It is not enough to simply say the deal on "fast track" is a bad one. We need to understand, in the details, why what is being sold as a new "improved" fast track is just utter nonsense.
The best source for this is Global Trade Watch, which has really been the most important progressive group fighting so-called "free trade" for decades (unlike groups like Campaign for America's Future which simply builds lists and raises money off the work Global Trade Watch has done).
GTW has a great analysis of the lies being pushed by the president, Ron Wyden, Orrin Hatch and Paul Ryan. So, first thing to understand: Wyden has partnered up with some of the most right-wing, "free market", anti-government forces the Congress has to offer--and the deal is so bad they could not come up with a single Democrat in the House to co-sponsor the deal.
Wyden needs a primary opponent now; with the caveat that I'd like to see who that person is, I'll contribute money to a progressive candidate's campaign to defeat this pig.
To the deal itself. The big point that GTW makes is simple:
The Hatch Fast Track bill introduced today would revive the controversial Fast Track procedures to which nearly all U.S. House of Representatives Democrats and a sizable bloc of House Republicans already have announced opposition.
Most of the text of the Hatch Fast Track bill replicates word-for-word the text of the 2014 Fast Track bill, which itself replicated much of the 2002 Fast Track bill.
The bill explicitly grandfathers in Fast Track coverage for the almost-completed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and would extend Fast Track procedures for three to six years. The bill would delegate away Congress’ constitutional trade authority, even after the Obama administration dismissed bipartisan and bicameral demands that the TPP include enforceable currency manipulation disciplines.
[emphasis added]
This is in stark contrast to the bullshit Wyden is trying to push that what he negotiated was this great leap forward.
The fundamental nature of so-called "fast-track" is that it ties the hands of our elected officials--the people we vote for--to exercise their constitutional duties. And this turd does not change anything.
To jump to the end of the analysis, there is an important point to counter the bullshit from the president and his Congressional minions on fast track. They run around saying, "oh woe is me/us, we really need fast track because with it, we can't close out trade deals and bring the wonderful benefits of "free trade" to the masses"...Aside from the putrid nature of the deals themselves, it's a lie, as GTW points out:
· Both Democratic and GOP presidents have struggled to convince Congress to delegate its constitutional trade authority via the Nixon-era Fast Track scheme. Fast Track has been in effect for only five years (2002-2007) of the 21 years since passage of NAFTA and the agreement that created the WTO.
· A two-year effort by President Bill Clinton to obtain Fast Track trade authority during his second term in office was voted down on the House floor in 1998 when 171 Democrats were joined by 71 GOP members who bucked then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. Clinton did not have Fast Track for six of his eight years in office, but still implemented more than a hundred trade agreements.
· President George W. Bush spent two years and extraordinary political capital to obtain the 2002-2007 Fast Track grant, which passed a Republican-controlled House by one vote, and expired in 2007. Bush’s efforts to obtain a new grant of Fast Track authority never gained sufficient support to move towards floor votes before he left office.
Fast track is an anomaly. Do not buy the bullshit that is critical to getting these deals done.
The basic badness of this deal:
· Empower the executive branch to unilaterally select partner countries for a trade pact, determine an agreement’s contents through the negotiating process, and then sign and enter into an agreement – all before Congress voted to approve a trade pact’s contents, regardless of whether a pact met Congress’ negotiating objectives;
· Authorize the executive branch to write legislation containing any terms the White House decides are “necessary or appropriate” to implement the pact. Such legislation would not be subject to normal congressional committee review and markup, meaning this and future administrations could include in a Fast-Tracked trade bill whatever terms it desired;
· Require votes in both chambers within 90 days, forbidding any amendments and limiting debate to 20 hours, whether or not Congress’ negotiating objectives were met.
· Instead of establishing a new “exit ramp,” the bill literally replicates the same impossible conditions from past Fast Track bills that make the “procedural disapproval” mechanism to remove an agreement from Fast Track unusable. A resolution to do so must be approved by both the Senate Finance and the House Ways and Means committees and then be passed by both chambers within 60 days. (Sec. 6(b)(1-2)) The bill’s only new feature in this respect is a new “consultation and compliance” procedure that would only be usable after an agreement was already signed and entered into, at which point changes to the pact could be made only if all other negotiating parties agreed to reopen negotiations and then agreed to the changes (likely after extracting further concessions from the United States). (Sec. 6(b)(3-4)) That process would require approval by 60 Senators to take a pact off of Fast Track consideration, even though a simple majority “no” vote in the Senate would have the same effect on an agreement. In contrast, the 1988 Fast Track empowered either the House Ways and Means or the Senate Finance committees to vote by simple majority to remove a pact from Fast Track consideration, with no additional floor votes required. And, such a disapproval action was authorized before a president could sign and enter into a trade agreement. (19 USC 2903(c)(2)(B))
This is lipstick on a pig. And Wyden, looking to make the deal and make it look pretty, is the one applying the "bi-partisan" lipstick.
