On May 10th, the Bush Administration released a set of "principles" for renewal of fast-track trade negotiating authority, now renamed "trade promotion authority." The response has generally been less than favorable, marked by forthright Democratic criticism and anonymous Republican sniping. Our take on it is somewhat different.
We continue to believe approval of trade promotion authority makes sense. It is a proven way to facilitate passage of trade agreements in the U.S. national interest; and, as demonstrated by conciliatory moves on labor and environmental policy the Administration never would have made otherwise, it is also the most effective way for Democrats to put a permanent stamp on the Administration's trade agenda. But it is also a very difficult and controversial procedure; and if it is to succeed, President Bush must invest much more of his time and political capital than he has yet been willing to do -- both in setting out the initiatives (from the FTAA to a new WTO Round and beyond) to the American country, and in making the case directly to Congress.
This will be a difficult task, and the principles themselves have some serious flaws. But we believe they are also a reasonable beginning that should not be rejected out of hand. And if President Bush is ready to make the necessary commitment, progressives can take up the work by stressing the need to improve the principles in two fundamental ways:
- Trade promotion authority should never be an obstacle to trade liberalization. The Administration should immediately abandon its linkage of support for existing agreements (with Vietnam, Jordan and Laos, for example) to approval of TPA.
- Administration rhetoric on labor and environmental policy must coincide with reality. The Administration can begin by reversing attempts to cut funding for international efforts to combat child labor and by developing a serious, credible policy on climate change and other international environmental issues.
Before looking more closely at the problems, however, we will begin with the positive.
First, the Administration's principles outline an ambitious but realistic agenda, which builds logically on the achievements of the past eight years.
President Clinton's trade record -- approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement and expansion of the Caribbean Basin Initiative; the completion of the Uruguay Round that created the WTO; the high-tech trade initiatives on telecommunications, information technologies and electronic commerce; the African Growth and Opportunity Act; the historic agreements with Vietnam and China -- left the U.S. trade regime and the international trading system changed fundamentally for the better. The most important function of the new Administration's proposal is to present an agenda that can build on this record.
Specifically, it calls for approval of existing agreements with Jordan and Laos as well as Vietnam; completion of free trade agreements with Chile and Singapore; and as the top long-term priorities, a new WTO Round and a Free Trade Area of the Americas. While the agenda does have some gaps -- the lack of attention to the high-tech agenda is especially disappointing -- on the whole it represents continuity with and confirmation of the Clinton record, and is thus one progressives can conceptually support.
Second, the principles avoid two dangerous traps. Specifically, they do not absolutely rule out negotiations on U.S. trade laws, nor do they require any single means of enforcing agreements. The first point will ensure that American negotiators have the maximum leverage to win foreign concessions; the second will -- rightly -- postpone debates on enforcement of labor and environmental clauses in trade agreements to the point at which we know what those clauses actually are, and therefore also what the most appropriate means of enforcement will be.
Third, the principles represent the beginning of an effort to accommodate legitimate labor and environmental issues in tandem with trade policy. Drawing on ideas developed by House New Democrat Coalition Co-Chair Cal Dooley, they find a specific role for trade policy to play in advancing environmental protection and labor standards (although the Administration offers few if any new ideas) and offer a "toolbox" for international labor and environmental policy beyond the trade context. These make up perhaps the most detailed and progressive proposals the Bush Administration has made in any labor and environmental policy area (though admittedly this is not saying much). As such, while incomplete, they can help open a genuine discussion on this most controversial aspect of any trade promotion authority bill.
However, the principles also have some flaws. Two in particular strike us as especially serious.
First, to be blunt, at present the Administration's labor and environment "toolbox" has no credibility. This is entirely the Administration's fault, and is up to the Administration to fix. The problem cannot be solved through rhetoric; rather, the Bush Administration must reverse specific policies that contradict its "toolbox" proposals. To note two especially important examples:
- The toolbox recommends that we "strengthen and raise the profile of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and provide strong support for ILO initiatives aimed at fostering member countries' adherence to core labor standards." In practice, however, the Bush Administration proposes not to strengthen and raise the ILO's profile, but to weaken and lower it. The Administration's FY 2002 budget actually cuts U.S. commitment to international labor policy by more than half, from $148 million in 2001 to $72 million in 2002. This would cripple U.S. support for the ILO's child labor reduction initiatives in future years.
- The toolbox calls for a marked strengthening of U.S. commitment to the environmental programs operated by the United Nations Environmental Protection program, the World Bank, and other international agencies. This is fine in principle -- but in reality coincides with generally hostile Administration attitudes towards international institutions, and specific efforts to sabotage international action on climate change. Until we know what the Administration's actual environmental policy goals are, pledges of support for multinational efforts on their behalf are hollow.
Second, the principles, in calling trade promotion authority the Administration's "first legislative priority," implicitly extend a misguided policy of linking passage of all existing agreements to passage of trade promotion authority.
For months now, the Administration has refused to endorse early passage of the Free Trade Agreement with Jordan, or to submit the agreements normalizing trade relations with Vietnam and Laos to Congress for the early vote current trade law guarantees. This policy has corrosive substantive and political effects -- it damages American national security interests in Southeast Asia and the Middle East at a time of unusual tension in both regions; and rather than creating incentives for cooperation on trade, it weakens both foreign and Congressional trust in the Administration's overall trade policy. One may observe that such linkage also makes a mockery of trade promotion authority itself, turning it into an obstacle to trade liberalization rather than a facilitator of trade agreements.
These flaws go to the heart of the Administration's overall trade policy, and to the credibility of the principles document. The Administration will thus need to correct these flaws before a serious discussion of trade promotion authority can begin; and we still await the personal effort on the part of President Bush necessary for any such discussion to succeed.
But on the whole, we also believe the Administration's principles represent a reasonable first step on which progressives can build. They set out a generally strong agenda, using the Clinton record as the foundation, and they make the Administration's first steps toward accommodating its critics on key issues. We look forward to the debate.
Blueprint Keywords: Extra Fast Track
