Shades Of Nafta: Top Republican On Trade Seeks To Pass Fast-Track In Lame-Duck Session

Camp confirmed his plan in a brief interview with World Trade Daily in mid-September.  He says Obama Administration U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman backs his lame-duck fast-track push.  Camp and then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced Obama’s fast-track bill early in 2014.  It’s gone nowhere legislatively since.

That bill does not have enforceable worker rights and would let Obama push treaties that not only lack those rights but that also let corporations take the upper hand in nullifying any national, state or local laws that the firms claim could hurt potential profits from trade.  

Job safety and health laws, environmental laws and buy American ordinances would be among the endangered legislation.  And workers’ jobs would be up for grabs, too.

If Camp, a lame duck himself, goes ahead, that will leave workers and their allies little time to rally lawmakers and the public against fast-track.  And since electoral pressure will be off, lawmakers can kowtow to Obama’s wishes and business bullying and pass fast-track.

“We’re preparing for the possibility that they’ll try to sneak it (fast-track) through” during the session after the Nov. 4 election, replies AFL-CIO trade policy specialist Celeste Drake.  “The administration and Froman have been saying they’ll do that” for a while, she adds. 

“And they expect to make a big announcement about TPP” – the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the three controversial trade pacts Froman is bargaining – “at the Asian-Pacific (leaders) summit,” she explained.  That gives them a reason to push fast-track.

“Our message will be ‘No, don’t do that,’” Drake said of passing fast-track in the lame- duck.  “Let’s be a lot more thoughtful about trade, and enact legislation that’s very, very different,” such as trade legislation – enforcing worker rights and setting standards for which nations the U.S. can bargain with – the AFL-CIO and its allies has advocated for years.

While Camp concentrates on fast-track, which would then let Obama shove all three trade pacts through Congress via up-or-down majority votes on legislation to implement them, the top Ways and Means Democrat, Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., has another goal.  He sounds the alarm about what he calls the worst of the three, the TPP.   The others are a trade pact with the European Union (TTIP) and a proposed Trade In Services Agreement (TISA). 

“The TPP presents an enormously important opportunity to transform the trading relationship between the United States and those partners from something that in some cases looks like a one-way street to a fully reciprocal one with healthy flows that go both ways and create opportunities for everyone – the way trade is supposed to,” Levin told the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential non-partisan foreign policy think tank, on Sept. 18.

The U.S.-Europe pact would have more safeguards for workers than other trade pacts because, by and large, most European Union countries – but not all – have stronger worker rights standards than the U.S. does.  But TISA is such a threat to outsourcing state, federal and local government jobs and work worldwide that Teamsters President James Hoffa,  Teachers President Randi Weingarten, AFSCME officials and at least 39 other international public service union leaders lobbied U.S. lawmakers in mid-September to stop TISA.

In a written report accompanying his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Levin said the TPP must include – among other items – enforceable workers’ rights and a ban on currency manipulation.  Two big Asian nations, China and Japan, undervalue their currencies to gain export advantages for their industries, especially cars, costing U.S. workers’ jobs.

A 2007 enforceable labor rights provision in a trade pact with several Latin American nations, called the May 10 agreement, “is – and must remain – a bedrock principle within trade agreements,” including the TPP, Levin’s report says.

Enforceable labor rights sections of the TPP must also have “the same dispute settlement mechanism as the other provisions of the agreement.  These obligations must also be fully implemented – an area the parties are only beginning to tackle in the negotiations.

“That task will be challenging with several TPP countries – particularly Vietnam, a country under which the government, not independent labor unions chosen by the workers, is deemed the best representative of workers in the workplace.”  There should also be “ a special monitoring and enforcement structure in place to ensure (Vietnamese) compliance.”:

The TPP must also ban currency manipulation, just as House and Senate majorities have both urged the Obama administration.  Right now, TPP lacks any currency rules and Froman “hasn’t broached the subject,” Levin’s report says.

“The issue must be addressed.  TPP parties could agree to take existing International Monetary Fund disciplines, build upon them, and make them actionable in TPP.  The IMF already prohibits currency manipulation and has developed guidelines to define when it occurs. The problem is the IMF lacks an enforcement mechanism,” Levin explained.  All 12 nations in the TPP talks, including Vietnam, are IMF members.