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SOME OF THE TREATIES THAT SELL US,OUR RIGHTS AND OUR JOBS OUT

FTAA
NAFTA
CAFTA
Oman FTA
Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador FTAs
AGOA

Public Citizen | Fast Track - Fast Track
http://www.citizen.org/trade/fasttrack/
FAST Track
“Fast Track” is the process that gives the executive branch the authority to negotiate and write trade agreements and delegates away Congress’ constitutional power to set the terms of U.S. trade policy. Fast Track creates special rules for considering trade agreements by allowing the executive branch to sign an agreement before Congress votes on it and only gives Congress 90 days to vote on the trade deal.Under Fast Track, the president is authorized to negotiate trade agreements with foreign countries without consulting Congress or state legislators. After the executive branch locks down the terms of the deal and writes the implementing legislation, Congress is only permitted a yes or no vote, while states are virtually left out of the process. Thus, state and congressional officials elected to represent the public interest have no role in the process but to approve or disapprove the whole package.Fast Track renewal was slipped through Congress at midnight in 2002 by only two votes. In July 2007, the current grant of Fast Track, now called “Trade Promotion Authority” by its supporters, will expire. Fast Track is not needed to approve trade agreements, a fact proven by the dozens of trade agreements that have been passed without its use (such as the Jordan FTA, China PNTR, etc.). Fast Track unnecessarily creates a situation where negotiators cannot be held accountable by the public, and legislators are denied their constitutional authority to set the terms of trade agreements.In recent years, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has used Fast Track to push dozens of controversial pacts through Congress including: the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and dozens of trade agreements with countries such as Chile, Singapore, Morocco, Australia, Bahrain and Oman. Trade negotiations have been accelerated to an alarming speed, denying legislators and the public the appropriate time to consider the serious ramifications of these agreements.


Public Citizen | State and Local Governance - State and Local Governance
http://www.citizen.org/trade/subfederal/
State and Local Governance

Register for Global Trade Watch's special Pre-Conference with the Center for Policy Alternatives on State Sovereignty and Trade!
The current corporate globalization process is pushing an ever-increasing number of issues away from local or even national democratic decision-making and into inaccessible international venues where few citizens or even their elected representatives can follow.State laws and municipal policies are coming under attack as "barriers to trade." Yet, agreements such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and new negotiations currently underway at the World Trade Organization continue to expand the same failed approach. These negotiations aim to delve even deeper into areas traditionally under state and local control.Three areas have particular relevance for state and local governance:
Government Procurement: When states sign up to government procurement provisions contained in agreements such as CAFTA or the Andean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA), common economic development and environmental policies, such as buy local laws, policies to prevent offshoring of state jobs, recycled content laws and others could be subject to challenge as barriers to trade.
Investment: Under NAFTA, the proposed CAFTA, and other agreements, corporations can use closed trade tribunals to privately enforce an extreme set of investor rights by directly suing the United States over the actions of state or local governments which restrict the profitability of their investments. NAFTA has already generated “regulatory takings” cases against land use decisions, environmental and public health policies, and adverse court rulings that would not have been possible in U.S. courts.
Services: The WTO services agreement could undermine state efforts to expand health care coverage and rein in health care costs, and places constraints on state and local land use planning. New negotiations in the services area could have additional implications for state regulation of water, energy, higher education, professional licensing and more. » Letter from Gov. Granholm to USTR Schwab Requesting that Michigan be Carved Out of Specific Service Sectors (6/22/06)
» Letter from Gov. Vilsack to USTR Schwab Requesting that Iowa be Carved Out From Further Doha Round Services Negotiations (5/19/06)
» Fact Sheet: Trade Pacts Undermine State Sovereignty
» 10 Tips for State Legislators to Ensure a Meaningful Role in the Development of U.S. Trade Policy
» Fact Sheet: State Purchasing Policy Under Attack

Public Citizen | Harmonization - Harmonization
http://www.citizen.org/trade/harmonization/
Harmonization

Services | http://www.citizen.org/trade/subfederal/services/
Investment | http://www.citizen.org/trade/subfederal/inv/
Procurement http://www.citizen.org/trade/subfederal/procurement/

Harmonization is the name given to the effort by industry to replace the variety of product standards and other regulatory policies adopted by nations in favor of uniform global standards. The harmonization effort gained a significant boost with the approval of several new international agreements, particularly the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which established the World Trade Organization (WTO). These trade agreements have also established an ever-increasing number of committees and working groups to implement the harmonization mandate. Unfortunately, most of these working groups are industry dominated, do not provide an opportunity for input by interested individuals or potentially-affected communities, and generally conduct their operations behind closed doors. Yet, under current trade rules, these standard-setting processes can directly affect our national, state and local policies
.U.S. threatens EU's REACH chemical safety policy as "barrier to trade"

Public Citizen | Offshoring - Offshoring
http://www.citizen.org/trade/offshoring/

