Mfgs.: Reject Fast Track for President
Manufacturers Urge Congress to Reject Fast Track as “Undemocratic, Unconstitutional, and Flawed
Newswire Services
Newswire Services
January 31, 2007
U.S. Business & Industry Council Calls for Moratorium on All New Trade Agreements Until Trade Deficit Is Brought Under Control.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Business & Industry Council (USBIC) yesterday urged Congress to reject President Bush’s request for a one-year renewal of fast-track trade negotiating authority, ostensibly sought to allow for passage of a completed agreement from the Doha Round of world trade talks.
Rather than continue fast track, USBIC believes: (1) there should be a complete moratorium on new trade agreements until the trade deficit is brought under control and balance is restored to the world trading system; and (2), when the United States begins to consider new trade agreements again, they should be made as the Constitution requires, with full input from domestic interests through their elected representatives – not by the Executive Branch with the guidance of multinational corporations.
USBIC also predicted that even the one-year extension sought by the President – in contrast to the five-year grant typically requested – would damage manufacturers and other domestic producers precisely because the Doha Round is designed to give preferential access for third world manufacturers and farmers to first world markets rather than vice versa. “Doha is the latest in a long line of non-reciprocal trade agreements where only a few special American interests will benefit, while the vast majority of American producers will be disadvantaged,” said USBIC President Kevin L. Kearns.
According to USBIC, passing fast track – which severely limits debate on new trade deals and denies Congress the right to amend them – would boost the odds of several ill-conceived bilateral trade deals passing the House and Senate, along with the equally flawed Doha world trade agreement.
“President Bush has compiled the worst trade policy record of any American president,” said Kearns. “You’d think that he would be eager for Congress’s help in getting the country out of the current mess. But no, he apparently believes that the way to solve the problem of our gargantuan trade deficits and the rapid decline of our manufacturing base is to pass more of the same trade deals that created the current unsustainable situation. In fact, free trade is yet another one of his stay-the-course, don’t learn from your mistakes policies.”
Kearns said, “Renewing fast track would allow the president to stay on a policy course that has wracked up nearly $3.6 trillion in merchandise trade deficits, lost huge chunks of vital domestic manufacturing markets to imports, and hemorrhaged millions of high-wage manufacturing jobs to foreign competitors.”
Continued Kearns, “The president clearly does not know how to open new foreign markets for U.S. producers, and he has refused to help most domestic businesses and workers cope with predatory foreign trade competition, whether from currency manipulation, foreign government subsidies, dumping, or intellectual property theft. The President’s trade policy record clearly doesn’t deserve the blank check represented by fast track.”
Kearns also refuted the popular claim that without fast track, any future trade deals would become impossible. “The U.S. market is by far the biggest prize in any bilateral or multilateral trade talks,” he explained. “The rest of the world desperately depends on exporting to America in order to generate growth. Our trading partners will whine loudly, but ultimately they have no choice but to work with us to restore stability to a global trading system that today is seriously out of balance. How much more money can we print, or how many more bonds can we issue, to pay for the current flood of imports before foreigners refuse to hold our dollars and buy our bonds any longer?”
Kearns also advised Congress to avoid the temptation of “fixing” fast track with mandates to better protect labor rights and environmental standards in trade agreements. “These objectives are worthy,” he said. “But such U.S.-imposed conditions are bound to be unenforceable. American officials simply cannot police the world, monitoring working conditions and pollution in factories in China and many other slave-wage countries. However well-intentioned, these measures won’t open a single market, won’t earn a single dollar for domestic manufacturers or farmers, won’t raise American wages one dime, and won’t save a single American job.”
In Kearns’ view, the very concept of fast track trade policymaking is undemocratic, unconstitutional, and fatally flawed. “The whole point of fast track was to make Congress more complacent in approving trade deals. But the method chosen was virtually to exclude from the policy process those domestic interests most affected by these deals – i.e., domestic U.S. manufacturers, American farmers and ranchers, and their employees. We don’t fast track any other field of U.S. policymaking. There’s no justification for making an exception when the domestic economy, our manufacturing and technology base, and the jobs and standard of living of the majority of Americans are on the line.”
The U.S. Business and Industry Council, founded in 1933, is a national business organization representing roughly 1,500 small and medium-sized domestic U.S. companies, predominantly manufacturers.
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