USLEAP campaigns for effective global trade rules to protect workers and against trade agreements that do not protect workers abroad who organize to improve their wages and working conditions.
- Globalization increasingly integrates economies of other countries with the U.S.
- Globalization increasingly brings into U.S. homes products made by workers all over the world
- Globalization without rules to protect workers who try to improve their wages and working conditions creates a race to the bottom for workers in any industry, in the U.S. or elsewhere, whose jobs can be moved
- Global trade rules, established by the World Trade Organization (WTO), currently do not protect workers
- U.S. trade rules to protect workers were weakened with the passage of Free Trade Agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA
- Congress began efforts to reverse the weakening of U.S. trade rules to protect workers in the summer of 2007 but there is still a long way to go to achieve effective trade rules that protect workers.