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Making sense of NAFTA and its replacement

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 In 2016, Donald Trump’s trade message was very simple: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was the worst trade deal ever negotiated.

He has renegotiated NAFTA, rebranding the deal as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). We never quite understood his objection to the original NAFTA, and we don’t understand how USMCA fixes it. You need to squint to see the difference between NAFTA and its replacement.

‘Come back home’: Gavin Newsom cites Alabama abortion ban to recapture the film industry

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Gov. Gavin Newsom is citing recent abortion bans in conservative states to argue that film companies should take their productions out of the South and back to California.

In a Twitter video with Assemblywoman Luz Rivas, Newsom said California, which already gives tax breaks to films, is “going to do more” to entice productions to film in the Golden State.
 

Could Teacher Strikes Set Off a Private Sector Strike Wave?

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In the spring of 2018, teachers across West Virginia improbably shut down schools statewide, creating a political crisis that forced Republican Gov. Jim Justice and the GOP-led legislature to back down. Drawing inspiration from the West Virginia strikers, teachers in the red states of Arizona and Oklahoma soon followed suit by carrying out statewide strikes of their own.

How Volkswagen Has Gotten Away With Union-Busting

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Labor law is not workers’ law. That’s the lesson learned by pro-union workers at Volkswagen’s sole U.S. factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Workers filed for an election to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) in early April. This would have been the third union election in the last five years. The UAW narrowly lost a previous plant-wide election in 2014.

California Labor Urges Legislature to Rein in Out-of-Control High-Interest Lenders by Passing AB 539

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Most working people experience extreme financial hardship at one time or another. It’s the sad reality of an economy that prioritizes wealth-hording by the super rich over the basic needs of everyday people. Compounding the problem of so many of us living paycheck-to-paycheck is the largely unregulated market for high-interest loans.