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David

This is another in a series of ongoing posts following the announcement of a secret free trade deal on May 10, 2007 between a handful of senior Democrats and the Bush administration. That deal encompasses free trade agreements with Peru, Panama, South Korea and Colombia, and is designed to pave the pay for the passage of presidential fast track authority - the authority that lets presidents eliminate all labor, environmental and human rights provisions from trade agreements.

Apologies for the lack of reports on the Secret Trade Deal of 2007 during my move to Denver - there is certainly a lot to report. The White House finally released the legislative texts of the Secret Trade Deal, weeks after the deal was announced. Now frantic to package the deal and ram it through Congress over the expected objections of most rank-and-file Democrats, the deal makers, backed by an army of K Street lobbyists, are prepared for the final push. Intensifying the push is the imminent expiration of fast track trade authority - the authority that allows presidents to strip all labor, human rights and environmental protections out of trade pacts. Here is today’s report.

ANDEAN TRADE PREFERENCE BILL SETS STAGE FOR FIGHT OVER SECRET TRADE DEAL: As reported here yesterday, Congress is considering a bill to renew existing trade preferences for Andean nations. Reuters reports that the bill passed the House with strong bipartisan support and is expected to pass the Senate easily. The maneuvering over the bill tell the more complicated story of the trade battle within Congress. Most fair trade lawmakers ended up supporting the bill because had it failed, it would have created more urgency to pass the bigger - and far more destructive - Secret Trade Deal - the package of bilateral free trade agreements that vastly expands the status quo, NAFTA-style trade system. Those on both sides of the bigger trade fight agree that the votes on the Andean trade preferences bill was not a referendum on where Congress is on the bigger question of how - and whether - to reform America’s lobbyist-written trade policy.

BUSH AND DEMS RACE TO PACKAGE SECRET DEAL; ENFORCEMENT GUARANTEES SPECIFICALLY PREVENTED: The New York Times and Reuters reports on a frantic flurry of negotiations between the Bush administration, a handful of congressional Democrats and the governments of Panama, Peru, South Korea and Colombia designed to package and promote the secret trade deal in the face of massive opposition from labor, consumer protection, religious, agriculture and human rights organizations representing millions of citizens. Though the legislative text of the secret deal has now - finally - been released and there have been some improvements in the labor and environmental standards of these proposed pacts, the deals deliberately exclude any provisions allowing for third-party enforcement of the much-touted new standards. While corporations continue to enjoy the rights in trade deals to sue for enforcement of patent, copyright and intellectual property protections, labor, human rights and environmental organizations will be denied similar rights to sue for enforcement of labor, human rights and environmental protections. This means that all enforcement of the celebrated new labor and environmental provisions will be left up to the Bush White House - a guarantee that such provisions will continue to go unenforced.

NEW DEMS PRESSURE PELOSI, PLOT PASSAGE OF SECRET TRADE DEAL AT MEETING WITH BUSH: CongressDaily reports that ” President Bush hosted about a dozen House Democratic lawmakers who have traditionally been supportive of trade agreements at the White House” with Bush making “a pitch for the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement.” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), one of the few Democratic lawmakers to help Bush pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement, said Bush “let us know how important [the] Colombia [trade agreement] was from a geo-political perspective.” Meeks and a handful of other corporate-backed Democrats are holding out the possibility that they will support the proposed deal with the government of Colombia - a government that actively colludes with paramilitary gangs to execute union organizers (and a government that has recently put a group of former Clinton administration officials on its payroll to help ram - or perhaps, Rahm - the pact through Congress). AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and United Steelworkers of America President Leo Gerard met with Pelosi the same week to stress their opposition to the deal, but Meeks “said Pelosi has made no such commitment” to oppose it. These same Democrats also last week invited Bush officials to speak at the launch of the Congressional Services Caucus - a group spearheaded by Reps. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., and Kevin Brady, R-Texas to advocate for the financial service industry’s interests in Congress.

WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DOCUMENT IMPACT OF TRADE DEALS: Last month, this website reported that five senators are pushing legislation to force all future trade deals to include benchmarks for economic success in the core texts - benchmarks on wages, job growth, and other economic factors that, if not met, would allow Congress to terminate the trade pact in question. During a meeting with Bush administration officials about the proposal, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab “insisted it is not possible to measure the economic impact of trade agreements, including job creation,” according to a press release from U.S. Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-VA) office. Schwab’s absurd claim contradicts the U.S. government’s own reports which measures such data, and reports by, among others, the Economic Policy Institute.

