Sadder still the fact that Chinese workers illegally paid less than China's own minimum wage still risk losing their jobs to other countries like Viet Nam where the rate is even lower. Who can sensibly argue that this is NOT a race to the bottom?

Just read an article in the LAT about Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart apparently is a driving force in the repression of wages and working conditions all over the world. Obviously this hurts all workers. I've been arguing with the people on angrybear about this. Unfettered free trade definitely ISN'T good for workers. Wal-Mart is causing the destruction of it's own shoppers, yet the economists refuse to recognize this fact.

Free trade agreements should be repealed now, and replaced with fair trade agreements that require that all workers receive a living wage, safe conditions, and the right to organize, and that reasonable environmental standards are followed. Otherwise, no trade. The alternative is a continued race-to-the-bottom that will only deepen inequality, poverty, and environmental destruction in the developing world, while undermining the standard of living for workers in western countries. The only winners in the free trade game are the Wal-Marts, Nikes, subsidized Western agribusinesses, and their respective investors.

The Dems need to make this an issue, by showing how the sluggish employment picture in the US results in significant part from the Bush administration's policies on trade.

Another reason why the #1 jobs program the world can do is implement economic policies that help the peasant farmer stay viable. Industry will never be able to absorb all of these people being replaced by tractors. Small farmers also take much better care of their land.

As long as the Fortune 500 remains the dominant force in U.S. politics, and as long as both wings of the U.S. ruling class remain committed to a "protectionism for us, free trade for them" stance (a stance that by all signs a Dean cabinet would hold fast to), well-meaning campaigns for "labor rights" and "independent trade unions"
in China will be cynically exploited by the U.S.
to extract concessions from China on the pace and extent of its conformity to WTO rules and regulations. Such campaigns will essentially play the same role that NGO complaints about human rights abuses in Tibet play, doing little or nothing to benefit putative beneficiaries but a hell of a lot to advantage US TNC's and exporters as they press the CCP to rearrange the terms of their marriage of convenience more and more in their favor. At the very least supporters
of the Chinese working class and peasantry should be extremely selective about which labor rights campaigners they affiliate with. I can't say I have explored it in great detail but I feel fairly safe associating with China Labour Bulletin (http://www.china-labour.org.hk/iso) because they seem to be well aware of the ways in which the TNC's and the bigger powers than China
(the EU and Japan in addition to the U.S.) can
cleverly twist the labor rights discourse toward their own ends.

I do feel compelled to mention, however, that were
Chinese wage levels reflective of Chinese productivity, and were the average standard of living in China raised thereby, China's stress on local, national, and global ecosystems would increase all the more. Fordist mass consumption is thus ultimately objectively impossible in China. The basic choice is between ecological socialism in China or world barbarism -- the leading question for 21st Century leftists and progressives everywhere. The poster who commented about the absolute unviability of transforming Chinese peasant smallholder farming into capital- and energy-intensive agribusiness is on the right track.