Jan. 30, 2007<\/p>\n
Replace Fast Track So Congress Can Change the Direction of<\/b> U.S. Trade Policy to Benefit the Majority, Public Citizen Tells Lawmakers<\/b><\/p>\n
Outdated Nixon-Era Fast Track Must Be Retired<\/i><\/b> to Rebuild National Consensus on Trade<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Congress should replace presidential Fast Track trade authority with a modern trade negotiating system that better addresses widespread public concerns, Public Citizen said today as President Bush gave a trade policy speech in Illinois.<\/p>\n
In written testimony submitted to the House Committee on Ways and Means for today\u2019s hearing on trade and globalization, Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen\u2019s Global Trade Watch program, described how trade deals negotiated under Fast Track have led to the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, a ballooning trade deficit, declining living standards for American workers and increased income inequality worldwide. The 2006 midterm elections, with the net addition of 37 fair trade proponents to Congress, was a signal that voters want to change the failed, status-quo trade policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo rebuild a national consensus on trade, we need a new mechanism for negotiating trade agreements that puts a steering wheel \u2013 and when necessary, brakes \u2013 on our trade negotiators, so that Congress and the public are back in the driver\u2019s seat and can take a new course on trade that might harness trade\u2019s benefits for the majority,\u201d Wallach said in her testimony.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since Fast Track was first hatched in 1974 by then-President Richard Nixon to grab Congress\u2019 constitutional trade authority, many of the worst U.S. trade agreements \u2013 including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which established the World Trade Organization (WTO) \u2013 have been negotiated. Before Fast Track, the\u00a0United States had balanced trade and rising living standards, but since then, the U.S. trade deficit has exploded as imports have surged.<\/p>\n
\u201cFast Track, like eight-track tapes, belongs in a Smithsonian display of outdated technology,\u201d said Wallach. \u201cThis Congress can replace Fast Track with a new procedure that opens up the process, enhances Congress\u2019 role in trade policy-making and is adequate to meet the realities of today\u2019s expansive international commercial agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1973, the\u00a0United States had a trade surplus, as it had nearly every year since World War II. But in every year under Fast Track save one, the United States has run a trade deficit. In addition, the average American worker makes only a nickel more per hour in inflation-adjusted terms than in 1973, the year before Fast Track went into effect. Were it not for trade agreements that pit U.S. workers in a race-to-the-bottom with poverty-wage workers worldwide, U.S. workers\u2019 wages would better track productivity increases, and workers in developing countries could also fight to raise their wages.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ballooning trade deficit is directly correlated with manufacturing job loss, while haphazard trade liberalization accounts for much of the stagnation in wages and more than a third of the rise in income inequality in\u00a0America,\u201d said Wallach. \u201cNotably, Illinois \u2013 the site of President Bush\u2019s policy address today \u2013 has lost one in four manufacturing jobs during the NAFTA-WTO decade.\u201d<\/p>\n