di-
rectly tied to the loss of these
jobs overseas,” the Reverend
Dr. William Barber II, pres-
ident of the North Carolina
NAACP, recently wrote.
What these communities
need is fair and balanced trade,
which would mean more jobs
at all skill levels for American
workers, as well as higher la-
bor and environmental stan-
dards for workers around the
globe — a true win-win.
Hanging in the balance are the
Fergusons of America, whose
struggles to overcome racial
and economic barriers are hard
enough without the headwinds
of yet another wrong-headed
trade agreement.
Isaiah J. Poole is the editor
of OurFuture.org, the website
of the Campaign for America’s
Future.