TRADE-US: Clinton Launches Drive for Fast-Track Authority

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 16 1997 (IPS) - President Bill Clinton submitted his long-awaited “fast-track” bill to Congress Tuesday which, if it is passed, will give him wide-ranging authority to negotiate new free-trade agreements with Chile and other countries.

The proposal, called the ‘Export Expansion and Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1997,’ appeared to fall short of demands by key Democrats, labour unions and environmental groups. They have been pressing for the protection of worker rights and the environment be placed at the core of any new trade agreements negotiated under fast-track authority.

“This fast track would put us on the wrong track,” complained the Democratic Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Richard Gephardt.

Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, welcomed Clinton’s decision not to include strong environmental and worker rights protections in his fast-track request. “We appear to be off to a good, constructive start,” said Rep. Bill Archer, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which handles trade bills in the House.

Launching the bill after a delay of one week, Clinton stressed that Washington must negotiate new trade deals in order to maintain its growth rate and prosperity.

“Today, the United States is the world’s strongest competitor,” he said. “We cannot afford to squander our great advantages by retreating to the sidelines and watching other countries conclude preferential trade deals that shut out our goods and services.”

Nonetheless, Democrats and their union and environmental supporters expressed disappointment with the bill’s failure to ensure that workers’ rights and environmental standards will be strictly enforced in any new trade agreements.

“Clinton actually seems to have moved backwards from the last time he submitted such legislation,” said Rob Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank with close links to organised labour and progressive issue groups.

The new bill includes a promise to uphold worker rights and environmental standards only when they are “related to trade,” wording that appears to rule out the use of sanctions if trading partners violate basic worker rights or even their own environmental laws. Instead, the bill commits the administration to lobby for general standards on worker rights and environmental protection at the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation (WTO), which oversees the world’s multilateral trading system.

Labour activists, however, scorned this initiative. “This seems very naive, in that every effort the administration has made so far on its labour rights agenda at the WTO has failed,” said Terry Collingsworth of the International Labour Rights Education Fund.

“It also is inappropriate for fast-track legislation, which is primarily designed to reach new trade agreements,” he added. “The WTO will have nothing to do with these negotiations and will not be participating in them. So this is a gift of nothing.”

The new legislation also provides for negotiating “side agreements” on worker rights and the environment with new free- trade partners, similar to those which took effect with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada. Critics have complained that these side agreements have generally proven unenforceable.

Tuesday’s proposal marks the formal launch of what is expected to be a particularly wrenching debate for Congressional Democrats, who are deeply divided over trade issues.

Fast-track authority gives the president the power to negotiate new trade agreements without having to worry that they may later be amended by Congress. Under fast-track, Congress must vote either yes or no on the final text of a trade agreement within 60 days of its formal submission.

Granted routinely by Congress since the early 1970s, fast-track authority first became controversial when President George Bush launched negotiations for NAFTA. Critics expressed concern that free trade with Mexico could result in large job losses in the United States and worsening air and water pollution along its border with Mexico, as U.S. firms rushed southwards to take advantage of cheaper wages and weaker environmental regulation.

Clinton identified himself with these concerns during his 1992 presidential campaign against Bush and subsequently negotiated labour and environmental side agreements with Canada and Mexico.

But NAFTA foes – who now constitute a majority of Congressional democrats – argue that these accords have proven largely ineffective because they do not provide for tough sanctions against governments and industries which violate labour rights and environmental laws.

Led by Gephardt, who is positioning himself to challenge Vice President Al Gore for the right to succeed Clinton in the year 2000, most Democrats say they will not support any fast-track bill that fails to ensure that future trade pacts will include strong protections in these areas.

They and their supporters argue worker rights and the environment should receive the same protection as intellectual property rights and corporate investment are given are NAFTA. In the latter two cases, violations of property rights can result in the imposition of sanctions. Business groups and most of their Republican allies, on the other hand, have long opposed the inclusion of labour and environmental conditions in new trade accords.

The proposed authority specifically authorises the negotiation of a free-trade deal with Chile, the first of what is expected to be a series of negotiations with other Latin American nations and regional groupings designed to realise a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by the year 2005.

Senior officials noted they will not seek Chile’s accession to NAFTA but will instead negotiate a stand-alone accord similar to one recently concluded between Chile and Canada. They also said side agreements on worker rights and the environment will likely accompany the underlying accord.

The administration also emphasised that fast-track authority will embrace multilateral negotiations liberalising trade is specific sectors, notably agriculture, services, telecommunications, and other high-tech industries in which the United States is believed to have a comparative advantage.

In presenting the proposal, senior officials stressed that Clinton considered NAFTA a great success despite the 1995 peso crisis that contributed to the 16-billiond-dollar U.S. trade deficit with Mexico in 1996. But, in his formal message to Congress about the legislation, Clinton failed to even mention NAFTA – a measure of the low marks the trade pact gets in public- opinion polls here.

“It’s important to note that whatever one’s views on NAFTA, fast track is and ought not to be a referendum on NAFTA,” said Daniel Tarullo, the White House’s top trade expert.