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[Page: E2257]  GPO's PDF
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• Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I commend the diligent efforts of Chairman THOMAS, my colleagues and their staff members in drafting and sponsoring H.R. 3005, the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act of 2001.

• H.R. 3005 is being referred to as the most environmentally and labor responsive legislation regarding Trade Promotion Authority (Fast Track) to be sponsored by the U.S. Congress. However, I share the concerns raised by many of my constituents that H.R. 3005's labor and environmental standards do not go far enough to ensure a level playing field in our proposed trade agreements.

• H.R. 3005 refers to environmental and labor provisions as negotiating objectives. Our trade history reveals that during the past 25 years including labor rights, and now environmental rights, as ``negotiating objectives'' do not guarantee that these provisions will actually be included in any proposed trade agreements. The geopolitical and trade landscape has changed, of the 142 members comprising the World Trade Organization (WTO), 100 are classified as developing nations and 30 are referred to as lesser-developed nations. Why is this important? It is important because with China's accession into the WTO, the 130 nations will become more forceful in promoting their trade agendas, and an opportunity for a more favorable trade agreement becomes apparent if a nation lowers its environmental and labor standards. Many nations' standards are sub-standard at best.

• As drafted, the overall negotiating objective of H.R. 3005 is to promote respect for worker rights. My constituents report that the worker rights provisions do not guarantee that ``core'' labor standards are included in the corpus of prospective trade agreements. By core labor standards, I refer to the International Labor Organization's 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work: freedom of association, the right to organize and for collective bargaining, and the rights to be free from child labor, forced labor and employment discrimination, which many people throughout the world are confronted with.

• My constituents are troubled that H.R. 3005 does not require a signatory to an agreement to improve or even to maintain that its domestic laws comport with the standards of the International Labor Organization, in practice an incentive is created for lowering them. Among H.R. 3005's principle objectives is a provision entitled labor and the environment, which calls for the signatories to trade agreements to enforce their own environment and labor laws. The United States, as a leader in the global trade community must set the example by raising the labor and environmental standards of its trading partners. In the end, it will be the United States who is called upon to provide the resources to clean-up environmental disasters.

• Through their first-hand accounts, my constituents report that workers in many nations that we seek to enter into bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade agreements are subjected to exploitation, harassment and worse for exercising their rights to collective bargaining, and are forced to work under abusive conditions. For example, in our own hemisphere more than 33% of the complaints filed with the International Labor Organization's Committee on Free Association originate in the Andean region. I understand that new labor laws in Bolivia, Ecuador, Columbia and Peru undermine the right to collective bargaining, and there are scores of reports from NGO's regarding unconscionable violations of the most fundamental rights for workers and their union representatives. The AFL-CIO reports that since January 2001, more than 93 union members in Columbia have been murdered, while the perpetrators have gone unpunished.

  [Page: E2258]  GPO's PDF

• How the United States engages in trade negotiations and its practices are crucial not only for our future, but for our democratic process. How our nation conducts itself is scrutinized world-wide, in essence, we must set the right example. Events at the recent World Trade Organization negotiations in Doha, Qatar have made this fact even more apparent. The WTO is seeking to adopt a worldwide ``Investor-State Clause'' in the next round of discussions. This clause was written into Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA ) for the purpose of protecting businesses from expropriation by foreign governments. What it has been used for, however, is completely different from its originally stated purpose.

• Cases such as Methanex v. United States and its progeny are dispositive of harmful effect of the unbridled power of ill thought out provisions of trade legislation. Methane, the producer of MTBE an additive used to make gasoline burn cleaner, was leaking from a storage tank and into the water supply in California. Governor Davis acted promptly, and after further testing banned MTBE. Methanex, a Canadian Corporation, brought an action against California/United States in July 1999, not in our courts, but pursuant to NAFTA's Chapter 11 foreign investor clause. According to William Greider's October 15th article in The Nation, ``under this provision a foreign investor can sue a national government if their company's property assets, including the intangible property of expected profits, are damaged by laws or regulations of virtually any kind.'' Greider further reveals that Methanex, through its Washington D.C. powerhouse law firm, used tribunal established through NAFTA , where the proceeding are secret (unless the parties agree to public disclosure).

• Greider goes on, ``As nervous Members of Congress inquire into what they unwittingly created back in 1993, critics explain the implications: `Multinational investors can randomly second-guess the legitimacy of environmental laws or any other public-welfare or economic regulation, including agency decisions, and even jury verdicts....... the open ended test is whether the regulation illegitimately injured a company's investments and can be construed as tantamount to expropriation, though no assets were physically taken.' ''

• This Chapter 11 case and many others like it are now pending and/or being heard before these arbitral panels. Methanex is seeking 970 million dollars. This is an outrage and an assault on our legal system. To add insult to injury, the drafter of the provision, now in private practice, readily admits that it was an intended consequence of NAFTA , rather an unintended consequence as most people believed it to be.

• All cases finalized thus far have been either judged in favor of the business interest or settled out of court. The end result is a direct subversion of the right of people to protect from polluters the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the food they eat. In effect, this clause allows the democratic processes we hold so dear to be subverted.

• Mr. Speaker, we must seek out ways to make trade compatible with conservation of the environment and by adhering to core labor and environmental standards that are both incorporated into the body of a trade agreement and enforceable.
  

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