Plus: U.S. Auto Sales Up Year-Over-Year in June and Weekly U.S. Jobless Claims Edge Down.

Deal Struck on Long-Stalled Trade Pacts
The White House said last Tuesday it had reached a deal with Congress to allow three “coveted” free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama to move forward after months of delay. The trade agreements would eliminate tariffs on the flow of goods and services between the United States and the other countries, similar to the agreements the U.S. has with Mexico, Canada and 15 other countries.

The deal includes funding through 2012 for a program that provides benefits to workers whose jobs are shipped overseas.

“Haggling over the modest and obscure benefits program had tied up the trade pacts for months, pitting Democrats concerned about the impact of competition on American workers against Republicans eager to increase foreign trade but loath to increase federal spending on another aid program,” the New York Times explains. “The Obama administration, which had maintained for weeks that it would not submit the trade pacts to Congress until the deadlock was resolved, by Tuesday night found itself defending its new deal as an important step that might lead to a complete resolution.”

The deal does not assure that Congress will pass the pacts, and last week’s announcement “was met with some disapproval from leading Republicans who said they remain opposed to pairing the South Korea, Colombia and Panama trade deals with a renewal of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program,” the Washington Post says. “The aid and retraining program for workers who lost their jobs because of outsourcing is an Obama administration priority that Republicans have sharply criticized as costly and unnecessary.”

In a statement, National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons called on the White House and Congress “to move ahead with the Colombia, Panama and South Korea agreements” and said manufacturers “are hopeful that a bipartisan, bicameral solution is reached quickly with the Administration.”

U.S. Auto Sales Up Year-Over-Year
Automakers sold approximately 1.1 million vehicles in June, up 7.1 percent from a year earlier but down slightly from May, according to Autodata Corp. Amid supply shortages caused by the Japanese quake, the Detroit Three captured more than half the sales in the U.S. market for the first time since 2008.

“With Toyota Motor Sales and American Honda both down 21 percent and Subaru, another Japanese automaker depleted by earthquake-related production problems, off 8 percent, the Detroit 3 grabbed a majority share of June sales for the first time in more than three years,” Automotive News reports (subscription required). “The domestic makers’ 50.1 percent market share is their highest monthly total since February 2008.”

General Motors Corp.’s sales rose 10.6 percent over June 2010 to 215, 335, while Ford Motor Company sold 193, 415 vehicles last month, a 13.3 percent year-over-year increase. Meanwhile, June sales for Chrysler LLC surged to 120,394, a 30.2 percent rise over the same month last year.

Despite the year-over-year rise for total deliveries in June, the annualized rate last month dropped to 11.5 million vehicles from just over 13 million vehicles posted monthly in the February-April period, according to Autodata.

Weekly U.S. Jobless Claims Edge Down
New unemployment benefit applications dipped slightly to 428,000 in the week ending June 25, edging down from 429,000 a week earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected initial claims to fall to a seasonally adjusted 425,000 in the latest week.

“It was the 12th week in a row above the 400,000 mark, after claims dropped below that line from February to April in a trend that had encouraged the belief that the economy was strongly recovering,” Agence France-Presse reports.

Generally, requests must fall below 400,000 to indicate healthy job growth and strong hiring conditions. The four-week moving average — which is considered a more accurate measurement of employment trends — was 426,750, an increase of 500 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 426,250, according to the Labor Department.