Failed Trade Policy

Floor Speech

FAILED TRADE POLICY -- (House of Representatives - March 26, 2007)

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Mr. ELLISON. Thank you. I thank you for your leadership on this issue of fair trade. I think that the time is right, the time is now to begin talking about fair trade. I want to commend all of the Members here tonight talking about this critical issue.

This election sent a strong message: no staying the course on Bush's failed trade policy. So now what do we hear, that the Bush administration wants to send to Congress NAFTA expansion agreements with Peru and Colombia. Consider the problems that Democrats have endlessly raised in writing, in hearings, on the floor, think about these problems and the administration's trade agreement model, how we have continually demonstrated that the Bush trade model is killing American jobs and is an enemy of the middle class.

Then consider what the administration chose to put in the deals anyway. Democrats are for consumers' right to affordable medicine. The 2002 trade negotiation authority instructed the Bush administration not to lard up and pack up these trade deals with new protections for big pharmaceuticals that could cut poor consumers off from access to medications and cause endless deaths in poor countries. But the administration inserted this poison pill into the FTAs. The TRIPS-plus requirement needs to come out.

Democrats are against privatization of Social Security. We believe the elderly in whatever nation they are in should have safeguards for their security as they age. Yet the Peru free trade agreement requires Peru to open its social security system for privatization. That has to come out.

Democrats believe that foreign businesses operating on U.S. soil shouldn't have greater rights than U.S. businesses. And we believe that our environmental and health safeguards cannot be exposed to attack in international tribunals. But the administration included the extreme foreign investor rights and investor state enforcement of NAFTA's Chapter 11. That needs to come out as well.

Democrats believe in the right of Congress and the President to protect this Nation's security. We have made it clear that the trade pacts cannot subject our decisions about who should operate U.S. ports to attacks in international tribunals or demands for compensation. Yet although the Dubai Ports World operates Peru's ports and thus would have the right to such a claim, you included the ``landslide port activities'' in the Peru and Colombian agreements. That has to come out.

Democrats believe in reducing poverty in the developing world. We believe in providing farmers in the Andean nations opportunities to earn a living without resorting to illegal drugs that will end up on our streets here in the United States. But despite the warnings from Peruvian and Colombian Governments and the record of NAFTA displacing 1.7 million compesinos, the President has insisted on zeroing out corn, rice and bean tariffs in those things. That has to come out.

Democrats believe consumers have a right to safe food. But the administration included provisions allowing food imports that don't meet our standards. That needs to come out.

Democrats believe that when governments spend tax dollars, they must do so in the best interest of the taxpayers. But the administration included language in these FTA procurement texts that could expose Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws, renewable energy standards and more to challenge. That must come out.

It would only require striking a sentence here or a word there to remove the FTA terms that directly conflict with these core Democratic Party values and goals.

And then there is what is missing, the enforceable labor and environmental standards in the core of the text of the agreement equal to the commercial provisions.

Regarding the Colombia FTA, there is no fix to that and there is nothing that can make this agreement acceptable in my view. It is highly offensive that the Bush administration would exploit the enormous discretion fast track provides even to initiate negotiations with a country infamous and, unfortunately, famous for having the highest rate of trade union assassinations. More than 2,000 labor activists have been murdered in Colombia since 1990. Sixty were assassinated in 2006 alone; one per week. The Colombian Army is implicated in many of these murders, but few have been prosecuted. Until the Colombian Government changes its situation, the United States should not offer any enhanced trade relations to Colombia.

Mr. Michaud, thank you for your excellent work and leadership. The American people deserve fair trade agreements. The American Congress must take back its constitutional authority to make sure that any agreement that the United States engages in is an agreement that is in the best interest of the American working people.

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