Northwest labor press., October 03, 2014, Page 13, Image 13

...NAFTA critic Wallach
(From Page 12)
led both to a huge wave of desperate
migration to the U.S., but also to a glut
of manufacturing workers in the border.
In Mexico, not only are industrial
wages down, but tens of thousands of
small- and medium-sized mom-and-
pop retailers — and the manufacturers
that used to supply them food, clothing,
shoes … — were just wiped out when
the U.S. mega-companies like Walmart
came in. Canada has been the biggest
loser as far as investor-state rollbacks of
policies, because in the face of these at-
tacks, Canada’s government more likely
than not rolls back the law. So toxics
that were taken off the market were put
back on the market because that was the
settlement of an investor-state case.
Canada was going to adopt plain pack-
aging rules for cigarettes, to help keep
people who hadn’t started smoking
from starting. RJ Reynolds threatened
an investor-state case, and Canada
walked away from it.
NAFTA-style trade agreements are
often blamed for offshoring, but U.S.
companies were already moving pro-
duction to Mexico before NAFTA, and
to China before the United States
granted it “permanent normal trade re-
lations” and allowed it to join the World
Trade Organization. Is there a way in
which these agreements make it easier
for American companies to outsource?
First of all, you can look at the data,
and there’s a huge jump in offshoring
after these agreements go into place. If
you’re up to your ankles in offshoring,
when these agreements go into effect,
within a year, you’re in over your head.
That’s also true of China joining the
WTO (World Trade Organization). The
reason that happens is two things. One
is guaranteed long-term duty-free ac-
cess. In the case of China, before, every
year it had to go through a review
process, and when they were doing hor-
rible things about human rights or labor
rights, there was always a question
about whether they would get low-tariff
“most-favored-nation” status for the
next year. So companies would think
twice about relocating. Once there was
a certainty that China would be in the
WTO and would have duty-free access
no matter what they did on human
rights and labor rights, then a lot of
companies felt it was safe to go in. In
addition, the investor rules in the free
trade agreements guarantee certain
things that remove the risks and costs of
relocating. The free-market Cato Insti-
tute has come out against investor-state
dispute settlement, and part of the rea-
son why is it’s a market distortion. In
their libertarian perspective, it skews
what they call the risk premium, how
much risk they have to take, distorts it in
favor of offshoring. About offshoring or
not offshoring, they’re ideological:
They don’t care what the result is; they
just want the market to be free. And
they see this as a distortion because the
investor rules provide preferential treat-
ment. There’s things you can do to reg-
ulate a U.S. company that you can’t do
to regulate a foreign company under
these trade agreements. Singapore was
just putting up capital controls to avoid
a financial bubble that would lead to an-
other financial crisis — because they
had a flood of money coming to invest
in their real estate sector. But because
they have a free trade agreement with
the U.S., they can’t. They are left to
have a bubble-led crisis because they
lost the ability to regulate. These rights
include the right to compensation for
changes in regulatory structure. Ger-
many announced they’re phasing out
nuclear power by 2029, because of
Fukushima. So they’ve given notice in
the whole industry to figure out a tran-
sition plan. And all the domestic com-
panies are trying to figure out what to
do. But two plants are owned by a
Swedish company Vatenfall, which
launched an investor-state case saying,
“We don’t care if it applies to German
firms. We’re foreign investors. We have
special privileges. You can change the
policies, but you have to compensate us
for billions of dollars, because we ex-
pected to make profits on those plants
in the future.”
Over the years, Public Citizen
Global Trade Watch has kept a run-
ning tally of fair trade supporters in
Congress. How’s the “Fair Trade cau-
cus” doing?
There is pretty much bipartisan con-
sensus in the House of Representatives
against ever doing the old-style “fast
track” trade mechanism [an agreement
to hold a speedy up-or-down vote on
trade agreements, with limited debate
and no opportunity to amend.] That has
been a huge chill on negotiations of
agreements like TPP [Trans Pacific
Partnership]. Some of the fast track op-
ponents are structuralists: They don’t
think that fast track delegation is consti-
tutional. In the Constitution, Congress
Having knowledgeable
help with your Social
Security disability claim
right from the start
makes a difference.
OCTOBER 3, 2014
Top national trade expert to keynote at
Fair Trade Campaign’s 10-year dinner
Oregon Fair Trade Campaign will celebrate 10 years of fighting for a pro-
worker trade policy with an Oct. 18 fundraising dinner. The group is a coali-
tion of union members, environmentalists, and faith and community activists
that works to oppose NAFTA-style trade agreements such as the TransPa-
cific Partnership — a proposed Pacific Rim deal that’s being negotiated with-
out input from Congress or the public.
