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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Midsummer Night's Massacre |
Current rating: 0 |
by Lori Wallach
(No verified email address) |
30 Jul 2002
Modified: 31 Jul 2002 |
Controversial 304-page "Trade" Bill Few Have Read is Rammed Through Congress at 3:30AM by Razor Thin Margin
Statement by Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch |
WASHINGTON - July 27 - This travesty of a vote will be remembered as the Midsummer Night's Massacre, where growing popular concern about corporate-led globalization was shot down in favor of a backwards policy combining corporate managed trade and global deregulation of basic consumer, environmental and other public interest standards.
Over the past decade, public opposition to NAFTA-style trade deals has grown so strong that now the only way to move this policy is to ram through at 3:00 a.m. in the dark of night 304 pages of legislation combining five different trade bills which was unavailable for public or congressional review until hours before the vote.
This Fast Track bill is supposed to set the next five years of U.S. trade and globalization policy. If U.S. negotiators follow the outrageous agenda in this bill, including a 31-nation NAFTA expansion and global deregulation of food safety, accounting, energy and other standards, the resulting agreements would be dead on arrival in Congress and in the court of public opinion.
A tidal wave of hypocrisy ripped through Washington's wee hours. It has been a tawdry spectacle to watch the GOP House leadership and President Bush ramming through a "trade" bill which has as its main agenda promoting massive global corporate deregulation just hours after crowing about passage of new regulations aimed at the corporate crime wave caused by the very sort of deregulation this bill promotes globally.
The trade package included authorization to negotiate a 31-nation Free Trade Area of the Americas NAFTA expansion, new limits on enforcement of labor or environmental standards in trade agreements, a modest Trade Adjustment Assistance program, and an expansion to more nations of the investor-to-state lawsuits of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which allows foreign corporations to challenge domestic regulatory standards before trade tribunals if they limit future expected profits. |
See also:
http://www.citizen.org/trade/
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Sierra Club Expresses Disappointment as House Approves Fast Track |
by Sierra Club
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
31 Jul 2002
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Sierra Club Expresses Disappointment as House Approves Fast Track, Threatening Environmental Protections
WASHINGTON - July 29 - The Sierra Club expressed strong disappointment today after the House of Representatives narrowly approved dangerous trade legislation. By a razor-thin margin of 215-212, and only after a rare lobbying visit to Capitol Hill by President Bush, the House passed the fast track bill, which will prevent Congress from fixing future trade deals, even when they threaten the environment.
"Now more than ever, Americans want Congress to hold corporations accountable, not give them more breaks," said Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. "The House's capitulation to powerful business interests could jeopardize many of the environmental protections Americans take for granted."
Fast track will allow the Bush administration to extend NAFTA across the western hemisphere. Provisions in NAFTA allow foreign corporations to sue the U.S. government whenever they feel that our environmental protections affect their profits. Already, a Canadian chemical company has used NAFTA to sue the US government for $1 billion, jeopardizing a vital California clean water law. Extending NAFTA would greatly increse the number of these claims, and threaten crucial environmental and public health laws.
"Here in California, we fought hard to keep our drinking water safe from dangerous toxic chemicals. But that progress could be undone by NAFTA's corporate-friendly provisions," continued Pope. "Now thanks to the House vote, many more environmental protections across the country could soon be under attack."
Rejecting fast track would not have limited our ability to enter international trade agreements. It simply would have allowed Congress to weigh in on those agreements, to prevent them from running roughshod over the environment. That safeguard no longer exists.
"We can have a trade policy that is clean, green, and fair, but not by handcuffing our elected representatives," added Pope. "The Bush administration now must take care not to put international trade on a collision course with the need to protect our environment."
http://www.SierraClub.org |
