Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO) | August 2, 2001 | By Holger Jensen
"Fast track" or "wrong track?"
Lawmakers haven't even begun that argument before their summer recess, which leaves President Bush without the authority to negotiate new trade agreements unfettered by congressional oversight.
House Republican leader Dick Armey of Texas confessed there were not enough Democratic votes to launch debate on what used to be called "fast track" and is now "trade promotion authority." He is shooting for September, but trade unions and environmentalists want to derail it altogether.
Until 1994, every president had fast track. President Clinton was the first to lose it, and he failed twice, in 1997 and 1998, to persuade a Republican-controlled Congress to renew it. Now Bush is having the same problem with Democrats, who accuse him of trying to enrich his corporate allies at the expense of labor and environmental protections.
Republicans counter that trade authority would boost Bush's standing as a world leader and help the economy by lifting tariffs that discourage other countries from buying American goods and services. Without it, they say, those nations are leery of negotiating trade agreements with Bush, knowing Congress can change whatever he signs.
Lack of trade promotion authority has hampered U.S. efforts to forge a Free Trade Area of the Americas that would eliminate tariffs in the entire Western hemisphere. Such a zone would link 34 nations from Alaska to Chile into a common market that produces $11.4 trillion worth of goods and services annually and generates nearly $3 trillion in cross-border trade.
President Bush Sr. first voiced the idea a decade ago, but negotiations did not begin until a Miami summit hosted by Clinton in 1994. Today, seven years later, the FTAA is still on the drawing board, though Bush Jr. committed himself to a 2005 startup at an April summit in Quebec.
To appease critics, the White House released a draft negotiating text of the FTAA agreement in early July. But the 434-page document only fueled Democratic opposition. Rep Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, complained that the Bush administration "has shown only minimal interest in addressing either the impact of trade on environmental and labor standards or assuring a reasonable level of transparency and public participation in trade decision-making."
Lack of trade promotion authority also hampers efforts to launch a new round of global trade talks. With only four months to go before the World Trade Organization's annual meeting in Doha, the capital of Qatar, its 142 member nations still have not agreed on an agenda, and Bush is in no position to provide leadership in that regard.
Three global "rounds," as they are called - Kennedy, Tokyo and Uruguay - have reduced tariffs on manufactured goods from an average 40 percent to 4 percent over the past 50 years. But a lot more needs to be done before global trade becomes truly free.
Agricultural tariffs, for example, still average 35-40 percent, and farmers are heavily subsidized. Britain's Economist magazine says the politicians of rich countries are so "shamefully in hock to the farm lobby" that they spend $300 billion a year propping up their farm sectors, as much as the entire national product of sub-Saharan Africa.
The European Union is the biggest dispenser of agricultural pork, but the United States comes a close second. A bipartisan farm bill now before Congress would add $73 billion to the $95 billion already planned for all spending on agricultural programs over the next decade.
Reducing agricultural subsidies and tariffs was one of the most important - and sensitive - topics in a fourth round of global trade talks originally planned for the WTO's 1999 meeting in Seattle. But disagreement between rich and poor nations and violent riots by anti-globalization protesters torpedoed those talks.
Analysts say another failure in Doha would spell doom for the WTO, even though its ranks will soon be swelled by China and Russia. But disagreements between rich and poor members persist, and the anti-globalization movement, as witnessed in Genoa, is gathering steam.
WTO chief Mike Moore told a recent gathering in Geneva there is "no better way than a new round to effectively address the problems of economic slowdown and prevent the further marginalization of many developing countries." But it has to be done soon, he warned, because trade issues "will not get easier in coming years."
Foreign Affairs; Holger Jensen is international editor. E-mail: hjens@aol.com. His column also appears on the Internet at www.RockyMountainNews.com/jensen/
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