Wyden and his Hatch-Ryan co-conspirators make much of a new "human rights provision". GTW (I included material related to currency manipulation because it's in the context of "nothing is new":
· Today’s bill includes a new negotiating objective related to human rights: “to promote respect for internationally recognized human rights.” (Sec. 2(a)(11)) But since the bill does not alter the fundamental Fast Track process, the president still would be able to unilaterally pick countries with serious human rights abuses as trade negotiating partners, initiate negotiations with them, conclude negotiations, and sign and enter into the trade agreement with the governments committing the abuses, with no opportunity for Congress to require the president to do otherwise.
· In addition to the Fast Track procedure applying whether or not objectives are met, some of the Hatch bill negotiating objectives advertised as “new” are in fact identical to what was in the 2014 bill and were referenced in the 2002 Fast Track. For example, the 2002 Fast Track included currency measures: “seek to establish consultative mechanisms among parties to trade agreements to examine the trade consequences of significant and unanticipated currency movements and to scrutinize whether a foreign government engaged in a pattern of manipulating its currency to promote a competitive advantage in international trade.” (19 USC 3802(c)(12)) The so-called “new” text in the Hatch bill repeats word-for-word what was in the 2014 Fast Track bill: “The principal negotiating objective of the United States with respect to currency practices is that parties to a trade agreement with the United States avoid manipulating exchange rates in order to prevent effective balance of payments adjustment or to gain an unfair competitive advantage over other parties to the agreement, such as through cooperative mechanisms, enforceable rules, reporting, monitoring, transparency, or other means, as appropriate.” (Sec. 2(b)(11)) Even if Congress had the power to ensure that this negotiating objective was met, the language of this negotiating objective itself does not require enforceable disciplines on currency manipulation to be included in the TPP or other deals obtaining Fast Track treatment. Despite the requests from bipartisan majorities of both houses of Congress that enforceable currency manipulation disciplines be included in the TPP, the Hatch negotiating objective lists “enforceable rules” as just one approach among several non-binding options for the TPP and other Fast Tracked deals.
· The bill’s negotiating objectives regarding labor and the environment replicate those of the 2014 fast Track bill, which in turn memorialize the provisions of the “May 10, 2007” deal that, according to recent government reports, have proven ineffective. (Sec. 2(b)(10)) While the May 10 provisions went beyond the 2002 Fast Track objectives regarding labor, a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in November 2014 found broad labor rights violations across five surveyed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partner countries, regardless of whether or not the FTA includes the labor provisions of the May 10 deal.
History, folks: this is the same garbage foisted on us via NAFTA. Labor rights or human rights are never part of the core parts of the agreements. In NAFTA, they were UNENFORCEABLE side agreements. Now, it's a negotiating "objective." Please wipe my ass with side agreements and "objectives" because that's about what they are worth.
Now, we've already seen the deep secrecy hiding the negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership, with leaks being the only way the public gets to know about the details. This piece of turd ups the secrecy to new heights:
The Hatch bill would simply formalize the past practices of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) under the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. The bill would formally designate trade agreements as falling under the national security-related clearance system, requiring USTR to create guidelines that would bar access to any draft trade pact text for congressional staff without security clearances. The other “transparency” provisions in the Hatch bill would simply return to the status quo level of transparency under the Clinton and Bush administrations before the Obama administration’s anomalous steps backwards. For instance, during NAFTA negotiations, members of Congress had open access to the full draft composite NAFTA texts with a new version placed into a secure reading room in the U.S. Capitol after each round of negotiations. In the summer of 2013, the Obama administration finally responded to growing pressure by members of Congress for access to draft composite Trans-Pacific Partnership texts by bringing requested specific chapters to members’ offices for review when a member asked for such access, but forbade members’ staff (even those with security clearance) from being present or notes from being taken. Returning to the same degree of congressional access provided by the Bush administration while continuing to exclude public and press access to draft trade pact texts is hardly worth applauding. (Sec. 4(a)(3))
As for public transparency, the Hatch bill actually fails even to reach the openness of the Bush administration. During negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas under that administration, USTR released the draft composite negotiating text of the agreement on the USTR website for anyone to read. The Hatch bill includes no such requirement for the draft texts of Fast Tracked trade agreements to be released to the public. A close read of a new provision requiring USTR to post a trade agreement text on its website 60 days before signing reveals that this timing would be 30 days after the agreement was initialed and the text locked, meaning the text would only become public after it was too late for the public or Congress to demand changes. (Sec. 6(a)(1)) [emphasis added]
Need I say more than the observation that the Obama Administration is behind something that is more secretive than the Bush Administration?