Sen. Wyden gets an earful from free trade opponents
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
voted for NAFTA and all but three
NAFTA-style trade deals since then.
But he’s in agreement with organized
labor about one thing: Trade negotia-
tions shouldn’t take place in secret.
In May, Wyden introduced the Con-
gressional Oversight Over Trade Nego-
tiations Act, which would require U.S.
trade negotiators to share documents
with members of Congress and their
staffs. The bill, co-sponsored by Jeff
Merkley (D-Ore.) and two other sena-
tors, was provoked by the refusal of
U.S. trade negotiators to divulge any de-
tails about negotiations under way to
create the Trans Pacific Partnership
(TPP), a NAFTA-style trade deal that
could eventually cover the entire Pacific
Rim.
On Aug. 13, Wyden brought the is-
sue home with a “listening session”
about TPP at a federal building in
Northeast Portland. At the meeting,
Wyden heard from an invited panel and
from constituents. Most of the panel
consisted of corporate and industry rep-
resentatives who support TPP, but most
of the crowd was critical.
Panelist Arthur Stamoulis, director
of the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign,
drew the biggest applause.
“Despite 13 major rounds of negoti-
ations and requests by hundreds of
thousands of Americans, the U.S. trade
representative still refuses to tell the
public what he’s been proposing in our
name,” Stamoulis said. “His office has
also indicated that they have no inten-
tion of releasing any text until the nego-
tiations have concluded and the pact is
signed, at which point it will be very
difficult to effect any kind of change.”
“That lack of transparency is anath-
ema to democratic policy-making, but
it’s also a rollback,” Stamoulis said.
“Even the Bush Administration pub-
meeting. Pam Barrow, an energy expert
representing the Northwest food pro-
cessing industry, said the region’s in-
dustries benefit from cheap domestic
natural gas. Asians pay six times as
much for natural gas. Barrow argued,
and Wyden agreed, that if natural gas
exports take off, Asian prices will come
down, and Northwest prices will go up,
hurting industry in a big way.
“Natural gas is a strategic American
advantage today,” Wyden said. “I’m
particularly concerned that industries
like food processing, heavy equipment
manufacturing, steel, that we preserve
your ability to get reasonable energy
prices.”
TPP is currently being negotiated
between the United States and nine
other Pacific Rim countries, including
Vietnam, Mexico and Canada, and
could ultimately include all 21 mem-
bers of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-
operation (APEC) forum.
“We cannot afford another job-killing trade deal,” Oregon Fair Trade
Campaign activist Elizabeth Swager tells U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden at an Aug. 13
public meeting about the Trans Pacific Partnership. “Before NAFTA we had
a trade surplus with Mexico,” Swager said. “Now it’s a massive deficit.”
lished the bracketed text of the Free
Trade Area of the Americas [a multi-lat-
eral trade deal that failed to get off the
ground].”
Wyden agreed with Stamoulis:
“Something’s way out of whack when
special interest groups can … get access
to the whole thing, and have more ac-
cess to it than elected officials and the
American people.”
“Too often trade agreements have
only benefitted a few multinational cor-
porations,” said panelist Tom Chamber-
lain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO.
“And local businesses, local workers,
and workers in our trade partner coun-
tries often end up worse off.”
If organized labor was looking for
allies in opposing NAFTA-style deals
like TPP, it didn’t have to look far: The
auditorium was packed with about 200
people who’d turned out during the
workday and waited in a long line to get
through a security check to attend. Most
of them were mobilized by environ-
mental organizations, and were there to
oppose export of coal and liquid natural
gas to Asia. Their opposition was based
on concerns over local environmental
impacts, as well as the contribution to
global climate change that could come
from additional fossil fuel burning.
But opposition to natural gas exports
got a business argument as well at the
We baked our buns off
for you this Labor Day.
So, please, enjoy those union-made hamburger
and hot dog buns at your Labor Day picnic.
Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers
and Grain Millers Local 114
AUGUST 17, 2012
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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