The dinner’s keynote speaker is one of the most prominent critics of Amer-
ica’s corporate-led trade policy, Lori Wallach. Wallach, director of Public Cit-
izen’s Global Trade Watch, has been campaigning since 1991 against trade
agreements that harm workers and the environment. She’s a frequent com-
mentator on CNN, NPR, Fox, and other media outlets, and has a talent for
translating complex trade jargon into plain English.
U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) will also attend the dinner, and Ore-
gon AFL-CIO president Tom Chamberlain will present him the group’s “fair
trade champion” award.
The dinner will take place Saturday, October 18, at the SEIU Local 503
Hall, 6401 SE Foster Rd. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., and the dinner and pro-
gram run from 6 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $60 per person, or $600 for a table of
10, and can be purchased online at oregonfairtrade.org or by phone at 503-
736-9777.
has exclusive authority over trade. And
some are free traders but have gotten
savvy that the trade agreements aren’t
about that any more. There are people
who are for zero tariffs but have no in-
terest in undermining food safety, inter-
net freedom, etc. It all boils down to a
majority in the House right now against
fast track. However, Oregon U.S. Sena-
tor Ron Wyden, now the chair of Fi-
nance Committee, is the guy who’s go-
ing to decide what happens next. And
he could be the man who retires the un-
democratic fast track mechanism. Fast
track has been key to getting us into
failed trade agreements like NAFTA
and WTO, by giving away Congress’
and the public’s oversight role. Wyden
can be the guy who tweaks and tries to
continue it. Or he can be the guy who
retires it. If you read the book I wrote
on the history of trade authority in the
United States since the founding of our
country, it lays out how almost every 40
years, Congress has created a new sys-
tem of trade authority. We’re very over-
due to replace fast track. Fast track was
established by Richard Nixon in 1973
in an era when trade agreements were
mainly about tariffs, about border taxes.
It’s a dangerous mismatch when you
have Congress’ core business — legis-
lating — being delegated on a huge ar-
ray of non-trade issues. It’s all going to
come down to Wyden, who in the past
has supported fast track, has supported
all these NAFTA style agreements.
He even voted for NAFTA.
He voted for all of them. He’s one of
the rare Democrats who voted for the
U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
He voted for CAFTA — the Central
American Free Trade Agreement. At
the same time, he’s a smart guy. He’s
had an open process and he’s heard
from a lot of Democratic senators and
some Republicans that they want some-
thing different: no more fast track. He’s
heard from Internet freedom groups,
environmental groups, all the unions,
family farm groups, Methodists, con-
sumer groups, MoveOn, AARP, groups
that have never been involved in trade
fights. Because it’s not about trade any
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
more. It’s about medicine costs for sen-
iors and so many other things. So all of
these groups and many members of
Congress have spoken to Chair Wyden
and said, “Sir, you are the man who is
either going to replace fast track and
give us a totally different way of getting
better agreements, or you’re going to be
the guy who’s responsible for trying to
revive Nixon’s undemocratic fast track.”
And it’s either going to happen in the
lame duck Congress that starts Nov. 12,
or it’s going to be coming out of the
chute in January 2015.
Do you think there’s a plan to ap-
prove fast track in the lame duck ses-
sion after the November 2014 election?
I think the White House is dying to
have the old-fashioned legislative luge
run. Because the way they’ve dicked
around Congress, they are not going to
be able to get TPP the way it’s con-
structed — with a big “F.U.” to Congress
on things Congress has explicitly said
had to be in there. It’s got stuff in there
that major blocs of Congress has said, “If
that’s in there, then I’m against it.” If
that’s in the TPP, they know it’s only go-
ing to get done if they have fast track.
We see from experience what it looks
like when trade agreements are written
by corporations. What would a Lori
Wallach “fair trade” policy look like?
Corporate special privileges, con-
straints on government regulation, and
expansion of monopoly patents and
copyrights, would all be excised from
trade agreements. Trade agreements
would actually focus on trade. And
countries that want market access rules
and cuts on tariffs would have to meet
internationally-agreed standards with re-
spect to labor, health and the environ-
ment. You would build international
commerce on the basis of prioritizing
the international policies that exist
through the ILO (International Labor
Organization), multilateral environmen-
tal agreements, World Health Organiza-
tion treaties, and the rights of human be-
ings. We need that floor set as the basis
for getting commercial privileges.
PAGE 13