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Upcoming NAFTA-style trade deals may be DOA By DON McINTOSH Associate Editor The long march of NAFTA-style trade agreements may be nearing an end. Starting in January, the new Demo- cratic majority in both houses of Con- gress will make it harder for the Bush Administration to win approval for trade agreements that don’t do any- thing to improve the labor and environ- mental standards of trading partners. And even before the new Congress is sworn in, resistance to several al- ready-negotiated trade treaties may prevent their passage during the re- mainder of the “lame-duck” session of Congress. On Nov. 13, the Republican House leadership failed to pass a bill the presi- dent wanted that would have normal- ized trade relations with Vietnam. The vote was 228-161 in favor, but that was short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill without debate. The bill may come up again when Congress re- convenes Dec. 4. Congress is expected to meet for one to two weeks before fi- nal adjournment. Trade watchers earlier expected a trade agreement with Peru to also get a vote during the lame duck session. Broadway Floral for the BEST flowers call 503-288-5537 1638 NE Broadway, Portland Southgate Mobile & RV Park 7911 SE 82nd Ave. Portland, Oregon Spaces Available up to 35’ 503-771-5262 Q Now, says AFL-CIO global economic policy specialist Jeff Vogt, it doesn’t look likely to be scheduled for a vote. And a treaty with Colombia faces even longer odds; Vogt sees no chance it will come up before the end of the year, because it’s too controversial. Critics of the so-called “free trade” agreements think Congress’ mood is changing because of growing concern among voters that the agreements are worsening the U.S. trade deficit and trade-related job losses. Democrats, especially, are increas- ingly critical of the trade agreements, in part because the Bush Administra- tion has taken a hard line, refusing to address the concerns of key Democra- tic constituencies like unions and envi- ronmental groups. NAFTA-style trade treaties eliminate tariffs and other bar- riers to trade; guarantee foreign corpo- rations get treated the same as domes- tic corporations; and commit to enforce patent, copyright and trademark mo- nopolies. If countries fail to live up to these commitments, the treaties contain enforcement mechanisms including fines and punitive tariffs. Unions and environmental groups want what they call “fair trade” treaties — treaties that would also guarantee labor and envi- ronmental protections in the same way. But so far, none of the treaties negoti- ated by the Bush administration con- tain more than non-binding promises to enforce whatever labor and environ- mental laws the countries already have. That’s not enough, union leaders say, especially when the workers in those countries lack basic rights, like the right to join a union. The Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) passed by two votes in July 2005. Just 15 of the 202 (Turn to Page 10) Quest Investment Management, Inc. Think Again • Minimum wage: A triumph of common sense over conservative ideology L ast month’s election did more than send a lot of new Democ- rats to Congress and state legisla- tures. It also delivered a resounding affirmation of a values-based eco- nomic justice agenda. This year’s “values voters” af- firmed the principle that people who work full time shouldn’t have to live in poverty. In six states, these voters approved ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage. In other states, legislatures raised the minimum wage to keep such initiatives off the ballot. By next month, when most of these new laws and initiatives deliver their first pay increases, states repre- senting a majority of the nation’s workers will have higher wage floors than the federal minimum wage. Stuck at $5.15 per hour for the past 10 years, the federal minimum has become a poverty wage for more than 10 million adult workers with seven million children — and an af- front to Americans who think “working” should mean no less than “working for a living.” As this election proved, when you ask voters whether they are willing to allow poverty wages in their states, you get a resounding ‘No.’ But that’s not why I think we may be at a tipping point for a progres- sive agenda that values work and de- mands fairness for working families. The more important development is this: States with higher minimum wages are proving that minimum wage increases deliver what their proponents promise — higher in- comes, and not what their opponents predict — fewer jobs. This victory of common sense over conservative economics was fought and won during the past 10 years at the intersection of reality and ideology, where people’s lives are directly affected by the contest of political ideas. And, this is a contest • Serving Multi-Employer Multi-Employer Serving Trusts Twenty Years Trusts for for Over Twenty Years that progressives have won. Before I take this point further, I want to call out the pioneers of this successful movement, which started in the Northwest. Activists in Wash- ington were the first in the country to use the initiative process to raise the minimum wage in 1988. Their coun- terparts in Oregon and California followed suit in 1996. Since then, initiatives to raise the minimum wage appeared on the bal- lot in 10 states, including a second round of increases in Washington in 1998 and Oregon in 2002 that added annual cost-of-living adjustments to their wage floors. All 10 of these minimum wage initiatives were ap- proved by the voters; not a single one failed — despite some high- spending opposition campaigns that featured a message from the Almighty urging a ‘No’ vote in TV ads run in Colorado this year. Most importantly, these cam- paigns helped to prove that wage laws forged in the crucible of the New Deal are still relevant to a global economy 70 years later. States that raised their minimum wages above the federal level and communities that adopted living wage ordinances in recent years pro- vided real-world laboratories to test the conventional thinking dominant in right-wing think tanks, preached by university economics depart- ments and used like a cudgel by business lobbies — namely, that minimum wage increases hurt more workers than they help. The results of these tests have been summarized in a new paper by Liana Fox, entitled “Minimum Wage Trends: Understanding Past and Contemporary Research,” published by the Economic Policy Institute (www.epinet.org.) And they were convincing enough to change minds, at least in academia. Alan Blinder, the former vice- chairman of the Federal Reserve, wrote this year: “My thinking on this has changed dramatically. The evi- dence appears to be against the sim- ple-minded theory that a modest in- crease in the minimum wage causes substantial job losses.” Blinder even rewrote his economics textbook to debunk that “simple-minded theory.” As Fox concludes in her overview of the new studies, “The positive ef- fects of the minimum wage are diffi- cult to dispute. The minimum wage sets a floor for the value of work and lifts the living standards of low-wage workers.” So what should progressives do now? If studies like these had validated the positive effects of school vouch- ers or consumer-driven health plans, you can bet that conservatives would wave their findings like battle flags. Progressives should do the same with a living wage agenda. In Oregon, the Legislature should repeal the prohibition on local living wage laws, which was passed in 2000 at the behest of the Oregon Restaurant Association, and let com- munities decide if they wish to es- tablish higher wage floors. In Congress, Democrats should move quickly to raise the federal minimum wage to an amount that takes it above the poverty level and boost the shameful “tip credit” wage of $2.13 per hour as well. Progressives should learn from their success in states like Ohio, Montana and Arizona that the mini- mum wage can serve as the cutting edge of a new values-based eco- nomic agenda to unite blue states and red. After all, the minimum wage has something going for it that the con- servative agenda doesn’t. It works. 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