Copyright 2002 Journal Sentinel Inc. Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
May 19, 2002 Sunday ALL EDITION
SECTION: CROSSROADS; Pg. 05J
LENGTH: 658 words
HEADLINE:
TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY; Proposal should be rejected
BYLINE: MARK WEISBROT
BODY: Fast track is back -- but not so fast, says
the U.S. Senate. Renamed by its advocates as "trade promotion authority," this
measure would strip Congress of its power to amend commercial agreements with
other countries. Our elected representatives would have only an up or down vote
on the final product brought to them by the Bush administration.
But the speed bumps are getting bigger in the Senate, which has already
fought back with an amendment preserving the right of Congress to separately
consider certain changes in U.S. trade law ("Senate approves plan to let
Congress alter trade deals," May 15).
Why the fight?
Nine years ago, our corporate and political leaders sold the American public a
bill of goods under the misleading title of "free trade," as in the North
American Free Trade Agreement. The same false advertising was used to market the
World Trade Organization a couple of years later. Now, the truth about these
agreements is coming back to haunt them.
Fast track is
a power grab by the executive branch to deprive Congress of its constitutional
authority to regulate foreign commerce. The administration wants this power
because the commercial agreements it seeks are not primarily about "free trade,"
and in fact have a number of harmful objectives.
Take
NAFTA's now infamous Chapter 11. This set of rules gave
corporations the right to sue governments directly for actions that reduce their
profits. Californians awoke to discover that their environmental laws were now
subject to a new form of legal challenge. When they banned the gasoline additive
MTBE, which had already contaminated more than 10,000 groundwater sites in the
state, California faced a lawsuit from a Canadian corporation under NAFTA's Chapter 11.
This case and others
have aroused opposition from not only the nation's largest environmental groups,
but also broad-based, non-partisan organizations such as the National Conference
of State Legislatures, the National Association of Counties and the National
League of Cities.
"We do not believe that it is
necessary to create different legal standards for foreign investors to attract
their investments in our communities," they wrote in a letter supporting
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's amendment to the fast-track legislation. The
Kerry amendment would direct trade negotiators to protect the constitutional
authority of our local, state and national governments -- and not to erode this
authority with new rights for corporations.
The use of
"free trade" agreements and organizations such as the WTO to increase patent
protection for pharmaceutical companies is also being exposed. This is the most
costly and -- in the case of essential medicines for such diseases as AIDS --
deadly form of protectionism in the world. Yet it remains one of the top
priorities for U.S. trade negotiators.
Then there is
the economic question of who wins and loses from these agreements. The weight of
the evidence from economic research across the political spectrum is clear: for
at least 70% of the U.S. labor force, the liberalization of trade and investment
over the past 20 years has lowered wages.
This is the
logical and predictable outcome of throwing American workers into increasingly
harsh competition with people who earn as little as 25 cents an hour and often
do not even have the right to organize unions.
Americans are fine with trade. But we are deeply suspicious of
agreements that subordinate our Constitution, our environmental protection and
our health and safety standards to international agreements that are
fast-tracked into law by multinational corporate lawyers and lobbyists.
And if increased trade and international investment are
being used to lower living standards for the majority of Americans, why should
we support more of the same?
------------
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic
and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.