Jensen
Conservatives are usually the most strident defenders of the doctrine of
original intent, the idea that we should follow the will of the Founding Fathers
in interpreting the U.S. Constitution.
In a
strange twist on that idea, Republicans are warning us that the Constitution has
“tied the hands” of the president in trade negotiations.
The
problem, it seems, is that the Constitution states in Article I, Section 8 that:
“The Congress shall have Power … to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” The
original intent seems pretty clear: Congress should regulate international
commerce.
The
“problem” is that Congress is sometimes more prone to public pressure (also
known as democracy) than the executive branch. That is, citizens who organize to
pursue their interests have more chances at influence in the House and Senate
than they do when the whole show is run out of the White House. As a result,
congressional participation in regulating commerce with foreign nations has at
times made it more difficult for corporations to ram through the kinds of trade
deals that help them line their pockets at the expense of those citizens.
The
solution to this occasional excess of democracy? For the Bush administration and
Republicans in the House, the answer is fast-track legislation.
Well,
it used to be called fast-track, until the Bush spinmeisters realized that the
term makes it sounds as if the rich and powerful might be trying to pull a fast
one on U.S. citizens, which of course they are. So, the concept has been renamed
“trade promotion authority,” and congressional Republicans are gearing up to
push the legislation through before they head off for vacation in August.
Fast-track authority made it easier for the first Bush administration to
negotiate, and the Clinton administration to pass, the disastrous North American
Free Trade Agreement. But fast-track authority expired in 1994, and the most
recent attempt to bring it back, in 1998, was defeated in the House by a 243-180
vote. But now fast-track is back, and the Republicans are talking about a
bipartisan coalition to push it through.
Under
fast-track, members of Congress would be abandoning their duty instead of taking
their rightful role in regulating international commerce. The proposed law
allows the president to bring trade agreements he negotiates before Congress for
an up-or-down vote, without amendments and with limited debate.
In
other words, fast-track severely limits the ability of the representatives
elected by the citizens of the United States to influence trade policy. Given
that trade policy is becoming as important, if not more important, than military
muscle in shaping the world, fast-track is not only an attack on democracy but
on democracy in the arena we most desperately need it.
If
reinstated, fast track will certainly make it easier for the Bush administration
to ram through a version of the Free Trade Area of the Americas — a hemispheric
NAFTA — that will increase the power of corporations and marginalize the
interests of labor organizers, human-rights activists and environmentalists.
From
the point of view of Bush administration officials, congressional Republicans
and other defenders of the right of corporations to run the world, that’s
precisely the reason HR 2149, the “Trade Promotion Authority Act of 2001”
introduced by Rep. Phil Crane, R-Ill., is needed. (Read the bill at
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.02149🙂
During the debate over this, expect to hear the usual distortions from Bush.
Already he has said that fast-track is necessary so that he can avoid a trade
agreement that has “codicils on it that frighten people from trading with us.”
Bush
knows full well, of course, that “people” aren’t frightened by agreements that
protect workers’ rights, human rights and the environment. Corporations are
frightened by such protections, which limit their ability to rake in massive
profits off the vulnerable economies and peoples of the developing world.
Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of
Texas at Austin. He can be reached at [email protected]. Other
writings are available online at
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/
~rjensen/freelance/freelance.htm.
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