Thom Hartmann: Thom Hartmann here with you, broadcasting from our Denver affiliate, KKZN AM760, Colorado’s progressive talk. Pleased to be here thanks for the studio and thanks for all the great folks. Especially Kate who is sitting here monitoring all the audio line and making sure that everything keeps on working. On the line with us, and we’re going to get on to your calls. It’s anything goes Friday, we’ll be taking your calls on pretty much any topic you want.

But first I wanted to get Todd Tucker in here. He’s the research director for Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and the co-author of a new report, also the co-author of the book, ‘The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority.” Citizens.org is the website. “Lies, Damn Lies, and Export Statistics: How Corporate Lobbyists Distort the Record of Flawed Trade Deals,” the report. Todd, welcome to the program.

Todd Tucker: Thanks for having me.

Thom Hartmann: Very glad to have you with us and thanks for the great work that you and everybody at Citizens.org, Public Citizen, is doing. “Lies, Damn Lies, and Export Statistics”? That’s an interesting catenation.

Todd Tucker: Yeah, well you know for years we’ve been hearing corporate lobbyists say that we’ve got to push these NAFTA style trade agreements. And you know when environmentalists have said what about the environmental destruction? The corporate lobbyists have said, don’t worry, we’ve got exports. Then you talk to folks in the labor community, in the small business community who are concerned about trade deficits and the business community, the corporate lobbyists, again say, well we’ve got exports.

What this study is about, our new report, “Lies, Damn Lies, and Export Statistics,” it really should be the final nail in the coffin for these kind of arguments. We don’t really talk about trees in this report, we don’t really talk that much about deficits in this report. We tackled the lobbyists on their own turf and we showed that the export growth rate to countries that we do have trade deals with, like NAFTA, lag behind our exports to countries that we don’t’ have trade deals with. In other words, so even on their own terms, corporate lobbyists don’t have a case for more NAFTA style trade agreements.

Thom Hartmann: Well but those trade agreements are creating enormous profits for the transnational corporations participating in them. I understand that over half of all US import/export, half of all US trade exempting oil imports is actually intra-company. In other words, it’s like HP US buying from HP China rather than what would be real trade. I mean that’s not trade, that’s the arbitrage of labor.

Todd Tucker: You know and we’ve looked a lot at these corporate claims both from Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers, and we find a lot of, first off, simple sort of math errors that they make in a lot of their projections of export gains. And then we also found things like the chamber and the business groups want to include things, want to include products that are not made by US workers in the estimates of US export statistics. So a good that’s from Costa Rica comes through a US port, no US workers involved in it, ships off to Europe, they want to include those kind of goods in US exports…

Thom Hartmann: Because it was a supposedly American company that brought it in and sold it back out again.

Todd Tucker: Yeah it’s just sort of this ridiculous kind of really grasping at any straw to try to put a little bit of legitimacy on their argument which, as you say, really the fundamental interest is about corporate profits and but as we should in the report the job promises, the environment promises, and now even export promises, have been really overblown and are incorrect.

Thom Hartmann: You said contrary to corporate, to recent corporate claims that trade balance in non-oil manufactured goods with US FTA partners over 2008 and 2009 was 97 billion dollars. How do these numbers come about and probably the larger question. I mean if we have an 800 billion dollar, 600 billion dollar, varies from year to year, annual trade deficit, that’s money that people in other countries, governments of other countries, corporations in other countries, have and they ultimate at the end of the day have to spend in the US, it’s US dollars. And so they’re coming over here and they’re buying our businesses, they’re buying our real estate, they’re buying our office buildings, they’re buying now our agricultural land. It’s also, is it not, a great sell off of America?

Todd Tucker: No, that’s absolutely right. And the way that we come up with the trade deficit statistics in our report is the same as what an obscure government agency called the US International Trade Commission uses and it puts out a lot of projections on various trade agreements, various trade deals. And you won’t hear a lot about them from the other agencies in the Obama administration because they put out reports that are actually somewhat honest.

