By David Sirota, AlterNet
Printed on March 23, 2005

At first glance, President Bush's nomination of Rep. Rob Portman (R) to be the new U.S. trade representative may seem like an encouraging sign. Portman, after all, is from Ohio – a state ravaged by corporate-backed free trade deals. As one study shows, Portman's state has lost more than 52,000 jobs because of our unfair trade policy. Naturally, then, you'd expect him to have a particularly good grasp at how America's current trade policy is hurting our country.

 

Instead, though, Portman has been one of the most outspoken advocates for this disastrous trade policy. As a senior member of the congressional committee that oversees trade policy, he has supported every major piece of free trade legislation that's come before him, while pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industries that push these deals. These trade deals have been deliberately swept clean of any provisions to make sure our trading partners adhere to wage, environmental and human rights standards, thus forcing Americans to compete in a race to the bottom with some of the most desperate workers on the planet.

 

Worse, Portman has made statements about this trade policy that insult the public's intelligence. For instance, he actually claimed "I don't think GM went to Mexico because of NAFTA." He said this even though studies showed that immediately after NAFTA passed, "GM jobs in the United States were cut by 38,000 workers."

 

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