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Stop Fast Track American Lands Alliance * Center for International Environmental Law Defenders of Wildlife * Earthjustice * Friends of the Earth Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy * National Environmental Trust National Wildlife Federation * Natural Resources Defense Council * Pacific Environment * Sierra Club June 27, 2001 Dear Representative: On behalf of our organizations' millions of members and supporters, we urge you to oppose H.R. 2149, the "Trade Promotion Authority Act of 2001" introduced recently by Congressman Philip Crane (R-IL). This fast track bill ignores environmental concerns and is simply not adequate to address the increasingly complex trade issues facing the United States today. We urge you to reject this bill, and any fast track legislation that allows the negotiation of trade deals that would undermine protection of the United States' environment. We believe Congress should provide strong leadership to ensure that trade agreements properly balance environmental and commercial objectives. The attached PRINCIPLES FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE TRADE identify many of the critical environmental issues that trade policy must take into account. We want to take this opportunity to highlight one of the most important of these issues for the fast track debate: foreign investor suit provisions. Trade agreements should not contain foreign investor suit provisions that can be used to undermine our ability to maintain strong environmental laws in the United States. NAFTA's Chapter 11 allows foreign corporations to challenge governmental laws and regulations -- including those protecting our natural resources, when such challenges would be rejected under U.S. law. In one case, for example, a Canadian corporation that manufactures the gasoline additive MTBE is seeking nearly $1 billion from the U.S. government. California decided to phase out MTBE, a chemical that, if ingested, could harm the liver, kidney, nervous system, and gastrointestinal system, after MTBE was discovered in California groundwater supplies. The Canadian corporation's suit claims that its profits were harmed by the phase out. The case is currently being considered, behind closed doors, by an international tribunal. Negotiations are now underway to expand NAFTA's foreign investor suit provisions to 34 nations of the Western Hemisphere through the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement. FTAA draft language would allow foreign private investors to sue governments over federal, state, and local regulations. Such suits would threaten existing environmental laws and regulations around the hemisphere, including those in the United States, and could potentially cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The threat of possible foreign investor lawsuits could also have a "chilling effect" on efforts to adopt new legislation needed to protect the public health and the environment. We urge you to oppose this bill and any fast track legislation that could open the door to trade deals that may undermine laws that safeguard our health and natural resources. Principles For Environmentally Responsible Trade Trade agreements should support, not undermine, environmental protection. To that end, the above-signed organizations believe that the following principles should inform all aspects of united states trade policy. I. Do Not Undermine Environmental Standards. Trade agreements should not be used to weaken national or international health and environmental standards. In particular, trade rules must: ensure that domestic environmental laws and regulations cannot be challenged by private investors before international tribunals; allow distinctions between products if they are produced, for example, in a way that harms endangered species, ecosystems, or the global commons; respect the right of governments to adopt precautionary standards to protect health and the environment; ensure deference to multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) when there are conflicts between trade rules and trade-related provisions of MEAs; and ensure the availability of strong and clear environmental exceptions to trade and investment rules for laws and regulations that protect health, the environment, and natural resources. II. Encourage Environmental Progress. In order to ensure sustainable development, trade agreements must encourage environmental progress and discourage harmful environmental impacts. In particular, trade policymakers should: ensure that market opening agreements are accompanied by strong environmental initiatives to evaluate and raise environmental performance in countries to protect natural resources that would be vulnerable to increased exploitation; provide for binding, enforceable measures in trade agreements to maintain and effectively enforce environmental laws and regulations and prohibit the lowering of environmental standards to attract investment or gain trade advantages; ensure that environmental provisions in trade agreements are subject to the same dispute resolution and enforcement mechanisms that apply to all other aspects of the agreements; provide a mechanism for citizens to seek review of failures to enforce health and environmental laws (e.g., see NAFTA); require that foreign direct investors disclose basic information on their environmental practices; develop a systematic program to improve environmental performance through capacity-building assistance, technology transfer, and corporate accountability; work to develop cooperative, multilateral solutions to trade and environment conflicts; and encourage the elimination of environmentally-harmful subsidies and economic incentives. III. Require Democratic Procedures. Trade agreements must be developed and implemented through open and fully democratic procedures. In particular: trade agreements under negotiation should be subject to comprehensive environmental reviews involving public participation throughout the process, the results of which should be taken into account in the final agreement; trade agreements should provide for meaningful public participation in a trade dispute, including review and comment on the written record, access to hearings, and submission of friend-of-the-court briefs. the public should have access to negotiations and the working texts of trade agreements, and have a permanent role in trade advisory committees and trade institutions; trade disputes and informal interventions should be initiated only after public notice and comment; and consistent with Congress' constitutional authority to regulate foreign commerce, Congress must provide new mechanisms to hold trade negotiators and policymakers accountable to implement the above trade and environment principles, including mandatory negotiating objectives. 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