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Fast track update
In case you missed this ...
>
> White House Again Delays Free-Trade Measure as
> Skittishness Over Issue Mounts
>
> By Paul Blustein
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Wednesday, September 10, 1997; Page A11
> The Washington Post
>
> Today was supposed to be the day for President
> Clinton to introduce legislation that would put
> free trade back atop the nation's agenda.
>
> But thanks largely to the continuing
> controversy over the 1993 North American Free
> Trade Agreement, trade remains one of the
> hottest-button political issues around -- and a
> skittish White House has changed its plans.
>
> The president will still lead a ceremony this
> afternoon in the East Room of the White House
> to rally Congress and the public anew to the
> free-trade banner. An Iowa farmer and a
> California woman who runs a high-tech company
> will offer testimonials to the benefits of open
> markets as Clinton formally launches a campaign
> seeking "fast track" legislative authority to
> cut path-breaking trade deals with Latin
> America and other regions.
>
> But the administration, which has repeatedly
> delayed introducing the legislative proposal
> over the past three years, is again postponing
> its submission, White House officials said
> yesterday, because of continued wrangling over
> wording on sensitive provisions concerning what
> sort of labor and environmental rules future
> trade deals should include.
>
> The delay stunned business lobbyists and other
> administration allies who have been gearing up
> to fight for the trade proposal in Congress.
>
> "Basically we're going to have a ceremony which
> is all sizzle and no steak," said Willard
> Workman, vice president for international
> affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
>
> Other business lobbyists fretted that the
> postponement raises questions about
> congressional prospects for the
> administration's proposal.
>
> "It's troubling," said Ari Fleischer, a
> spokesman for House Ways and Means committee
> Chairman Bill Archer (R-Tex.), whose panel
> controls trade legislation. "What's important
> now is for the president to engage in
> statecraft, not stagecraft."
>
> Although the White House expects to reach a
> compromise by early next week on the
> legislative language that's in dispute, the
> delay reflects the extraordinary passions the
> trade issue arouses among Democratic
> constituencies, particularly organized labor,
> which is planning to fight the administration
> with TV ads in districts of undecided
> lawmakers.
>
> And at bottom, those passions reflect the
> lingering fallout from NAFTA, which hangs over
> the administration's initiative like a
> thundercloud. The agreement -- which
> substantially erases trade barriers between
> Mexico, Canada and the United States -- became
> a symbol of free-trade policies that, critics
> charged, were shipping U.S. jobs to low-wage
> workers overseas.
>
> Administration officials have publicly joked
> that they will banish the word "NAFTA" from
> their lexicon during the upcoming trade
> offensive. And they argue that old divisions
> over the accord ought to be put aside in favor
> of accepting the reality of economic
> globalization and the need to pry open foreign
> markets.
>
> Yet as much as the White House hopes to focus
> the upcoming debate on future trade benefits,
> it is bedeviled by NAFTA's widespread
> unpopularity, reflected in polls such as a
> recent Wall Street Journal/NBC survey showing
> 43 percent of Americans viewing the pact's
> impact as negative, versus 28 percent who see
> it as positive.
>
> One of the administration's chief goals in
> seeking new negotiating authority is to
> effectively extend NAFTA beyond Mexico and
> Canada, first to Chile and eventually to the
> rest of the Western Hemisphere, creating a Free
> Trade Area of the Americas encompassing nearly
> 800 million people.
>
> That will be a hard case to make without
> revisiting NAFTA, said I.M. Destler, a scholar
> at the Institute for International Economics
> and, like many academic economists, a supporter
> of Clinton's position. "The administration
> would have to say, `Ignore the primary example
> of what we've done in this area -- but we want
> you to do more,' " he said.
>
> Opponents of the administration's initiative,
> including the leader of Clinton's own party in
> the House, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.),
> have said they intend to base their case
> substantially on NAFTA's failings.
>
> On Capitol Hill yesterday, the Citizens Trade
> Campaign, a coalition of labor, environmental
> and consumer groups, held a press conference to
> introduce "four individuals from across America
> whose personal experiences swayed their views
> on NAFTA expansion," including a Tennessee
> apparel worker who lost her job to Mexican
> competition.
>
> The administration counters that whatever
> NAFTA's shortcomings, the United States should
> not forgo opportunities to exploit the booming
> markets of Latin America and East Asia -- both
> of which have joined the United States in vague
> plans to form free-trade areas in the first
> decade of the next century. American living
> standards could also get a boost, the
> Clintonites add, from new global pacts in
> agriculture and services, where the United
> States ranks among the world's most productive
> nations.
>
> To negotiate such deals, the White House is
> asking for the "fast track" authority, under
> which trade agreements will be submitted to
> Congress for a simple up-or-down vote, without
> crippling amendments. Every administration
> since Gerald Ford's has used this device to
> give itself a credible negotiating position
> with foreign governments.
>
> "Certainly those in opposition to fast track
> will paint it as a referendum on NAFTA," said
> Charlene Barshefsky, the U.S. trade
> representative. "And of course fast track is
> nothing of the sort. It has to do with the
> future trade agenda and the future
> competitiveness of U.S. exports. It is a
> make-it-here, sell-it-there strategy."
>
> The United States risks being left at a serious
> disadvantage, Barshefsky warned, if it doesn't
> join in efforts to shape new trading blocs that
> are being discussed and formed, such as a
> recently concluded pact between Canada and
> Chile giving unrestricted market access to each
> other's goods.
>
> But even free-trade enthusiasts concede that
> the White House will pay a price for the way it
> oversold the Mexican market as a lucrative,
> job-generating bonanza during the NAFTA debate
> in 1993. Several independent studies have
> concluded that the pact has had little
> perceptible impact on the U.S. economy.
>
> A key lesson of NAFTA, according to Gephardt
> and other pro-labor Democrats, is that
> Washington shouldn't sign free-trade deals with
> Third World countries unless those countries
> agree to compete more fairly by providing their
> workers better wages and prohibiting
> environmental degradation.
>
> Any future deals should contain much stronger
> language on labor rights and the environment
> than the "side letters" that Mexico signed,
> Gephardt contends.
>
> This is the issue prompting the
> administration's last-minute struggle to craft
> legislative language. By going too far to
> appease labor, the White House risks losing the
> support of the GOP majority in Congress, whose
> leaders fear that a trade policy emphasizing
> labor and environmental safeguards would lead
> to protectionist barriers against foreign
> products.
>
> But by going too far to win Republicans, the
> administration risks deepening the unions' ire
> over NAFTA -- and handing a political issue to
> Gephardt, a potential rival to Vice President
> Gore for the Democratic presidential nomination
> in 2000.
***** NOTES from MDOLAN (MDOLAN @ CITIZEN) at 9/10/97 5:03 PM
GOP leaders were invited to the White House free trade group hug but didn't
attend. Labor and environmental groups were not invited -- but we showed
up anyway and had a rally in the park across Penn Ave. You should've been
there.
We're winning.
****************************************************************************
/s/ Mike Dolan, Field Director, Global Trade Watch, Public Citizen
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