RAPID CITY - Globalization and faulty trade agreements have cost the United States millions of jobs and thousands of farms and are threatening the American way of life, according to the head of a new coalition formed to fight globalization.

Fred Stokes, president of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, spoke Thursday in Rapid City to the national convention of Women Involved in Farm Economics.

He presented a video program that cited what he called the ill effects of globalization and unfair trade agreements:

* The disappearance of 20 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 1979

* The expected move off shore of nearly 3 million service jobs by 2015

* The loss of 63 percent of U.S. farms in the last century

"It's my opinion that rural America is dying," Stokes told about 60 WIFE members at their Rapid City meeting. "I consider it a rare privilege to have lived in what I fear may be the heyday of our country. My great fear is that we're beginning a period of decline."

Stokes, a retired cattle rancher from Porterville, Miss., said foreign trade has been the biggest factor hurting agriculture.

He was involved in forming the Organization for Competitive Markets in the late 1990s. The Coalition for a Prosperous America, formed in January this year, now

has more than 20 other ag, consumer and environmental groups, including Organization for Competitive Markets and Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, and 80,000 individual members, under its umbrella.

R-CALF USA is affiliated with the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association.

Stokes said the coalition and the groups it represents are not protectionist. "We cannot become isolationist," he said. "But the U.S. is playing by the rules of fair trade. Other countries do not."

Stokes said foreign trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Central America Free Trade Agreement have not delivered the economic benefits they promised. Instead, NAFTA AND CAFTA have cost U.S. workers jobs and farmers profits.

He said his coalition is working to get congressmen to order the Government Accountability Office to study the results of the earlier trade agreements before the Bush administration and Congress push through the proposed agreement with Peru. The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted to approve the Peru pact (see related story on Page XX).

In a short interview after his speech, Stokes said the Peru agreement is the biggest immediate threat to fair trade. "It's just a warm-up for Colombia, Panama and South America," he said.

Stokes singled out China's government as the biggest cheater on foreign trade.

He told the WIFE delegates that China manipulates its currency, thus artificially driving down the price of its exports.

"The Chinese ruling elite conspires with international companies to exploit Chinese workers," he said. Chinese factories ignore environmental concerns and generate as much as 25 percent of the air pollution that drifts over Southern California, he said.

Stokes said his group supports legislation that would impose U.S. tariffs on imports from countries, such as China, that manipulate their currencies to artificially lower the prices of their exports to the U.S.

China, he said, threatened to dump one trillion U.S. dollars on the market if such legislation passes.

The bulging U.S. foreign trade deficit - $800 billion last year - is driving down the value of the dollar, Stokes said.

China, in turn, is investing in U.S. companies or buying them outright at bargain basement prices, Stokes said. "I don't know if I want to live in an America owned by foreign nations."

Stokes says proponents of free trade point to increases in total trade, low unemployment and a healthy stock market as evidence of benefits. He said the increases in trade volume are not enough to offset the negatives.

"They're looking at numbers and charts," he said about free-trade backers. "I'm looking at people."

Free trade proponents say free trade raises all boats, Stokes said. "I say it's a tsunami that swamps all boats except those of an elite few."

Contact Steve Miller at 394-8417 or steve.miller@rapidcityjournal.com