The United Steelworkers (USW) joined Members of Congress and private sector experts Wednesday in declaring the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS-FTA) has fallen far short of job promises and improvements in trade balances marked by the second anniversary of the trade law this Saturday.
"Government data, congressional voices and economic studies confirm that the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement has failed us," USW President Leo W. Gerard said. "It has failed to produce good jobs and the evidence on exports is clear. Our export growth rate in the past 20-out-of-21 months is below the average monthly level seen before the FTA was signed.
"What's astounding is the monthly imports from Korea are up four percent and the monthly US trade deficit with Korea has ballooned 45 percent when compared to the pre-FTA level. The damage from KORUS and other free trade deals have been shown by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) to have caused the loss of tens-of-thousands of good-paying US manufacturing jobs."
The US-South Korea trade deficit has reached a historic high of $20.67 billion this year, which is a $7.4 billion (56 percent) increase from 2011--the year before KORUS took effect. And the government numbers continue to get worse in each of the following years with US exports down $1.8 billion since 2011 and $700 million since 2012. "These trade imbalances cost us more lost jobs," Gerard points out.
US vehicle exports to Korea totaled 14,819 units in 2011 and increased to 27,553 units in 2013; but Korea's exports to the United States grew from 587,328 to 752,675 units over the same period. The entire annual increase in US vehicle exports to Korea are dwarfed by less than one-month of the increase alone in Korea's exports.