[NYTr] Bush Has Little Support for NAFTA Expansion to Peru

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Public Citizen - Sep 25, 2007
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2515


House Committee Vote Masks Lack of Democratic Rank-and-File Support 
for Bush NAFTA Expansion to Peru

House Ways and Means Committee Shuts Out Public, Refuses to Hear 
Discontent Over More-Of-The-Same NAFTA Trade Policy

WASHINGTON,   D.C. – Today’s House Ways and Means Committee non-binding
vote on the Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA) will be the high-water mark
of Democratic support for Bush’s proposed expansion of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Public Citizen predicted today.

The Bush-negotiated Peru NAFTA expansion, which became bogged down in
the past Congress, was revived by a deal between Ways and Means
Committee leaders and the administration. That deal and the modified
agreement have been the focus of considerable opposition by many
Democrats who are not on the trade committee.

“This deal is bad policy because it extends many of the most damaging
provisions of NAFTA and CAFTA, but what’s incomprehensible are the
politics of a Democratic Congress passing another Bush NAFTA expansion
by a majority of Republicans and a small minority of Democrats,” said
Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division.
“This is especially incomprehensible after many of the freshmen
Democrats – who tipped the balance of power in Congress – were elected
by focusing on ending more-of-the-same trade policies.”

Not one key Democratic base group supports the expansion of NAFTA to
Peru. Dozens of unions and environmental, consumer, Latino civil
rights, faith, development and family farm groups have called on
Congress to oppose the deal, which also is opposed by Peru’s two labor
federations.

When some Democratic trade leaders announced in January 2007 that they
would engage the Bush administration to obtain changes to
Bush-negotiated NAFTA expansions to Peru, Panama, Colombia and South
Korea, unions and civil society groups listed minimal changes necessary
to avoid their opposition. Among the critical items that needed to be
removed or altered:

 * Foreign investor privileges identical to those found in NAFTA and
CAFTA that create incentives for U.S. firms to move offshore and expose
basic environmental, health, zoning and other laws to attack in foreign
tribunals; 

* Bans on “Buy America” and anti-offshoring policies; 

* Threats to renewable energy, recycled content and prevailing wage
procurement laws; 

* Limits on food import safety standards and inspection rates;

* Agriculture rules identical to those found in NAFTA and CAFTA
that are projected to increase coca production and create rural unrest
in trade partners. Under NAFTA, these rules led to displacement of 1.3
million Mexican peasant farmers and a 60 percent increase in
immigration from Mexico to the U.S.;

* Patent extensions that would provide large pharmaceutical companies
new protections that limit poor countries’ access to affordable
medicines; and 

* Peru FTA terms that could subject that country to compensation claims
for reversing its Social Security privatization.

The groups also listed as necessary the addition of enforceable labor
and environmental standards. On May 10, some Democratic leadership
members and the White House agreed to add improved environmental and
labor standards to the trade agreements, but they failed to address
many terms that directly contradict Democrats’ domestic agenda on food
safety, job-offshoring, environmental protection and more.

Further angering many rank-and-file Democrats and advocacy groups was
the House Ways and Means Committee’s decision to skip a hearing on the
Peru FTA.

“It is outrageous that there has not been a hearing on this deal since
2006, especially given a midterm election in which the American public
went to the polls in droves and voted for candidates who explicitly ran
against incumbents’ votes on past NAFTA-style deals and thereby
delivered the Democratic majority,” said Wallach. “The politics of this
vote eerily echo the 1993 NAFTA vote when a Democratic-controlled
Congress passed another Bush’s NAFTA deal and promptly lost its
majority.”

The focus on the need for a different trade policy by Democratic
candidates in the midterm election and the political success of this
approach, when 37 fair trade congressional candidates replaced
supporters of the failed NAFTA trade model, corrected the political
dislocation wrought in 1993 by President Bill Clinton’s pushing of
NAFTA that then contributed to the historic Democratic losses in 1994.
Democratic support for NAFTA was identified as a key factor in the
erosion of Democratic support by working-class households in the 1994
midterm elections.

“We have to fix our trade policy. We have to have a policy that
benefits American workers and workers around the world. Voters this
past November sent us a clear message to say ‘no’ to the failed Bush
free trade policies,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who, along
with nearly all the Democratic freshmen class made fair trade a
centerpiece of his campaign.

[For more information about the pending Peru and Panama free trade
agreements, visit http://www.tradewatch.org ]