Trade Adjustment Assistance
By 
The defenders of the Trans Pacific Partnership, likely the single worst thing Obama has ever done in his presidency given how hard he has fought for it, say that Trade Adjustment Assistance will at least help displaced workers recover and adjust to the new economy.
No it won’t, as this 2012 study demonstrates.
In the case of the four-decade-old U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance Program (TAA), which helps workers whose jobs were axed because of increased imports, the answer is no, write associate professor Kara M. Reynolds and student John S. Palatucci, both of American University’s Department of Economics.
Reynolds and Palatucci compared the employment and salary trajectories of TAA beneficiaries with those of workers laid off in similar circumstances who weren’t eligible for the program. In 2007, approximately 150,000 Americans received a total of $850 million of TAA aid in the form of income support, health insurance, job search assistance, relocation compensation, and retraining. The 2009 stimulus expanded the program’s roster and benefits.
After controlling for geography and other factors, the authors found that TAA beneficiaries fared no better at getting new jobs than those who didn’t participate in the program. Furthermore, the TAA beneficiaries who did find jobs earned roughly 30 percent less than they did in their previous positions, while the other workers typically earned 18 percent less. (This disparity owes much to the fact that the TAA program targets workers who are most in need of help.)
But what’s really important here is giving American corporations extralegal rights and the ability to outsource even more American jobs overseas. Of course, labor in these nations are also urging the defeat of the TPP, but let’s not forget that the same American corporations who are so wonderful to us in this nation are providing jobs to the world’s poor like the beneficent overlords they are. So let’s just be grateful to them for all they do for the world.