Approximately 600 organizations have sent a formal, public letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) opposing "fast-track" trade promotion authority and calling for a new system for negotiating and implementing trade agreements. The letter asks for trade pacts that "deliver benefits for most Americans, promote broadly shared prosperity, and safeguard the environment and public health." Read the letter here.
Campaign for America's Future is one of the organizations that signed this letter. The letter was led by the Sierra Club, AFL-CIO, the Communications Workers of America, the Citizens Trade Campaign, and Public Citizen. The letter was written because new fast-track trade promotion authority is being drafted by Wyden's committee. An earlier bill introduced by then-Senator Max Baucus and Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) would keep Congress from debating or altering trade pacts like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other upcoming agreements, even though they are considered one-sided in favor of giant multinational corporations over working people and the environment.
The letter asks for a new process for reaching trade agreements in which Congress has a role in selecting trade partners and in which Congress sets up a set of negotiating objectives that must be achieved. The new process would include more transparency and a way for Congress to certify that negotiating objectives have been met before trade negotiations are wrapped up.
Larry Cohen, President of the Communications Workers of America, said this new process can help us decide what kind of economy we want to have, saying, “A new model of trade authority is the only way to ensure that workers and communities have a voice in these trade decisions. We want to determine what kind of economy we have, not simply accept super-power status for multinational corporations and a snails’ pace for the enforcement issues raised by the rest of us.”
The Hill reports on this letter, in "Hundreds of groups call for new framework to negotiate trade deals," quoting AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
“Only with new trade negotiating authority can we secure new trade rules that can help hard working Americans build a sustainable economy and promote broadly shared prosperity,” said President Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO.
“Chairman Wyden has a chance to make history by being the architect of a new and democratic trade policy, and we commit to doing all we can to help achieve that goal," he said.
On fast track,
“There is no ‘acceptable’ version of fast track,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “Fast-track must be replaced so Congress can steer international trade in a new direction and create agreements that actually work for most Americans.”
Our Current Trade Deals Are Rigged Against Citizens By Choice
Our current trade deals are rigged - designed to benefit a few already-wealthy owners of giant multinational corporations. They were set up in order to transfer good-paying jobs out of the U.S. to take away the bargaining power of organized labor. This has forced down American workers' bargaining power, resulting in stagnant wages, a shrinking middle class and widespread poverty. Meanwhile the rich get vastly richer.
These rigged trade agreements have also massively increased our country's trade deficits. We currently run an enormous, humongous trade deficit of more than $40 billion a month.
Germany followed a different trade model. Germany worked with its companies and its labor unions to forge trade agreements that benefit businesses, workers and Germany's economy. CAF's Robert Borosage did a great job of laying out what happened in a recent interview on Richard Eskow's The Zero Hour radio program. (Scroll to 5:15.)
Globalization isn't an act of nature; it’s a set of policies, tax, trade, financial, monetary policies where you make choices and those choices benefit parts of the economy and injure others.
We made choices. Multinationals basically wrote our globalization strategy and they chose to benefit investors, made it easy to ship jobs abroad, made it even easier to threaten to move jobs abroad and dramatically weakened the ability of workers here at home.
But that was a choice.
In Germany they made a very different choice where unions were stronger, and the companies and the unions together navigated a globalization strategy that has made Germany one of the great export powers of the world and allows German workers to sustain middle class incomes and benefits.
Public Citizen has an action you can join: Write your representative to demand a real replacement to Fast Track and put an end to unfair trade deals.
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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary and/or for the Progress Breakfast.
