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| Missing the Forest for the Trees on Fast Track |
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Tuesday, May 15th, 2001
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Opponents of granting President Bush traditional fast track trade negotiation authority, especially in organized labor, could be setting themselves and most Americans up for a big and unnecessary defeat. Their mistake � focusing too tightly on securing the best labor rights language for the bill.
Fast track's critics on the left and right have insisted for years that the legislation require presidents to include enforceable labor rights provisions, as well as environmental protections, in the main text of any new trade treaties. For several reasons, the strategy worked in the mid- and late 1990s to block so-called "clean" fast track bills lacking such provisions. For example, despite the long economic expansion, most Americans blamed lagging wages largely on traditional trade deals like NAFTA, which lacked labor and environmental protections. Therefore, this globalization strategy became an extremely hard sell politically. Moreover, organized labor's allies dominated not only the leadership of the House Democrats, but the rank and file. And several dozen Republican Congressmen concerned about breakneck globalization saw the fast track fights as a great opportunity to embarrass a Democratic president.
This year, even though Republicans favoring these indiscriminate trade policies won the White House and still control Congress, the politics of fast track seem to be breaking the critics' way once again. Some of the multinational businesses that have spearheaded today's version of globalization are acting genuinely worried about public opposition to clean trade deals. As a result, more talk about labor rights and environmental compromises is coming from the big business community than ever before. New U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick is making similar noises.
Under a Republican president, moreover, even moderate Democrats � who have usually supported traditional trade policies � are sounding like staunch labor rights champions. The U.S.-Jordan free trade agreement signed by the lame duck Clinton administration seems to be another big plus for globalization critics. It includes some intriguing labor rights language, and Jordan's key position in the Middle East gives the treaty strong bipartisan appeal. And perhaps most important, the Congressional Republican leadership says it remains adamantly opposed to any meaningful links among labor rights, environmental protection, and trade � even to the point of threatening the Jordan deal.
The underlying trends, however, are moving steadily in favor of clean fast track supporters. For one thing, many of the Republican trade policy critics are feeling heavy pressure to fall in line behind a Republican president on trade � and some are responding. More important, today's House Democrats are generally much more centrist and pro-big business than their current leadership and their own immediate predecessors.
As made clear by last year's vote on China's membership in the World Trade Organization, these Democrats are mainly concerned with fashioning fig leaf compromises that feign concern about globalization's downside while toeing the multinational corporate line on the essentials. As also made clear by the China vote, the fig leaf doesn't have to be especially big for these Democrats, either. After all, they were satisfied with promises to create a human rights commission that would report on China's human rights record � much as the State Department already does.
Obsessing on specific labor rights language could easily set the stage for a similar sell-out. Even more alarming, "victory" by these narrow, legalistic standards would be Pyrrhic at best. The result could be new trade deals like the Jordan agreement (where a close look reveals precious little genuine enforceability at all) or the recent Cambodian deal (which the record shows is practically impossible to monitor, at least given current levels of resources).
But the biggest danger of focusing so tightly on the labor rights issue is that the best, most enforceable provisions conceivable can't possibly safeguard the interests of American workers and domestic companies against the whopping global worker surpluses piling higher and higher in the developing countries that U.S. trade policy has targeted recently. The huge populations of the Mexicos, Chinas, and Indias of the world, their still rapid growth rates, and their staggering levels of unemployment guarantee low-wage futures for their workforces as far as the eye can see. The rock bottom value of these workers � even as multinational companies keep boosting their productivity � means that new trade agreements will keep exporting high paying jobs out of the United States. And the continuing inability of these countries to import at levels anywhere proportionate to what they export and produce means continuing lopsided U.S. trade flows and ongoing global financial instability.
Even during the Goldilocks Economy, the key to defeating clean fast track bills was highlighting their destructive impact on American living standards and sustainable global growth. With the U.S. economy weakening and countries like Argentina and Turkey encountering new financial difficulties, these arguments will become even more effective. But the resulting opportunity to transform U.S. globalization policy will be missed if so many fast track critics keep missing the forest for the trees.
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Contact Eamonn Fingleton |
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