U.S.-TRADE: Clinton’s ‘Fast-Track’ Delay Worries Supporters

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 4 1997 (IPS) - The decision by President Bill Clinton to delay asking Congress for “fast-track” authority to negotiate new, market-opening trade agreements is giving free-trade boosters in the U.S. Congress the jitters.

They say Clinton should come out fighting for “fast-track” authority now or risk running out of time and political advantage later this year.

After much internal to-ing and fro-ing, the Clinton administration announced last month it will wait until after the Congressional recess in August before launching the push for fast track.

“The fact is that these three months (September through November) are the last remaining opportunity to pass fast track until another president is inaugurated in the year 2001,” warned Florida Democratic Senator Bob Graham during a baleful hearing before the pro-free trade Senate Finance Committee Tuesday.

Like other committee members — both Republican and Democrat — Graham told U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky that Washington risks missing the boat of the exploding growth in world trade if Clinton doesn’t succeed.

Fast track authority enables presidents to negotiate new trade agreements without worrying that they will be amended on the floor of either house of Congress. Once authority is granted, the president can submit the finished agreement for a yes-or-no vote.

Fast-track authority is ordinarily granted for several years at a time, but the last grant expired in April, 1994, a little over a year after Congress narrowly approved the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico.

Despite increases in trade with those two nations, NAFTA has become a political liability, a fact that has contributed to the White House’s reluctance to press for fast-track authority now.

The administration wants fast-track authority to negotiate a free trade agreement with Chile. Such an accord is seen as a first step towards the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) that would cover the entire hemisphere.

The administration also needs fast-track authority to participate in a number of multilateral negotiations on agricultural services, government procurement, financial services, and information technology — all areas in which U.S. companies are believed to have a competitive advantage.

With U.S. exports growing faster than the domestic economy and with forecasts that Asia and Latin America will grow at three times the domestic growth rate, fast-track supporters argue that Clinton must act quickly to open those markets to U.S. goods or risk losing out to U.S. competitors in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere.

“We must maintain the centrality of America’s role in world trade,” said Louisiana Senator John Breaux. “We must respond to the staggering increase in the number of preferential commercial alliances struck by Latin America, Europe, China, Asia, and other countries — arrangements that go around the U.S., rather than arrangements with the U.S.”

But, despite repeated public commitments to make fast track a top priority of his second term, Clinton has hesitated to launch a full-scale campaign, as he did for NAFTA.

The reasons have to do with both the calendar and with politics.

The administration’s first priority this year has been reaching agreement with the Republican-led Congress on a budget that will affect all of the federal government’s spending over the next few years. The negotiations have now concluded but at the cost of both time and a deepening split within the Democratic Party.

The split pits the so-called “New Democrats”, who tend to be conservative on economic issues, against traditional, “New Deal” Democrats whose constituencies include resurgent labour unions, many activist environmental and consumer groups, and the poor.

Aside from the budget, nothing divides these two factions as sharply as trade issues. Clinton’s decision last month to extend ‘most-favoured-nation’ (MFN) trade status to China marked the opening shot in a series of Congressional debates on trade that are about to begin.

The two Democratic factions are also rallying behind two different and as yet-undeclared candidates to succeed Clinton in the 2000 elections: Vice President Al Gore and the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Dick Gephardt.

New Democrat Gore, as influential a vice-president as any in recent history, is clearly worried that a strong, free-trade position could lose him support from key constituencies, especially labour, which he will need for a smooth coronation as the party’s nominee in 2000.

Gore’s strategy appears to be to delay debate on fast track.

An unhappy New York Senator Daniel Moynihan told Barshefsky Tuesday that he would go along with the delay. But, “it is not seemly,” he stressed. “And the vice-president should be told it’s not seemly, if this is being held up out of (political) calculations. And it is, and we know it is.”

Not surprisingly, the Republicans are not making Clinton’s problems with the Democrats any easier. In the Senate, which tends to be more committed to free trade than the House, they are taking a tough line on what fast-track authority should and should not include.

Specifically, they oppose the inclusion of provisions to protect the environment and worker rights such as those included in NAFTA side-agreements. At the same time, Democrats like Gephardt say they will oppose fast-track authority that does not contain tough protections in these areas.

“I’m willing to be a strong leader in this effort (to gain fast-track authority,” said Republican Senator Phil Gramm from Texas. “But, in order for that to happen, we’ve got to have a guarantee that fast track is going to be used for trade agreements, and not…to impose environmental law, or international labour standards.”

House Republicans, including Speaker Newt Gingrich, have been somewhat more conciliatory on this question. But, as Barshefsky noted in her testimony, “This is the single most difficult set of issues, because there appear to be substantial ideological divides within the parties, between the two parties, and perhaps between the House and the Senate.”

Barshefsky, who has spent two months consulting with lawmakers on how a consensus could be reached on environmental and worker safeguards, said that she will continue to do so until the administration actually presents its fast-track bill in September.