On
December 6, 2001, the House of Representatives passed HR 3005, the so-called
‘Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act’(popularly referred to as Fast Track
Authority) by the slimmest margin of one vote.
The vote was hardly bipartisan; most Republicans voted for and most
Democrats voted against the measure.
The
measure confers on the President the prerogative of submitting to Congress a
trade agreement negotiated with a foreign country for an up-or-down vote within
90 days, with no amendments or alterations permitted.
The
rational behind relinquishing a constitutional Congressional power to “regulate
commerce with foreign nations” is that foreign governments would be reluctant
to negotiate a trade agreement that would have to be renegotiated every time
Congress amended it.
Fast
track authority is not new, it was first granted to the Nixon Administration 24
years ago and renewed for each subsequent Administration until it was denied in
1994 to President Clinton. The
opposition came from both the right and the left of the political
spectrum. Labor unions and environmental
groups had become disenchanted with the absence, in the NAFTA agreements, of
any protection for the environment and workers. The Gingrich Republicans simply did not trust the Clinton
administration whom they felt was too inclined to accede to Labor’s and
Environmentalist’s input during the course of the negotiations.
As
of this writing, Senate Majority Leader Tom Dashle has just announced that he
would introduce a Fast Track Authority
measure early in January. Given the
close vote on the issue by the House, and the scope of the opposition, prior to
the announcement it did not seem likely that the Senate would approve the
measure. However, the chances for
approval improved when Senator Dashle, with reservations, indicated that he
favored granting the Administration Fast Track Authority.
More
specifically, what Labor and Environmentalist want, are provisions in the
authority that would instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to negotiate for
safe, healthy working conditions, decent wages, prohibitions against child
labor and higher environmental standards commensurate with those prevailing in
the United States. What they do not
want, are trade agreements that would encourage Transnational Corporations (TNC’s)
to circumvent the hard won U.S. standards by moving their plants abroad. They point out that, as part or the NAFTA
agreement, intellectual property (patents, copyrights etc.) and capital
investments were given adequate protection; they want similar consideration for
their concerns in future trade agreements.
If
the Fast Track Authority measure passes the Senate, it will undoubtedly be
signed into law by President Bush who will use the six year trade authority to
expedite the expansion of NAFTA to include all (31) of the Central and South
America countries, excluding Cuba. Thus
bringing under the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) the greatest ‘free trade zone’ to date,
stretching from Alaska to Patagonia.
Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen and American
Lands, a public land conservation group, fear that the extension of the
controversial NAFTA provisions, without modifications, would give the
corporations of the 31 additional countries the right to file closed door
lawsuits challenging U.S. environmental laws, and other national, state and
local policies. Last September
Representative Lloyd Dogget and other pro-trade Democrats urged President Bush,
in the event he is given Fast Track Authority, to keep similar investment
provisions out of the FTAA, stating “We believe that the provision of Chapter
11 represents a fundamental threat to the ability of democratic governments to
protect the public interest.”
In
our next article we will note cases cited in a new report issued by Public
Citizen and Friends of the Earth entitled ‘NAFTA Chapter 11 Investors-to State
Cases: Bankrupting Democracy’ which documents corporate cases brought under
NAFTA’s “investor protection”
provision.
Art
Peracchio
01-10-02