TRADE-US: Clinton to Try Again on Fast Track

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 10 1997 (IPS) - IU.S. President Bill Clinton, swamped Monday by opposition from the vast majority of fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives, withdrew his bid for “fast-track” authority to negotiate new trade agreements.

Clinton declared, however, that he will submit a new fast-track request when Congress returns from its Christmas recess early in the new year.

“This is not dead,” he told reporters. “I will be very surprised if we are not successful in developing a bipartisan, constructive, successful approach to fast track before this Congress is over.”

Political observers said Clinton’s decision pull back from a vote on Fast track marked a watershed in US trade policy. They believed he will have a much harder time mustering support for fast track during 1998 when all members of the House must run for re-election.

“During an election year, partisan positions become more set,” said Michael Schifter, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue which favours fast-track authority to negotiate a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA).

Clinton spent most of the last five days conducting the most intense lobbying campaign of his second term. At one point, the president sent most of his cabinet to Capitol Hill to bargain with individual lawmakers over the price of their vote.

Republican leaders, who supported the measure, said it would have passed if Clinton had agreed not to veto a pending foreign aid bill which included a ban on US assistance to non-governmental organisation (NGOs) abroad which lobby their governments on abortion reform. But Clinton declared “I think it’s wrong to mix these things.”

Fast-track authority gives presidents the power to negotiate new trade accords which cannot be amended by Congress when they are submitted for ratification. Under fast-track rules, trade agreements are subject only to a yes-or-no vote by both houses of Congress within 60 days of their formal submission.

In recent decades, Congress routinely has granted such authority but has failed to give it to Clinton since 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect.

Clinton wanted fast-track authority to negotiate free-trade accords with Chile and the rest of Latin America under the proposed FTAA, as well as new trade agreements with Asia and in multilateral talks on agriculture, telecommunications, and information.

He became caught, however, between the conflicting demands of most Democrats that new trade accords contain enforceable provisions – including sanctions – to ensure protection of worker rights and the environment, and Republicans who contend that labour rights and environmental conditions have no place in trade treaties.

After dithering for three years, Clinton finally bit the bullet in September when he went along with Republican demands that provisions on worker rights and environmental protection be relegated to unenforceable “side-agreements.” This is the case with NAFTA, the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

As a result, Clinton was abandoned by his own Democratic leadership in the House where Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, who may challenge Vice President Al Gore’s bid to succeed Clinton in the year 2000, campaigned relentlessly against what he called “the Republican fast-track bill.”

To prevail, Clinton needed 218 ‘yes’ votes in the 435-seat House. The Republican leadership reportedly lined up as many as 165 of its almost 228 members to support the bill. Clinton needed another 55 of the 206 Democrats in the House to be certain of winning but he fell at least 10 votes short of that goal.

“We (were) very close to having the requisite number of votes,” Clinton said Monday. “But early this morning, it became clear to me that, if the matter were taken to a vote, there was a substantial chance that we would not get the votes necessary to pass the bill.”

His decision to withdraw the bill marked a major victory for Gephardt and the opposition forces, especially labour unions and environmental groups. They argued that fast-track would result in the loss of US jobs, declines in food safety, and damage to the environment, as US companies rushed to open plants and invest in poor countries to take advantage of weak labour and environmental laws.

“This shows that the labour movement has an ability to reach out to working people – both unions and non-unions – in an effective way,” said Steve Drossman, public affairs director for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the country’s largest union.

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the country’s biggest labour confederation, said Clinton’s decision marked “an historic moment that will determine how the American people will be integrated into the global economy.”

“The message is clear: the next generation of trade policies must respect people as well as property, and factor in workers’ and environmental concerns along with business interests,” said Sweeney, whose role in defeating fast track makes him the biggest winner, aside from Gephardt, in the fight over fast track.

Sweeney also stressed that labour’s opposition to fast track was not based on protectionism, noting that “there is no turning back from our increasingly global economy.” He called for immediate steps to negotiate multilateral tariff reductions on agriculture and information technology and a free trade agreement with Chile “that incorporates workers’ rights and environmental standards.”

On the corporate side, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) called Clinton’s decision “a major defeat for America’s workers and economic growth.” Echoing Newt Gingrich, the Republican House Speaker, NAM president Jerry Jasinowski accused labour of running a scare campaign. “America’s labour bosses seem more concerned with scaring people into joining unions than the long-term security of union workers,” he said.

Schifter of the Inter-American Dialogue also regretted Clinton’s failure, particularly as it relates to US ties with Latin America and prospects for the FTAA, negotiations for which were to begin in earnest after next year’s hemispheric summit in Santiago, Chile. “In real economic terms, this may not have much significance,” he said, “but it raises serious questions about whether the US is ready for a real partnership with Latin America.”

Jerome Levinson, a labour lawyer, said Clinton and his corporate allies had “grossly underestimated unease among working people in this country” about the consequences of free trade.

“We will look back on this as a watershed event,” said Levinson, a former chief counsel for the Inter-American Development Bank. When combined with the recent financial turmoil in the East Asia and the backlash against NAFTA, fast track’s defeat suggests that “the neo-liberal economic model has exhausted itself,” he said.