[Dryerase] House hands trade powers to Bush; Senate next

[Asheville Global Report]

By Sean Marquis

July 30 (AGR)—  At 3:30am on Saturday, July 27 the US House of 
Representatives voted to give president George W. Bush “Fast Track” trade 
authority.
The early morning 215-212 vote would hand over congress’ constitutional 
role of regulating trade with other nations. In the past, presidents from 
Gerald Ford through George H. W. Bush were also given such added power, but 
that power lapsed in 1994 in Bill Clinton’s first term when the Republican 
controlled congress refused to give it to him.
Under Fast Track, the president brings a completed agreement to congress 
which then can only vote “yes” or “no” on the entire package and not alter 
or add any provisions.
Article 1, Section 8, paragraph 3 of the US Constitution states: “Congress 
shall have the power to regulate Commerce with foreign nations
”
If the Senate also approves the bill, congress will not have that power for 
the next five years, when the measure will come up for renewal.
Bush has been pushing for Congress to give him their power since he took 
office and with the help of patriotic fervor in the wake of the Sept. 11 
attacks, finally got the trade bill passed in the House.
Last December, the House of Representatives passed  Fast Track 215-214. In 
May, the Senate passed similar legislation with a vote of 66-30.
The two versions of the bill were hashed into a compromise 300-plus page 
bill last week which was sent to the House floor at 2am Saturday morning. 
After an hour and a half of debate, the bill was passed.
After the vote, Bush, who has renamed Fast Track as “Trade Promotion 
Authority”, issued a statement: “For nearly 10 Years, America has lacked 
Trade Promotion Authority and the ability to fully take advantage of trade 
opportunities. 
[TPA] will open markets, expand opportunity and create jobs 
for American workers and farmers. I urge the Senate to vote on this good 
bill before the Senate goes home for the August recess.”
The Senate is expected to pick up the compromise measure before the August 
break and with just enough trade-friendly Democrats, it is expected to pass.
According to a separate White House statement in support of TPA: “Trade 
spurs growth in overseas markets for US goods and services, enhances 
opportunities for higher-paying American jobs, expands choices for American 
consumers, and promotes US security interests
Trade spreads American values 
and reinforces the habits of liberty that sustain democracy.”
According to a report by CNN, Bush headed Saturday to Andrews Air Force 
Base in Greenbelt, Maryland, to play golf with three congressmen who were 
instrumental in TPA’s passage. As Republican Reps. Dan Burton, Michael 
Oxley, and Tom Delay teed off with Bush, the president said he was 
“celebrating the passage of  Trade Promotion Authority.”

‘Midsummer Night’s Massacre’
While Bush was off playing golf and celebrating, there were many who were 
not happy about his victory or congress’ roll over and remained unconvinced 
about the “democracy sustaining” ability of free trade.
Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, said that 
the vote, “will be remembered as the Midsummer Night’s Massacre, where 
growing popular concern about corporate-led globalization was shot down in 
favor of a backwards policy combining corporate managed trade and global 
deregulation of basic consumer, environmental and other public interest 
standards.
“Public opposition to NAFTA-style trade deals has grown so strong that now 
the only way to move this policy is to ram through at 3:00am [sic] in the 
dark of night 304 pages of legislation combining five different trade bills 
which was unavailable for public or congressional review until hours before 
the vote,” Wallach said.
She also pointed to the “hypocrisy in Washington” on account of  “GOP House 
leadership and President Bush ramming through a trade bill which has as its 
main agenda promoting massive global corporate deregulation just hours 
after crowing about passage of new regulations aimed at the corporate crime 
wave caused by the very sort of deregulation this bill promotes globally.”
The Sierra Club said that fast track will allow the Bush administration to 
extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) across the western 
hemisphere. Provisions in NAFTA allow foreign corporations to sue signatory 
governments [US, Canada, and Mexico] such as in the case of the Methanex 
Corporation.
Methanex, a Canadian company, is suing the US in a NAFTA tribunal claiming 
that a California ban on MTBE (a toxic gasoline additive) is 
“expropriation” and that it is entitled to $970 million in “compensation” 
as a foreign investor — the $970 million is “lost” revenue because the 
company cannot sell its toxic additive in the state.
“Now more than ever, Americans want Congress to hold corporations 
accountable, not give them more breaks,” said Carl Pope, Executive Director 
of the Sierra Club. “The House’s capitulation to powerful business 
interests could jeopardize many of the environmental protections Americans 
take for granted.”
A report by the Mexico Solidarity Network, an economic justice and human 
rights coalition,  said the contents of the bill were “terrible” and that 
the “Gramm language is in.”
According to the report: “The sneaky Senator Phil Gramm snuck in language 
at the 11th hour into the House Fast Track bill last December the night 
before the vote. This language basically says that countries don’t even 
have to uphold their own labor and environmental laws, much less the ILO 
[International Labor Organization] standards. It sheds any pretense of 
having the ability to use trade sanctions if a country that is a signatory 
of a trade agreement is found to be violating international labor law [by 
using child labor, for example] or environmental agreements.”
The report also pointed out the General System of Preferences (GSP), which 
gives preferences to goods from poor nations, was extended to 2006 but was 
also weakened.
The change would weaken gender discrimination protections.
“They [Congress] stripped out a clause from GSP that would have required 
countries receiving these special trade benefits to not have policies which 
discriminate against women,” the report said.
A week prior to the vote, Global Exchange, a fair trade advocacy group, 
issued a statement saying that, “Fast-Tracked agreements like NAFTA and the 
WTO [World Trade Organization] brought us lost jobs, attacks on local 
environmental laws, the ‘race to the bottom’ in labor and environmental 
standards here and abroad and the destruction of more than 33,000 family 
farms.”
“When an agreement is ‘Fast-Tracked,’ the final product of these 
corporate-driven negotiations is steam rolled through Congress without any 
chance for debate or changes,” according to the statement.
Global Exchange added that, “Fast Track is a fundamentally undemocratic 
procedure by which the US Congress surrenders its ability to craft trade 
policy.”