For too long, debates over international trade have been dominated by corporate elites and economic ideologues, rather than rooted in the experiences of ordinary Americans. 

The Trade Stories Project allows people who have been affected by policies and institutions like NAFTA and the WTO to share their views on a matter crucial to the global economy. 

This includes displaced workers, farmers, small business owners and immigrants who have been typically excluded from the trade debate.

As the United States prepared to host the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh in September 2009, displaced workers from across the country called on President Barack Obama to use the summit as an opportunity to put his promises for trade policy reform into action.  In a briefing for reporters organized by the Trade Stories Project, they shared their stories of trade-related job loss and explained why the President’s campaign promises regarding trade are still important.

“On the campaign trail, President Obama repeatedly spoke out about the need to fix failed trade policies like NAFTA and the WTO.  Since he’s been in office, the United States has continued to lose middle-class jobs as a result of these policies,” said Victor Pierce, a former machinist whose job at the Freightliner Truck Plant in Portland, Ore., was offshored to Mexico earlier this year.  “As the President meets with other world leaders, I hope he’ll remember people like me — people who couldn’t afford to buy our kids new school clothes this fall because free trade agreements have cost us our jobs.”

On multiple occasions during his race for the White House, President Obama said one of his first acts if elected would be to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  In 2007 and 2008, he made numerous other concrete campaign pledges regarding trade policy.  Many of these promises are recounted in the new report “Trade Matters: First-Hand Accounts of Why President Obama and Members of Congress Should Keep Their Promises on Trade Policy Reform.” 

The report also features the stories of displaced workers from Maine to Washington, and places in between, as evidence of why trade reform is important.  A free PDF is available online.  During the press briefing, several people featured in the report discussed why they want the President to follow through on his campaign promises.

“Current international trade policy can open our markets to imported food ingredients that would not meet U.S. standards for health and safety if they were produced here.  Such policies put consumers at risk and disadvantage domestic farmers,” said Joe Logan, a fifth generation dairy farmer from northeastern Ohio.

“Just as in manufacturing, jobs in the high tech industry are not immune to the current anti-worker trade policies,” said Rennie Sawade, a software engineer from Seattle, Wash., who has seen past jobs shipped overseas.  “High tech jobs are now treated as a commodity where jobs are constantly being shifted to the cheapest markets.  Broken are the promises made two decades ago that the new high tech jobs were going to be stable jobs that could not be outsourced.”

Speakers on the call did not oppose international trade.  Rather, they want changes to international trade policies that would better protect working people in the United States and abroad.  At the time of the call, 120 Members of Congress had signed on as cosponsors of the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act, comprehensive trade reform legislation that addresses public demand for change and would uphold the trade reform promises made by President Obama and others during the 2008 elections.

“Americans need major change in trade policy to bring back our manufacturing and farming jobs to the United States,” said Gayleen Spooner, a former employee of the Pinkham Lumber sawmill in Ashland, Maine whose job was displaced by imports.  “Companies move their factories to other countries to make bigger profits, but it is the working American that pays the price.  I hope President Obama will support the TRADE Act so we can get our economy back on track.”

Download a PDF of "Trade Matters" here

Listen to an abridge audio file of the press briefing:

Reporters can learn more by emailing media@tradestories.org or calling (503) 736-9777.