By Andrew Christie, Chapter Director
If you still haven’t weighed in on Fast Track with your elected representatives yet, your last chance is here, and here’s why you should take it: If Fast Track dies, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the corporate “free trade” regime die with it. A new model of fair trade based on protection of the environment and respect for the rights of workers has long been poised to replace it. This could actually happen. But for that to happen, Fast Track must be defeated.
Starting April 13, President Obama and Senator McConnell -- BFFs on this one issue, happy to provide an example of how the President and Congress can finally work together to get things done -- will be putting on the full-court press to give the President the authority to unleash the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership on the world; signed, sealed and delivered with minimal fuss or oversight, their contents a secret, to be known only after the deal is done. (For reference, these two “free trade” agreements are to NAFTA as Godzilla is to an alligator.)
Bipartisanship is indeed breaking out in the capitol…but not quite the way the corporate free traders had hoped.
The Constitution says that Congress, not the President, sets trade policy. That’s why only the worst “free trade” deals, the biggest engines for ceding sovereign authority and offshoring jobs (see: NAFTA, giant sucking sound) have required Congress to occasionally shred that part of the Constitution and hand a President the free pass of Fast Track to get those deals done.
Fast Track authority means the President negotiates and signs the trade deal all by himself – which invariably alters fistfuls of domestic laws -- before Congress gets to vote on anything. Then he hands the deal to Congress, which must bring it to a vote within 90 days, with limited debate and no amendments whatsoever. Done deal.
Hence, in 2013, 27 House Republicans sent a letter to the President saying “we do not agree to cede our constitutional authority to the executive through an approval of a request for ‘Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority.’” Right after that, 151 Democratic House members sent their own letter to the President, saying they were “deeply troubled by the continued lack of adequate congressional consultation in many areas of the proposed pact that deeply implicates Congress’ constitutional and domestic policy authorities.”
They concluded: “we will oppose ‘Fast Track’ Trade Promotion Authority or any other mechanism delegating Congress’ constitutional authority over trade policy that continues to exclude us from having a meaningful role in the formative stages of trade agreements and throughout negotiating and approval processes.”
Mitch McConnell and every transnational corporation on Earth want to help the President get that authority, because it’s the only way the Trans Pacific Partnership can happen.
Of all the things in the TPP that Fast Track would make possible, the line in the sand that should produce a loud NO vote across the partisan spectrum is this: Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), a provision that allows a corporation to sue the government – federal, state or local -- if it decides an American law is impeding its ability to make a profit. So even those representatives who would be delighted to see the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act challenged by a private corporate trade tribunal should pause to think about what it means to cede that kind of authority: a foreign corporation can sue the United States to overturn any of our laws it doesn’t like or demand hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in compensation for our impertinence in forcing it to obey those laws.
In pushing back against critics, the U.S. Trade Representative has tried to deny this, saying the Investor State provision “does not threaten domestic sovereignty” because “states fully retain their sovereignty, regardless of ISDS, including to impose any measure they wish (whether to protect labor rights, the environment, or other public welfare objectives).” Public Citizen promptly shot back: “Countries can impose any policy they wish, but thanks to ISDS, a government may have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to a foreign investor that objects to such policies. Germany now faces a claim from a Swedish energy firm, reported to exceed $4 billion, against Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.” That’s called a “chilling effect.”
Fast Track is for all the marbles. And stopping it is do-able. Many public interest organizations have made it easy for you to get a message to your representatives expressing your concern over this threat to democracy and a livable world and urging them vote accordingly on Fast Track. You can do so here.