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.

Public Citizen: Secret Trade Deal

The big story out of the Senate today was the failure of cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act... something I'll be writing about in depth as soon as I get the opportunity. Until then, some more depressing news...

Public Citizen came out with a long, depressing press release today about the free trade expansion deal that the White House and some "Democrats" agreed on... the text of which is still not being made available to the public... kudos to David Sirota for pointing out this release:

For Immediate Release: June 25, 2007
Contact: Holly Shulman (202) 454-5108, (202) 674-8757

Opposition Grows As Legal Text of Divisive Trade Deal Is Finally Made Public

Deal Between White House and Some Democratic Leaders Would Facilitate Passage of More Bush NAFTA-Style Trade Pacts by Majority of GOP and Minority of Democratic Majority

WASHINGTON, DC – The legal text of changes to several Bush-negotiated NAFTA expansion agreements released today confirms that the essential changes listed by labor unions, environmental, consumer, faith and family farm groups as necessary to avoid their opposition to the free trade agreements were not made, said Public Citizen today.

“Today’s text release confirms that Congress is about to face a vote on yet another Bush NAFTA expansion agreement, because now we can see that unfortunately none of the core NAFTA-CAFTA provisions linked to offshoring and downward pressure on wages so strongly opposed by most congressional Democrats and the American public have been removed even as improved labor and environmental standards have been added on,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division. “It’s like adding a new roof on a condemned building.”

A framework of changes to various Bush trade agreements announced in late March by some Democratic leaders had failed to address the majority of essential changes to the NAFTA-CAFTA model that Democratic base groups had listed this winter as necessary to avoid their opposition to the Bush-negotiated agreements. Some unions, environmental and other groups had awaited the legal text translating the Democrats’ “ask” and a tentative agreement to it by the administration announced May 10, hoping that the legal text would include more essential changes than had been listed in the limited summaries of the negotiations available.

Not one labor union or environmental, consumer, public health, anti-poverty, small business, faith or family farm group supports the deal. The announcement of the deal underlying today’s text came only 100 days after Democrats reclaimed the majority thanks to election of 37 House and Senate candidates who ran against the Bush trade agenda and replaced NAFTA-supporting incumbents.

“The Democratic majority arrived with a fair trade mandate from a public strongly opposed to staying the course on the failed Bush trade agenda,” said Wallach. “It is incomprehensible why any Democrats would ever prioritize reviving Bush trade deals opposed by their entire base and the majority of congressional Democrats over launching their own proactive trade agenda. They should aim instead at addressing the flood of unsafe imported foods and products, the many incentives to off-shore U.S. jobs, the endless ‘trade’ pact attacks on our environmental and safety laws and the nearly $800 billion trade deficit that is slowing U.S. economic growth and threatening global economic stability.”

The legal text fails to address most of the issues raised early this year by unions and other civil society groups as essential fixes. The text:

- 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.

###

And as David points out, it doesn't even allow for unions to sue countries for suspected labor abuses... though corporations can feel free to force prosecution for any perceived affront, large or small, to their slave-wages work force empire. Here's an unbelievable run down of the deal's timeline David wrote for TomPaine.com back in May.

Indymedia in Chicago ran down what the deal means for the three major participating countries (Peru, Colombia, South Korea).

A look at the Peru agreement confirms these priorities. According to Oxfam America, the FTA would delay the introduction of generic medicines--benefiting U.S. pharmaceutical companies--and raise drug prices by as much as 55 to 100 percent after five years.

The deal would expose Peru’s agricultural sector--which nearly one-third of the population depends on--to subsidized imports. This could spur a rural crisis, driving more farmers into coca production, and fueling migration to the cities and abroad for work.

Foreign firms in Peru would be able to challenge local environmental regulations. Reportedly, regulations on mining, timber and petroleum investment would also be rolled back, raising profits, lowering wages and undermining working conditions.

That'll help stem the number of undocumented immigrants that come into the country, as well as help end the trans-American cocaine trafficking industry. Right. It's as if the people in Washington complain about one problem, then go do things that would just serve to exacerbate it, then try to solve that problem by fucking up the first problem even further.

South Korea has an unusually large agricultural workforce for an industrialized economy. Even with rice taken out of the agreement, hundreds of thousands of farmers could face ruin if forced to compete with U.S. exports, which benefit from a complex system of subsidies and supports.

Further, the Korean services, banking and financial sectors are, unlike Korean manufacturing, relatively weak, meaning that thousands of workers in those industries could lose their jobs as a result of the FTA.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) argues that the FTA will “benefit a handful of conglomerates only, while pushing workers and the grassroots into the abyss of poverty and agony.” While the deal may be less one-sided than the agreements set up in Latin America, it’s still designed to benefit U.S. and Korean companies--at the expense of U.S. and Korean workers, and Korean farmers.

Hmm. I wonder which American farmers will benefit from this... strange feeling that it isn't small farmers, but the already subsidized corporate behemoths. But that's just a guess.

The Colombian FTA may be the hardest sell of all. Two thousand Colombian trade unionists have been murdered since 1991, and more than 400 have been killed since President Álvaro Uribe took office. As the watchdog group Public Citizen puts it, Colombia is a “country where the murder of union members is their comparative advantage.”

Seemingly oblivious to the murder of Colombian workers, Bush scolded Congress: “It is very important for this nation to stand with democracies that protect human rights and dignity.” But the U.S. is complicit in Colombia’s wholesale killings of unionists. The country is a pillar of U.S. imperialism in South America, receiving billions of dollars in military aid since 2000.

And I don't have to begin to talk about this transparent fuck you to workers all around the world.

The thing is, these deals don't even screw over one population in order to help another. American, Colombian, Korean and Peruvian workers all get screwed over just the same.