THE SECRET TRADE DEAL’S HYPOCRISY ON SOCIAL SECURITY PRIVATIZATION: The Hill newspaper reports that “critics of a U.S. trade deal with Peru say House Democrats are violating their party’s principle that social security systems should not be privatized by backing a deal that could lock in a partially privatized system in Peru.” In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), several Peruvian labor groups charged the deal would provide protections for Citigroup to sue Peru under the trade agreement’s dispute settlement system if a future Peruvian government were to nationalize the country’s partially privatized retirement system. Public Citizen confirms that in the final legislative texts, “nothing was done to fix the Peru FTA terms that could allow Citibank or other U.S. investors providing ‘private retirement accounts’ to sue Peru for compensation if Peru reverses its failed Social Security privatization.”

TOP DEM PROSPECT BEGINS HAMMERING GOP ON TRADE: Picking up where the 2006 election’s focus on trade left off, a top Democratic candidate in a targeted congressional district says he will make Republicans’ complicity in NAFTA-style trade policy a central focus of his campaign. Congressional Quarterly reports that Democratic lawyer Tom Myers is considering a challenge to Republican incumbent Phil English (R) in Pennsylvania’s Erie region, where lobbyist-written trade policies have devastated the economy. “There are so many people hurting in northwest Pennsylvania because of these unfair trade deals and the job losses and plant closings that have occurred as a result of that,” Myers said.

FAIR TRADE CHAMPIONS IN CONGRESS CELEBRATE EXPIRATION OF FAST TRACK: At a Capitol Hill news conference today, U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Bryon Dorgan (D-ND), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Betty, Sutton (D-OH), and Phil Hare (D-IL) joined more than two dozen labor, business, environmental, human rights and faith groups, to hail the expiration of presidential fast track authority - the authority that allows presidents to eliminate all labor, environmental and human rights protections from trade deals. “Voters in November spoke out against the job-killing trade pacts and fundamentally-flawed trade policy of the last decade,” Brown said. “We have a choice to lower our standards or demand our trading partners raise theirs. Today, we set our nation on a new course for trade that works for U.S. businesses and workers, not just multinational CEOs.”

BAUCUS - NOT MUCH CHANCE FOR RENEWAL OF FAST TRACK IN THE NEAR FUTURE: The Wall Street Journal reports that Montana Democrat Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said “Frankly, there’s not a lot of momentum right now,” to reauthorize fast track trade authority. The declaration comes as “rank-and-file Democrats are particularly anxious about trade, citing the impact on workers and families.” The Journal, however, makes clear that fast track is, in fact, special - it’s not the way trade was supposed to be negotiated. “Under the Constitution, Congress has authority over international-trade agreements,” the Journal wrote. Thus, fast track’s expiration merely means that Congress will now have a larger say in trade policy - a major step forward, as most observers believe Congress will use that reclaimed authority to demand better protections for workers, human rights and the environment.

DOHA TALKS COLLAPSE: The Financial Times reports that “in a near-exact repeat of events last summer, talks in Potsdam, Germany, between the four partners at the centre of the so-called Doha round of negotiations – the EU, US, Brazil and India – broke up with sides still far apart.” The collapse is seen as a solid step forward for two distinct reasons. First, as
a recent report from Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute showed, “rich countries are projected to receive an embarrassing 25 times the per-capita gains of developing countries” under the Doha framework - a situation sure to exacerbate global poverty. Second, the Financial Times notes that “many in the talks believe the political sensitivities in any deal mean no agreement can be concluded until there is a new incumbent in the White House.” In other words, if talks do resume, there is a much better chance that the U.S. president leading the talks will come to the negotiations with a much more progressive view on trade.

PELOSI PRESSURED AT HOME ON FAST TRACK: Public Citizen reports that last week, “the San Francisco Board of Supervisors joined the dozen other state and local authorities around the country and unanimously passed a resolution calling on Speaker Pelosi to replace Fast Track.” This resolution follows a resolution in Montana’s State Senate demanding the same of Democratic Senator Max Baucus - another key player on trade.

WEBB CHASTISES “THE RUBIN WING” OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: In his regular column for the Washington Post, David Ignatius writes that Virginia Sen. Jim Webb (D) is emerging as a new populist leader on issues like trade. “The average American worker sits there feeling the impact of globalization and immigration. They need people sticking up for them,” says Webb. The Virginia freshman senator specifically scolded “the Rubin wing” of the Democratic Party for continuing to push trade policies that prioritize corporate profits over all other protections for society. The term “Rubin wing” refers to the wing of the Democratic Party that continues to take orders from Citigroup executive Bob Rubin, who as President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, helped secure passage of NAFTA and China PNTR.