Why Bush wants TPA extended: President Bush wants Trade Promotion Authority for the sake of "free trade," but there is a growing grass-roots resistance to the harmful consequences of his trade agenda.

Without action by Congress, the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) powers of the president will expire at midnight on July 1. This authority, formerly known as Fast Track, was first extended by Congress to President Nixon with the Trade Act of 1974. It has been used to place the United States in such trade pacts as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Although the TPA powers have been employed by both Republican and Democrat presidents to get trade pacts through Congress, the TPA-spawned pacts collectively advance a similar agenda. That agenda is euphemistically called "free trade" by its promoters, despite the fact that it is not genuine free trade. Genuine free trade entails the free flow of goods without any outside government involvement. But when the fine print of trade agreements is fully explored, it becomes clear that the TPA trade-agreement process is not about eliminating government involvement but about who will make the rules. Put simply, the agreements restrict the ability of the United States to set its own trade policies by transferring decision making to regional and global arrangements as part of a broader agenda called "globalization."

Consider the binding nature of NAFTA's Chapter I I tribunal rulings, which many congressmen did not even notice when they voted for NAFTA in 1993. In April 2004, with these tribunals established and issuing rulings, the New York Times quoted California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George as warning: "There are grave implications here. It's rather shocking that the highest courts of the state and federal governments could have their judgments circumvented by these tribunals."

President George W. Bush supports the "free trade" agenda. He also wants to continue using Trade Promotion Authority to advance that agenda and has called on Congress to extend his TPA authority. But there has been growing grass-roots resistance to the TPA-spawned agreements based on both their economic consequences and their neutering of U.S. sovereignty.

The "Free Trade" Agenda

U.S. adoption of the NAFTA agreement in 1993 under "fast track" rules provided a foundation for the so-called free-trade agreements that followed--as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger predicted when the NAFTA agreement was still being debated: "[NAFTA] will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere.... [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system."

President Bush supports NAFTA and wants to build upon it. "NAFTA has worked," he claimed last March 14 in Mexico. "You don't want to weaken NAFTA; you want to make sure it stays strong in order that prosperity continues to expand and people benefit on both sides of the border." Of course, that rosy assessment of a NAFTA economic boom contrasts sharply with the mounting evidence of economic devastation wrought by NAFTA and other so-called free-trade agreements. Last year, for instance, an Economic Policy Institute briefing paper about NAFTA found that "growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have pushed more than 1 million workers out of higher-wage jobs and into lower-wage positions in non-trade related industries." The paper also found that "the displacement of 1 million jobs from traded to non-traded goods industries reduced wage payments to U.S. workers by $7.6 billion in 2004 alone."

President Bush disagrees that NAFTA has been bad for the economy as a whole, and in 2005 he strongly lobbied lawmakers to get a similar trade agreement, CAFTA, through Congress, extending the NAFTA concept to Central America.

But the president does at least acknowledge that some American workers have lost their jobs despite the economic boom he credits to NAFTA. He wants to help those "displaced workers," but not by backing away from his trade agenda. In his January 31 "State of the Economy Report," delivered at New York City's Federal Hall, he explained: "Government has a responsibility to help displaced workers find new jobs, or even a new career. So my administration has reformed job training programs and expanded Trade Adjustment Assistance to help more displaced workers learn the new skills they need to succeed. I'm going to work with Congress to reauthorize and to improve the Trade Adjustment Assistance this year, so we can help Americans take advantage of this growing, dynamic economy."

In the same speech, President Bush proudly pointed to his success at implementing his trade agenda: "When I took office, America had free trade agreements with three countries. We have free trade agreements in force now with 13 countries--and we have more on the way." Also on the way is a strengthening of the WTO. As the president put it in his speech: "At this moment, the most promising opportunity to expand free and fair trade is by concluding the Doha Round at the World Trade Organization."

However, President Bush pointed out: "The only way America can complete Doha and make headway on other trade agreements is to extend Trade Promotion Authority.... The authority is set to expire on July 1st--and I ask Congress to renew it."

What's Wrong With TPA

Under fast-track legislation, the Congress surrenders some of its constitutionally authorized power to the executive branch, diminishing the role of Congress (and of the people acting through their congressmen) in setting trade policies, and expanding the influence of the executive branch (and the special interests that have strongly influenced the presidency during both Republican and Democratic administrations).

