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"No" to "Fast
track" |
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Off the Fast Track and onto the Right
Track
A Fast Track Fact Sheet
A report from Kristi Disney, Tennessee Industrial
Renewal Network
[from Southern Communities, published here by
permission on 7-2-01]
"Fast Track" is a procedure under which Congress gives the
president authority to negotiate trade agreements and provides special
rules for considering those agreements. From 1975 to 1994, Fast Track
authority outlined negotiating objectives for our trade negotiators,
limited the time Congress could debate and consider legislation to
implement trade agreements after they had been completed by the president,
and required an up-or-down vote on the implementing legislation, with no
congressional amendments allowed. The president can negotiate trade
agreements without Fast Track authority, but he then has to let Congress
debate the agreement at length and possibly add amendments that would
modify the agreement.
Labor, the environmental movement, consumer groups, and fair trade
coalitions worked successfully to defeat Fast Track in 1997 and again in
1998. Fast Track has not required the president to include enforceable
protections for the environment and workers' rights in our trade
agreements. The basic format of the legislation lacks adequate procedures
for consultation with Congress and the public and limits democratic debate
about trade policy.
Now President Bush claims that he must have Fast Track authority in order
to negotiate new trade deals, especially to complete the proposed Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), based on NAFTA. Although the Bush
administration is trying to make Fast Track sound better by calling it
"trade promotion authority," it has not proposed fixing any of
the problems with previous Fast Track proposals.
U.S. trade policy needs to be dramatically reoriented before Congress
grants Fast Track authority for major new negotiations. Itis crucial that
we have an open national debate over the content and form of trade policy
before we
(1) proceed further with negotiations toward the FTAA, which would
essentially extend the flawed NAFTA model to the rest of the western
hemisphere,
(2) negotiate additional bilateral free trade
agreements, or
(3) launch new World Trade Organization negotiations.
Flawed trade policies cost American jobs, put downward pressure on U.S.
wages and working conditions, erode the ability of governments to protect
public health and the environment, and contribute to political and
economic instability and growing inequality in the rest of the world.
Key principles that must be addressed in any trade
negotiating authority include the following:
 | Trade negotiating authority must require the
inclusion of enforceable workers' rights and environmental standards
in the core of all new trade agreements. New trade agreements must
ensure that all workers can freely exercise their fundamental rights
and require governments to respect and promote the core labor
standards laid out by the International Labor Organization in its 1998
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. |
| Workers' rights and environmental standards must be
covered by the same dispute resolution and enforcement provisions as
the rest of the agreement. An agreement that does not meet these
principles must not be considered under Fast Track procedures.
Monetary fines modeled on the NAFTA labor side agreement or the
Canada-Chile agreement are inadequate and have proven an ineffective
means of enforcement. It is not sufficient simply to list workers'
rights and environmental protections among the negotiating objectives.
Workers' rights have been among our negotiating objectives for more
than 25 years, with very little progress being made. |
| Congress must ensure that ordinary citizens have
access to negotiating texts on a timely basis, and that negotiators
are accountable to both Congress and the public as to whether
mandatory negotiating targets are being met. |
| Trade agreements must not undermine public services
or public health, nor allow individual investors to challenge state
laws in secret. Trade authority must delineate responsibilities for
investors, not just rights, and must not require privatization and
deregulation as a condition of market access. |
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An index of
our reports
from
BECOMING NEIGHBORS:
An Invitation
to Global Discipleship
A Witherspoon conference
on global mission and justice
September 16 - 19, 2007
Louisville, Kentucky |
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Check out our report from the
Conference
on
Terror, Torture,
and Security |
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