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 President Obama has spent weeks crisscrossing the country publicly promoting his American Jobs Act, ironically in Washington his administration has been focused on lobbying Congress to approve a package of job-killing free trade deals. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the NAFTA-style South Korea Free Trade deal could cost America roughly 159,000 jobs while Colombia would export another 54,000.

Tonight FDL will be hosting a webinar at 8pm ET on the NAFTA-style trade deals for Panama, Columbia and Korea that congress will vote on this week. Our guests will be actor Danny Glover, Chair of TransAfrica; Congressman Emanuel Cleaver and Professor Joseph Jordan of TransAfrica’s Scholars’ Council. TransAfrica Chief of Staff Joia Nuri will host the chat and serve as moderator. Be sure to sign up.

You know at some point people might get wise to the fact that Obama is the most powerful political figure in the world, and he does have options beyond being a corporate tool who lets his campaign manager rearrange the national lawn furniture.

Speaking of people saying different things at different venues, here’s Chuck Schumer yesterday at the Economic Policy Institute, demanding that Congress work to create jobs

At a time of high unemployment, it’s difficult to fathom why the President would be fighting to increase our trade deficit and ship tens of thousands of jobs overseas by pushing his NAFTA-style trade deal with Korea. Even more stunning, however, is the loophole in the Obama deal that will hand billions over to North Korea to spend on their nuclear weapons program.

Usually, when Max Baucus tries to craft a grand bargain, oversized legislation starts by getting progressively worse, at which point the legislation finally dies.

But he has finally succeeded in getting a grand bargain, with a deal to extend Trade Adjustment Assistance in exchange for votes on the Korea, Colombia, and Panama trade deals.

The Administration should take the opportunity to dissolve the Department and move its parts into other federal bureaus, and blame Republicans for forcing his hand to boot.

Personally, given how stupid all three trade deals are, this is one time I would be perfectly happy to see the Republicans shoot the hostage, but I fear Obama will use this as an excuse to make a bad piece of legislation even worse.

There’s always a lot of tut-tutting when the White House releases the list of people who attend a state dinner. While a lot of that, for the dinner honoring Hu Jintao tonight, has to do with which members of Congress have blown off invites (John Boehner, Harry Reid, and Mitch McConnell, though McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao will attend with her father), I’m rather interested in who will attend from the auto industry.