Orlando Sentinel - Rep. Webster: U.S.-Korea Trade Pact Good for Central Fla.

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By: David Damron

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is touring Florida to generate support for the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and on Monday leaned on an Orlando congressional ally to get it passed, U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Winter Garden.

"It's going to bring jobs to Central Florida," Webster said, arguing it would not resemble past "one-way street" trade pacts such as NAFTA, with this one being built for "more accommodation to a net [trade] balance."

Critics such as Public Citizen don't buy it. They and other labor groups argue that the Obama administration has barely tweaked this languishing President Bush-era trade deal, one that would increase the overall trade deficit by billions and cost as many as 159,000 American jobs, citing a report by the Economic Policy Institute.

"The [Obama] administration had a chance to fix the many glaring problems in Bush's NAFTA-style Korea agreement, but it didn't," Public Citizen's Lori Wallach said in a statement this month.

Chamber leaders have their own set of dueling numbers, claiming for instance that Florida could lose 19,417 jobs if it doesn't pass. The Chamber took South Korea's U.S. Ambassador Han Duk Soo to a local ski and boat manufacturing facility, Correct Craft, and heard assurances from an I.B.M. executive from Tampa that this would be good for the state.

Here's a link to Public Citizen's concerns about the deal. And here's the Chamber's reasons for passing it.

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