Trade Promotion Authority allows a president not only to negotiate a particular trade agreement but also to implement legislation needed to bring existing U.S. law into conformity with the agreement. This violates not only the constitutional mandate that "All legislative powers herein granted" (Article I, Section 1) be exercised by Congress alone, but also that Congress--not the president--"regulate commerce with foreign nations" (Article I, Section 8).

Moreover, "fast track" hamstrings Congress by requiring that it: 1) limit debate to a maximum of 20 hours; 2) vote within 60 legislative days after both the agreement and its implementing legislation have been presented by the president; and 3) vote yea or nay on the exact text submitted by the president without altering or amending. Great pressure is applied then to members of Congress to pass the agreement, by the White House and corporate lobbyists, with extravagant claims about the benefits to be reaped by increased trade and, conversely, the dire consequences that will befall the United States' economy, competitiveness, and international stature if they fail to expeditiously approve it.

The fast-track authority also enables the president, with the cooperation of Congress, to circumvent the Constitution's treaty-making power. Advocates of fast-track authority want free-trade agreements to be negotiated by the president as though he were exercising his valid executive power "to make treaties." However, our Constitution requires that treaties be approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate, not by a simple majority of House and Senate members who have been bound and gagged by TPA rules.

Because of the nature of the "fast track" process, it is not surprising that it has produced a series of trade pacts that have been (despite administration claims to the contrary) damaging to our economy and national independence. But a growing number of Americans is coming to realize the danger, and the president will not have an easy time getting TPA extended, if he's able to get it extended at all.

Among those opposing TPA is the pro-American industry organization American Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC), whose executive director, Auggie Tantillo, observed in a January 31 press release, "TPA is the blank check Congress gives to the Executive Branch to offshore entire U.S. industries." Recognizing that Congress as well as the president is part of the problem, Tantillo added: "TPA is Congress' way of passing the buck to avoid accountability. By stifling meaningful debate and all amendments, TPA perverts the legislative process by effectively preventing negatively affected industries and interests from airing their concerns in Congress. Such an outcome only serves to promote the special interests who write the biggest campaign checks at the expense of the will of the majority of the American people."

On the whole, Bush's fellow Republicans in Congress have gone along with him. On the other hand, with a Republican president in the White House, the Democrats have been very resistant to the president's trade policies. When the House passed CAFTA in 2005, for instance, only 15 Democrats voted "yea." (By contrast, 102 House Democrats voted for NAFTA in 1993 when Bill Clinton was president.)

But Democratic congressional opposition to the president's trade policies could erode if the pacts submitted to Congress are expanded to include labor standards set by the UN's International Labor Organization as well as environmental standards. On March 27, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), that panel's trade subcommittee chairman, unveiled a proposal to modify pending trade pacts along those lines. Their proposal has the support of the Democratic leadership. "Labor groups also praised the document," according to Congressional Quarterly, "but expressed skepticism that the administration would accept the Democrats' position."

By linking the extension of trade pacts to labor issues, organized labor is actually hoping to have it both ways. Many labor-union officials would like to empower a supra-national labor tribunal (or panel) to strike down state "right to work" laws in states that ban collective bargaining of unions. However, they do not want other international tribunals decreeing that state laws which favor sourcing work to union shops are a restriction of "free trade." Once again, it's a question of who makes the rules.

Expanding the trade pacts beyond trade to include labor and environmental standards would actually make these pacts worse, not better, from the point of view of any American who, regardless of his position about free trade or protectionism, wants the United States to be able to set its own policies and write its own laws without being further hamstrung by international regulations or tribunals. However, the expansion of the so-called free-trade pacts beyond trade fits nicely with the goal of the political elites to transfer more economic and political power to regional and global arrangements, including a proposed North American Union modeled after the EU.

To move his trade agenda forward, President Bush needs TPA extended. Whether or not a majority of congressmen vote for that extension, and also vote for pending and future "free trade" agreements with or without labor and environmental standards, will ultimately be shaped not only by pressure from the White House and the special interests, but also by the opposing pressure from informed constituents who've had a belly full of destructive trade agreements.