America's Slippery Trade Slope

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 5/11/2007 01:06:00 AM
I had feared this would come to pass, but it has. The Democratically-controlled Congress and the Bush administration now say that they want to incorporate labor and environmental standards into future trade pacts. The slippery slope as I see it is that the Trojan horse of protectionism can now masquerade under the guise of "labor and environmental standards." The Bush administration wants to get the president's fast-track authority renewed when it expires at midyear. This authority allows him to negotiate trade deals that are not subject to modification by Congress; instead, they are voted on as is. The irony, as I have noted elsewhere before, is that to get trade promoting authority, Bush has to agree to measures that smack of protectionism. From the New York Times:
The Bush administration and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, breaking a partisan impasse that had dragged on for months, reached an agreement this evening on the rights of workers overseas to join labor unions.

Both sides predicted that the agreement would clear the way for Congressional approval of several pending trade agreements.

Democrats hailed the accord as a major victory in their campaign to ensure that trade deals provide for the rights of workers to organize and that trading partner countries ban child labor and slave labor.

The deal is expected to clear the way for Congressional approval of the pending trade deals with Panama and Peru. Representative Sander Levin, a Michigan Democrat, told Bloomberg News that other pending deals with Colombia and South Korea still need a “hard look...”

The Bush administration hopes that this agreement paves the way for a much broader deal to extend Mr. Bush’s authority to negotiate future trade accords and get a quick up-or-down vote on them.

That authority, known as “fast track” trade negotiating authority, expires June 30.

The Wall Street Journal also chimes in:
After months of standstill, the White House and congressional Democrats agreed to strengthen labor and environmental standards in free-trade pacts, signaling a new bipartisan consensus aimed at shoring up crumbling U.S. public support for economic globalization.

The agreement -- which was set to be announced last night by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other top administration officials and lawmakers -- means some smaller stalled trade deals have cleared a key hurdle to passage. And it could smooth the way for broader trade measures on the horizon -- one renewing President Bush's soon-to-expire authority to negotiate trade deals without facing Congressional amendments, and a new global trade pact being negotiated in the so-called Doha Round of World Trade talks.

But yesterday's agreement applies just to bilateral pacts with Peru and Panama. And it puts off, for now, a more contentious, separate agreement with Colombia that Bush officials wanted to complete.