Offshoring

The debate now raging over service-sector offshoring represents the forseeable expansion of concerns first voiced in the early 1990s over the effect of globalization on U.S. jobs. These concerns were widely heard when Congress was faced with two transformational "trade" agreements: the NAFTA and the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which established the WTO. The focus then was the future of U.S. manufacturing jobs. The legal protections and rights of these trade agreements have made it easier for U.S. companies to maximize profits by moving operations "offshore," typically to countries where wages are far below those of U.S. workers and where there are few environmental, health or safety regulations with which they must comply.Widespread public concern over the growing offshoring of a range of back-office, technological and other professional occupations has made this a very hot political issue in the 2004 election. Increasingly, policy makers and economists are coming to realize that something dramatic has occurred that cannot be explained by prevailing economic theories and models. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped 10,000 yet people are still not finding jobs and many have stopped trying.Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch's April 15 report, "Addressing the Regulatory Vacuum: Policy Considerations Regarding Public and Private Sector Service Job Offshoring," proposes two distinct sets of policies that Congress and state legislatures should consider in response to this latest wave of offshoring. The first set of policy options are required to ensure that identity theft, financial fraud, irreversible exposure of sensitive personal medical and financial information, and domestic infrastructure sabotage threats do not increase with the move to shift professional and service sector work overseas to lower-wage countries.The second set of policies is aimed at protecting the right of state and federal government to invest taxpayer dollars back into the domestic economy. To date, Congress and over 30 states are considering policies that would prevent service work paid for with state and federal tax dollars from being sent overseas.Further reading:
“In Age of Outsourcing, Do the Old Rules Apply?” Christian Science Monitor (03/05/04)
“Jobless Recovery Too Long to be Fluke,” Los Angeles Times (03/14/04)

Public Citizen | Immigration - Immigration
http://www.citizen.org/trade/immigration/

Immigration

How trade policy is affecting immigration - Coming Soon!»
National Latino Leaders Urge Congress to Rethink NAFTA-style Trade and Economic Policies

Sept. 11 - National Latino Leaders Urge Congress to Rethink NAFTA-style Trade and Economic Policies

LOS ANGELES, CA – Reflecting on the roots of poverty and immigration in Latin America, the historic National Latino Congress has unanimously approved a resolution rejecting new NAFTA-style trade agreements and calling for the replacement of the flawed “Fast Track” legislation that helped to facilitate the expansion of NAFTA to Central America through the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which was passed last summer by one vote.To download the press release as a pdf document, click here.The resolution, which complicates the Bush administration’s current efforts to further expand NAFTA to the South American countries of Peru and Colombia and to seek an extension for its expiring "Fast Track" trade negotiating authority, was passed in the final plenary of the Congress on Saturday, September 9th. It reads, in part:


"Now therefore be it resolved that our organizations call on the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration to immediately cease their anti-immigrant, failed trade policies that are continuing to force families to migrate from their homes in the first place; develop trade policies that promote the creation of sustainable development and good jobs in the United States and abroad by replacing the Fast Track process and replacing the failed NAFTA-CAFTA trade agreement model that has proved damaging to the livelihoods of the majority and the environment in involved countries while creating economic and social devastation that promotes dangerous, desperate cross-border migration."

The resolution also specifically calls attention to national lawmakers who are attempting to push anti-immigrant legislation ahead of the November elections while continuing to push for expansion of trade and economic policies that force families to immigrate in the first place.Latino leaders present applauded the passage of the resolution, calling it an important step towards addressing the obvious link between current U.S. trade policy and immigration."We live in a service sector economy where the race to the bottom is a common occurrence and the scapegoating of a segment of the population is done in the name of national security. However, before we begin to criticize those who have to work two jobs to make basic ends meet and who were forced to migrate illegally, we need to take a close look at our failed trade policies such as NAFTA and CAFTA," stated Milton Rosado, National President of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement."NAFTA caused over 1.3 million Mexican campesinos to lose their livelihoods. Not surprisingly, the number of people coming from Mexico to the United States each year rose 60 percent in the first six years after NAFTA," said Dolores Huerta, president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and co-founder of the United Farm Workers. "Passing a border security bill won’t have any effect on immigration; we can only resolve immigration issues by addressing the bigger question of why people are being forced to immigrate in the first place – because of U.S. trade policy that makes it impossible for small farmers to compete with big agribusiness.""El Salvador was the first country to implement CAFTA, and we are already seeing an increase of both immigration to, and deportation from, the United States," said Ana Perez, a board-member of the Salvadoran American National Network (SANN) and delegate at the National Latino Congreso. "CAFTA is locking in and deepening the U.S.- backed economic policies that have been impoverishing Salvadorans for decades.""We are for free trade but it must contain certain provisions for worker rights, human rights, civil rights, environmental and labor protections. We are against the exploitation of child labor," said Rosa Rosales, President of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)."It’s election time, and a lot of politicians are blaming immigrants for the fact that working people keep losing ground in the United States," said Oscar Chacon, co-founder of the National Association of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC), a national umbrella organization of Latino immigrant-led organizations in the United States. "But most of these immigrant-baiting politicians are the same ones who are pushing a reckless expansion of the very international economic policy that results in increasing inequality here and abroad, and that NAFTA-style trade agreements seek to reinforce," stated Mr. Chacon.The convening organizations of the National Latino Congreso, the first comprehensive gathering of Latino leaders, organizations and elected officials since 1977, include the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC), the National Hispanic Environmental Council, Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP), the William C. Velasquez Institute and Earth Day Network (EDN). The goal of the 5-day long event is the creation of an action plan and long term Latino agenda.To read the entire resolution, as well as the other resolutions from the National Latino Congreso, go to www.latinocongreso.org.The passage of the resolution came after Latino leaders and trade experts held a press conference on the link between U.S. trade policy and immigration on Thursday, September 7th.To read the press release from that event, please visit: http://www.citizen.org/documents/Tra...ease_FINAL.pdf
Contacts: Lizette Olmos, LULAC, (202) 365-4553, ljolmos@lulac.org, www.lulac.org Alexandra Acosta, LCLAA, (201) 390-7129, Acosta@lclaa.org, www.lclaa.org

Public Citizen | Other Issues - Other Issues
http://www.citizen.org/trade/issues/
Other Issues

Backgrounder - Going Down with the Dollar: Possible Scenarios and Implications of Currency Adjustments
» The Uses of Chile: How Politics Trumped Truth in the Neo-Liberal Revision of Chile's Development

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