For instance they did an analysis of the agreements that President Bush signed with South Korea and with Columbia. And this agency, the ITC, found out that the US global trade deficit would actually increase if these agreements were to go into effect. You know, you don’t hear the Obama administration talking that much about those goals when, about those findings, when they’re trumpeting this Korea FTA.

So for instance, when US trade representative Ron Kirk, an Obama administration official, goes out on the road, talks to the press, what he cites is that the statistic just on the export side, without looking at the import side, without looking at the increase in the overall global trade deficit as a result of the Korea FTA.

So you know we’re kind of up against a whole lot of tricky little flaws, little method problems in these studies. And what our report does is just kind of go one by one down the line and find the flaws in those studies so that we can give a more accurate picture of what is the record, historical record of our trade agreements.

Thom Hartmann: We’re talking with Todd Tucker, the research director for Public Citizens Global Trade Watch and co-author of the new report, “Lies, Damn Lies and Export Statistics,” which you can find over at Citizen.org. And Todd, this is bipartisan BS. I mean Ross Perot warned us about that great sucking sound and Bill Clinton and George Herbert Walker Bush were on the exact same side of that argument. They were both saying oh yeah we need this! And here we are. Are there, I know that Senator Sanders has been pushing against this. I know on the right, that Ron Paul has been pushing against this. But they tend to be viewed as the extremes, as the edges. Are there any politicians in Washington DC who are taking seriously the message that you’re putting forward, that this stuff is hurting our country?

Todd Tucker: Absolutely. And in fact we’ve looked at over 200 congressional races in 2006 and 2008, looking at new members of congress that were coming in. And we found that the overwhelming majority of these candidates, especially on the democratic side, campaigned on a message of fair trade reform. And against more NAFTA style deals. So to the extent that Nancy Pelosi is speaker, Harry Reid is leader of the senate, that is due to these new ranks, these new members, these rank and file democrats that are running and winning on a fair trade platform.

But then you fast forward to today. We’re looking at you know democrats playing defense in the house, may lose the house. And you’ve got a lot of folks from manufacturing districts, from agricultural districts that are again sort of trying to campaign on fair trade reform but then they’re being undermined by the national folks that are talking about pushing the Korea FTA, and the Bush deal with Columbia. So it’s really putting their own folks in a tough spot and it’s really going to be the party that will pay at the end of the day.

Thom Hartmann: And I’m assuming that on the republican side of the ledger there’s almost nobody other than maybe Ron Paul. And actually I’m not even sure, actually I think he may be in favor of just no rules on trade whatsoever, total free trade, he’s libertarian.

Todd Tucker: That’s right.

Thom Hartmann: Which is even worse, arguably.

Todd Tucker: That’s right. We do see a number of republicans campaigning on this, and we also see some republicans that have a history of voting for NAFTA style trade agreements. But then when it comes election time they try to sort of crank up some sort of manufactured populist rhetoric against trade agreements but then vote for them when they come back into office. But we do, it is a bipartisan phenomena of both, folks in both parties running on fair trade. And ultimately it’s some of those incumbents that may pay the price on election day.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. It’s absolutely incredible. To what extent, Todd, we just have a half a minute left, Todd Tucker. To what extent is this catching fire politically, nationwide, this issue of fair trade versus free trade?

Todd Tucker: I think it absolutely is. You look at poll after poll and you see that this is one of the top concerns that Americans have. In ’06 you had polls showing that trade concerns were rating even above the Iraq war in determining sort of how people were going to vote come election day. So I think that the political party that can speak in a credible way, in a consistent way for fair trade is going to have a lock down on the political future of this country.

Thom Hartmann: Well, let’s hope the democratic party picks up that message and does it quick. Todd Tucker with the Public Citizens Global Trade Watch Group, the research director there. You can read his new report, “Lies, Damn Lies, and Export Statistics: How Corporate Lobbyists Distort the Record of Flawed Trade Deals,” Citizen.org. Todd thank you.

Thom Hartmann: Thanks a lot.

Thom Hartmann: Great to have you with us today.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.