Blog | Global Worker Rights

6 Reasons Curtis Ellis Is a Terrible Pick for Trade Post

News has emerged that Curtis Ellis is being considered by President Donald Trump as one of the finalists to run the Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB). The job is considered to be a key part of any effort to boost U.S. manufacturing jobs while cracking down on labor abuses overseas. Here are six reasons why this move is a bad idea and will harm working people:

1. Ellis is a frequent columnist and commentator on extremist blogs that present themselves as news organizations but in fact specialize in inaccurate and misleading content. He frequently posts for WND, a site best known for enthusiastically embracing the claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Ellis’ nativist views are well-documented, embarrassing to U.S. diplomatic efforts and profoundly at odds with promoting worker rights for all. For instance, in one essay, he said that the left, including Obama and Hillary Clinton, planned the “liquidation of white, blue-collar working families” in order to “fundamentally transform” America. “The decimation of America’s middle class and industrial strength is a case of murder, not accidental death. It was done with premeditation, malice and forethought.... If you believe, as do the leftists, that America has more than it deserves and Americans are racists, the global redistribution of our wealth—even if it means the death (literally) of American working people—is a desired outcome, a feature not a bug.”

2. Ellis specified in another column how he thought Obama would liquidate white, blue-collar families: “Stalin used bullets and the gulag to eliminate his class enemies. Today’s executioners rely on Obamatrade, alcohol, drugs and suicide to do the job.”

3. He claimed that Obama was part of an effort to outsource American jobs, leaving working people “robbed of the opportunity to support their wives and children ... literally drinking and drugging themselves to death.”

4. Ellis wrote a column claiming that legal immigrants were devastating to the U.S. and that they make America worse. He is a big supporter of a wall to keep out undocumented immigrants.

5. His history of controversial statements will embarrass the U.S. in international relations. A human rights nonprofit stakeholder said: “It’s alarming to think our diplomatic counterparts could Google this guy and find these paranoid and xenophobic rantings. It would immediately undermine him and place at risk the U.S. leadership on promoting labor rights as part of the global trade agenda.”

6. He’s not prepared for the work, despite his time on the job. A senior Labor Department source said: “Despite being with the department for four months, Ellis still does not seem to understand the most basic aspects of the work. There is widespread concern that if this is the person who represents the interests of the American workforce in international negotiations and other foreign affairs, other countries are going to eat our lunch. It won’t end well for American workers."

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