Fast Track is Back

There's an old adage that trade negotiators think their work is like riding a bicycle: Either they keep pedaling forward or the bicycle -- the new global economy -- falls down. But after a decade marked by major steps in global economic "liberalization" -- more accurately described as "deregulation" or "corporate regulation" -- it is time to stop for a minute and ask which way this bicycle is headed and whether we want to go there.

The next big domestic political battle on globalization may come as early as this summer over a proposal to grant President Bush special "trade promotion authority" -- better known as "fast track" -- that would push trade deals through Congress with minimal debate. It will pit the fast-pedalers against a wide range of groups, especially the labor and environmental movements, who advocate what Economic Policy Institute President Jeff Faux calls a "strategic pause" in the current course of globalization.

Congress failed to renew fast track authority for President Clinton in 1997 and 1998. First it was withdrawn without a vote, then it was defeated. The vote united the majority of Democrats and a small bloc of Republicans, many of them conservative nationalists. Now, in a much different political climate, with a narrowly divided Congress and a Republican president, conservative Illinois Republican Rep. Phil Crane has introduced legislation for new fast track authority. Bush has staked his personal reputation on fast track, promising foreign leaders -- such as those at the Quebec Summit of the Americas -- that he would get it and claiming that the United States would be crippled in negotiating major deals, such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) or a new round of World Trade Organization agreements, without it.

Fast track proponents argue that the president needs such authority to conclude big trade deals. Otherwise factions within Congress will pick apart agreements that have been carefully crafted with a variety of trade-offs, and foreign government negotiators will not have confidence that U.S. negotiators can deliver on their promises. Of course, the first question should be what new global trade agreements, if any, are needed now? Setting that crucial issue aside, it is clear that fast track isn't necessary, even if it is convenient for negotiators to restrict democratic review of their handiwork. Presidents have only invoked fast track authority five times over a period in which hundreds of trade deals have been negotiated. Indeed, just before leaving office, Clinton trade representative Charlene Barshefsky admitted that fast track authority wasn't really necessary.

Critics repeatedly have argued that fast track is inherently undemocratic and that agreements like NAFTA and the WTO should be handled like treaties. Moreover, progressives insist that any legislated trade authority should require negotiators to include protections for labor rights and the environment, and that those protections should be enforced in the same manner as protections for intellectual property or other commercial goals -- including the option of trade sanctions.

The Crane legislation, however, specifically prohibits trade negotiators from including such enforceable labor and environmental provisions in the core of future trade agreements. This free market fundamentalism is out of touch with changing popular sentiment. Earlier this year, even major corporations in the Business Roundtable acknowledged that they could support some provisions for labor and environment in new fast track legislation. The hard line taken by Crane has, for the moment, stiffened Democratic opposition to trade promotion authority. Some influential Democrats with a history of voting as "free traders," such as Montana Sen. Max Baucus and California Rep. Robert Matsui, a leading proponent of fast track and NAFTA, have insisted the new legislation include strong labor and environmental protections.