One intriguing item that Obama announced in his State of the Union was on a Trade Enforcement Unit. I I tend to be skeptical about these enforcement agencies. But if you follow the facts, the President is correct that his Administration has been solid on bringing trade cases against China, on tires, on steel, on solar products, on rare earth minerals, and he’s gotten results.

With the U.S. economy stuck in a constant rut and Europe going into a tailspin, President Obama is looking to escape to the East. While the nations of the Asian Pacific rim face strains of their own, from massive inequality to climate change, their growth rates look positively zen compared to the stagnant economies that used to run the world.

So for the past several days President Obama has been charming Asia-Pacific officialdom, hoping these “emerging” economies can prop up the West’s sagging empires.

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes for the past few weeks with FDL members on the OccupySupply program. So far the FDL Membership Program has raised $83,583.88 and spent $42,833.96 on supplies, and we are proud to report that union made hats, scarves and socks are now on their way to 40 Occupations across the country.

John Boehner has declared the China currency bill, which passed the Senate with rare bipartisan support and 63 votes, “dead on arrival” in the House. So Sen. Sherrod Brown has an op ed in Boehner’s home town paper pressuring Boehner to support the bill and explaining how exchange rates are causing Ohio to lose jobs.

Last week, President Obama racked up several more broken campaign promises as he pushed through Congress three new job-killing corporate trade agreements. The Senate Finance Committee was quite open about the fact that these agreements will kill off more jobs and eager to mitigate the damage with band aids attached to the treaties. Some of us who were in the hearing room felt an obligation to speak up and ask why in the world the senators — with perfect bipartisan harmony — insisted on causing the damage in the first place. And for that we were thrown in jail.

That giant sucking sound you hear today is the sound of jobs being outsourced as President Obama signs into law three free trade deals; South Korea, Colombia and Panama. According to the Economic Policy Institute, passing the Korea Free Trade deal will likely cost this country 159,000 jobs.

Yesterday Obama scored another “w” with the passage of the Korea, Panama and Columbia Free Trade deals — virtually unchanged since Bush tried to push them through before he left office.

In 2008, the Columbia deal was a big campaign issue, with both Obama and Clinton denouncing any agreement until human rights conditions had been addressed. Obama declared he would oppose the Columbia deal “because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.”

Since that time, the murder of labor leaders in Colombia has only accelerated, but the value of their lives has apparently declined. Because when the Colombia Free Trade agreement passed yesterday, it was awfully lonely in the “what about the dead labor leaders” room.

As Public Citizen’s Lori Wallach explained yesterday, the three trade agreements passed Congress in a whirlwind of activity last night, because a present for the President of South Korea’s visit to Washington today is more important than a considered debate about the role of neoliberal trade agreements and what they have traditionally done to US exports. In addition, the House did pass Trade Adjustment Assistance, with every Democrat supporting and about half of Republicans. This had already passed the Senate, so the entire package goes to the President for his signature, and he is pleased about this:

With nine percent unemployment and Americans desperate for job creation, it is unconscionable that President Obama and House Republicans would push through a trio of NAFTA-style job-killing trade agreements that even the government’s own studies show will increase the U.S. trade deficit.

While the American Jobs Act failed a cloture vote last night, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act passed the Senate on a final vote. That bill would allow the Commerce Department to target currency manipulators like China with tariffs proportional to their currency manipulation if industries or unions file complaints. And it would force [...]