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 |  Subject: Looming Disaster: Obama to usher in major shift in trade policy  Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:55 am | |
| The election of Barack Obama has delivered a
decisive victory to "fair traders," mainly Democrats and their allies
who for years have contended that the free-trade policies of past
administrations were recipes for American job losses and environmental
degradation.
Obama's win marks the first time
in modern American history "that a candidate advocating a shift in our
trade policies in a decisively pro-worker, pro-consumer,
pro-environment direction has been elected president," Public Citizen's
Global Trade Watch, an advocacy group that is critical of free trade
agreements, said in a report.
On the other
side, Dan Griswold, director of the center for trade policies at the
pro-trade Cato Institute, was equally stark in his assessment: "We are
going to see the U.S. retreat from its long-standing leadership in the
global economy."
Obama has taken a generally
mainstream Democratic position on trade. He supports expanding trade
but says trade agreements must support U.S. manufacturing jobs and
include enforceable labor and environmental standards.
He
has promised a tougher stance against China, telling the National
Council of Textile Organizations, "I will use all diplomatic means at
my disposal" to induce China to change its foreign exchange and export
policies, which have led to huge trade imbalances.
During
the primary season, Obama and other Democratic hopefuls called for a
renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with
Canada and Mexico, although that was less of an issue in the general
campaign.
The Global Trade Watch report said
the election produced a net gain of 32 congressional fair traders -
five in the Senate and 27 in the House. With that, said the
organization's director Lori Wallach, "we suspect a shrinking number of
members of Congress will dare to pledge fair trade at home and vote for
NAFTA expansions in D.C."
Among two
Republican incumbents ousted by Democrats campaigning on fair trade
issues were Phil English of Pennsylvania and Robin Hayes of North
Carolina, lawmakers who cast decisive votes in 2005 when the House
passed the Central America Free Trade Agreement by a two-vote margin.
"Free
trade has been devastating to our district," said Democratic Rep.-elect
Larry Kissell, a former textile worker who defeated Hayes. "We have
called for a free trade moratorium until we see good jobs coming back
to this district," he said in a teleconference arranged by Global Trade
Watch.
A moratorium could effectively
sideline three bilateral free trade agreements, with Colombia, South
Korea and Panama, that have been negotiated but await congressional
approval. The Bush administration has been particularly strong in
advocating the Colombia accord, which it says would open up that
country to U.S. exports while rewarding the Bogota government for its
pro-U.S., pro-democracy policies.
But
suggestions that Congress vote on the Colombia deal, possibly as part
of an economic stimulus package during a lame-duck session, have
garnered little interest among Democrats who say the Colombian
government hasn't done enough to curb violence against union organizers
and members.
Democrats and their labor
advocates also say the South Korean accord doesn't adequately address
the issue of South Korea selling some 770,000 vehicles in the United
States in 2007 while buying only about 6,200 U.S. vehicles.
Panama
may be the only bilateral agreement with a chance because its products
don't upset U.S. constituencies, Cato's Griswold said. "Obama has made
it clear he understands the benefits of trade," Griswold said, "but he
has made it even more clear he will not cross important constituencies
in his party, such as organized labor."
Christopher
Wenk, senior director of international policy at the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, said Democrats might be more willing to go along if it is an
Obama trade agenda rather than a Bush trade agenda.
That
agenda would necessarily focus more on environmental and labor
protections, but he said the business community already supports an
agreement reached between the Bush administration and House Democrats
in May 2007 requiring that environmental safeguards and worker rights
be core parts of future trade deals.
That
agreement set the stage for congressional approval in late 2007 of a
free trade accord with Peru. Congress previously gave grudging consent
to Bush-negotiated trade agreements with Oman, Bahrain, Australia,
Morocco, Singapore, Chile and the six Latin American countries of
CAFTA. But last year it also refused to extend "fast track" authority,
which gives the president the right to negotiate trade deals that
Congress can approve or reject but cannot amend.
"If
you look at history, we've had pro-trade presidents since FDR," the
Chamber's Wenk said. "There's absolutely no reason why we should become
inward and protectionist and isolationist right now."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBAMA_TRADE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT |
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