The King is Dead: Fast Track Expires (without secret trade deal)

When Charlie Rangel and some of his fellow corporate-funded Democrats in the House struck a deal with the White House on free trade in South Korea, Columbia, Peru and Panama, they thought it would be okay to keep the terms of the deal secret and just assure the middle and working class constituents -- constituents that worked so hard to win them their majority -- that there were real labor and environmental protections in the deals.

Too bad those guarantees were a sham:

- Fails to alter the outrageous NAFTA "Chapter 11" foreign investor privileges that create incentives for U.S. firms to move offshore and expose our most basic environmental, health, zoning and other laws – policies strongly advocated for by Democrats – to attack in foreign tribunals.

- Does absolutely nothing to address bans on "Buy America" and anti-offshoring policies that safeguard American jobs and that Democrats have continually fought to expand and preserve.

- Does nothing to fix the Peru FTA terms that would allow Citibank or other U.S. investors providing "private retirement accounts" to sue Peru if the country reverses its failed social security privatization. This deal helps lock Peru into the same privatized social security system that Democrats have been fighting against in the United States.

- Rolls back the most extreme CAFTA-style drug patent rules to NAFTA-era language. However, the NAFTA language itself undermines rights available under World Trade Organization patent rules. Thus, while the amended text is better than CAFTA, it limits developing country trade partners’ rights relative to their status without the new limits that would be imposed by the FTAs, increasing the cost of medicine for our trading partners – costs that Democrats are trying hard to contain for our own healthcare system.

- Fails to change the food import standards as needed so that only food meeting U.S. standards would be allowed.

- Does nothing to address the NAFTA-style farm rules that resulted in 1.3 million Mexican peasant farmers losing their livelihoods. This is predicted to create dislocation and misery for large numbers of people, increase production of cocaine and cause instability in developing country trade partners.

- Does nothing to give unions or environmental groups rights to sue in international court for enforcement of trade laws - rights that corporations currently have.

Thankfully, we have people like David Sirota, who put together an amazing series of articles exposing the truth behind the trade agreements, and strong union leadership that stayed in the ears of the people who benefited so greatly from their massive 2006 election effort. That the new freshman class is made up of a lot of real, populist Democrats has been a major boon to the movement, as well.

All these things paid off on Friday, when Congress did not renew the President's Fast Track Trade Agreement Authority. Here's parts of a fitting obituary:

After a brief, damaging existence, Fast Track was pronounced dead on June 30, 2007.

The demise of Fast Track allowed the U.S. Founding Fathers to stop rolling in their graves over Fast Track's trampling of constitutional checks and balances. As well, victims of Fast Track-enabled trade agreements welcomed the news, given the anomalous procedure's record of damage despite having been locked up and out of commission for blocks of time since its inception.

Fast Track delegated away Congress exclusive constitutional authority over trade -- allowing the executive branch alone to choose trading partners, set the substantive terms of trade policy, and even sign trade agreements, all before Congress ever voted. The controversial delegation mechanism allowed Congress only a yes or no vote on trade agreements after they have been negotiated and signed and by its very design shut out public and congressional oversight.

...

Fast Track's lifelong philosophy was, 'Just trust the president.' Even after being kept in chains for much of its existence, Fast Track's legacy includes millions of peasant farmers who have been displaced by fast-tracked trade deals, workers whose wages have remained stagnant since Fast Track's hatching in 1974, millions of Americans made ill by fast-tracked trade deals that required food imports not meeting U.S. safety standards, the evisceration of the U.S. manufacturing base, and much more damage. Many Americans celebrated Fast Track's long overdue demise and joined a national day of prayer for a better procedure that in the future could replace Fast Track to ensure trade agreements would benefit the majority.

Excuse me as I wipe my tears away... on my handkerchief, proudly stitched in Bangladesh.

Just as important was the lack of action on long term re-authorization of the four trade deals. After short term eight-month extensions for the Andean deals passed through Congress easily, it was time to try to get the secret deals locked in, long-term. That's where they ran into trouble; the new populist caucus was not going to approve those deals without some serious investigating and opportunities to offer amendments. There was no way these agreements were going to be fast tracked.

But as Sirota points out, that doesn't mean some corporate Dems and the White House won't try to jam them through, anyways, just like Bush did with Fast Track in 2002. We've got to stand strong with labor to demand real FAIR trade, not corporate giveaways that destroy communities and pilfer jobs all over the country.

"Early next week"

I'm hearing the Senate will vote to invoke cloture on card check on Monday or Tuesday; the AFL-CIO's site says it should come up "early next week". So it looks like we should know whether this thing will pass by Wednesday morning, latest.

Debate continued in the Senate today, with Sens. Lautenberg (D-NJ, my home state), Webb (D-VA) and Clinton (D-NY), all co-sponsors of the bill (along with 43 other Dems) talking up the measure. I wonder if in this era of party over principle the speeches were meant to get the senators' populist talk on record for a future campaign, especially for Hillary, competing for labor endorsements and votes with John Edwards. I ask this because the money interests in the Republican party have their claws in so deep that I can't imagine any amount of depressing statistics, rhetorical appeals to the greater good or anecdotal evidence featuring a single mother working two jobs and still unable to feed her kids would really change the way their puppets in the upper chamber will vote on this thing.

Meanwhile, that bastion of fair journalism, the Chicago Sun-Times, comes out with this ridiculous statement :

And how do the unions, and union-backed supporters of the egregious Employee Free Choice Act, which is due to be voted on in the Senate today following its passage in the House, propose to protect workers from intimidation and harassment? By overturning employees' right to secret ballots in deciding whether to unionize and replacing that long-ingrained feature of American democracy with a "card check" method by which union organizers collect signatures on cards in public and every employee's choice would be known. Which would . . . mitigate efforts by managers and union organizers to influence the outcome? A public declaration is less open to intimidation than a secret vote? (emphasis mine)

Horseshit. Under the current secret ballot system, employers can force elections off for weeks, leaving ample time to illegally fire organizing workers, make threats on job security, intimidate and indoctrinate workers with mandatory anti-union information sessions.

Chew on this: 92 percent of employers force employees to undergo these closed-door meetings, 72 percent hire private union-busting PR firms, half of employers threaten to shut down operations or fire workers, and a quarter of them actually follow through with their termination of employment threats. To even begin to suggest that these are free and fair elections just goes to show how warped the conservative view of democracy is. Lying, twisting and intimidation to get your way: the modern day conservative's ideal democracy. And given that 60 million people would join a union if they could, I don't think intimidation or coercion by organizers will be much of a problem.

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The NY Times has this little ditty from the world of free, worker exploiting trade:

Despite pressure from U.S. lawmakers and President George W. Bush, Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet said Friday that his country does not need to improve its human rights record.

''It's not a question of improving or not,'' Triet said in an interview with The Associated Press, hours after meeting with Bush. ''Vietnam has its own legal framework, and those who violate the law will be handled.''

Triet, the first president from the communist-led nation to visit the White House since the Vietnam War, acknowledged differences in the countries' positions on the matter and called for more dialogue. He said his talks with Bush were ''frank and open'' and that disagreement over human rights would not stop a thriving trade relationship from getting stronger.

...

''I explained my strong belief that societies are enriched when people are allowed to express themselves freely or worship freely,'' Bush said in the Oval Office after meeting with Triet.

Of course, that belief isn't strong enough to call for any kind of sanctions on a country that we have a $7 billion trade deficit with, nor does stop Bush from calling for more free trade with countries known to exploit their workers. Or President Clinton, for that matter, who is accepting an award soon from the corrupt President Uribe. Stay strong, Congressional Dems.