Roscoe Reeve: Trade deals killing middle class

Having read Thomas Grennes’ well-written Aug. 12 Point of View “Too tough on trade” in defense of the 1 percent, I find myself unconvinced.

Our trade plans have thrown millions of American workers under the bus, and it doesn’t seem that any new jobs did unemployed manufacturing workers any good.

With the middle class now seeing its jobs exported (many asked to train those putting them out of work), sand has been thrown in the previously smooth sailing of trade deals approved by a bought government.

Workers adapt, Grennes said. To the worker it means a lost home, desperate family and spent savings on the way probably to a job that pays a fraction of what was previously earned.

Automation is a smokescreen for the movement of jobs to foreign countries where workers toil for pennies a day. It’s that low pay that puts the spice of profit in the pockets of our 1 percent, few of whom invest in those who worked in their now closed factories, and give us the income disparity that’s going to end our democracy.

Create job training assistance and a real safety net first, and then come back to talk of trade deals. Sell that to our N.C. GOP.

This story was originally published August 28, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Roscoe Reeve: Trade deals killing middle class."