Reply #27: It's clear you didn't bother to research before posting

[brentspeak]

The http://www.epi.org/temp727/WorkingPaper289-2.pdf">EPI study factors in that Korea, like China, manipulates its currency, the very thing you yourself term "unfavorable monetary policy".

You also said:

South Korea is a modern economy like our own, with a similar standard of living and wage structure, good benefits, and an excellent national health insurance program. We're not competing with slave labor there.

The Korean deal will allow for Korean goods to be categorized as "made in Korea" with as little as 35% Korean manufacturing involvement; the treaty will now permit 65% of "made in Korea" products to actually be made in China or elsewhere.

Furthermore, the growing trend in Korean domestic manufacturing is to in-source cheap labor from abroad -- from Indonesia, Vietnam, and former Soviet republics -- in place of existing domestic Korean labor. There are huge, teeming housing complexes around Seoul where imported foreign factory workers are packed together like sardines and bussed back and forth to factory locations. These in-sourced foreign laborers are paid and treated almost as poorly as Chinese coke-smelt employees, and they are increasingly replacing Korean factory workers inside Korea itself.

Therefore, American workers will indeed be "competing with slave labor there."