|
DUMP FREE TRADE
State Legislatures Strike Back Against Trade Deals
By Mark Anderson
United States trade policies and the resulting steep job and revenue losses, and the erosion of national sovereignty, are wreaking so much havoc around the country that state officials are more motivated than ever to put their protests in writing.
The Indiana state Senate on Feb. 22 voted 25-24 in favor of Senate Concurrent Resolution 16, calling on the U.S. Congress to declare a general moratorium on all trade deals.
This close full-Senate vote followed a 9-0 vote by the Senate Committee on Commerce and Transportation to send SCR 16 to the entire Indiana Senate. The resolution is pending before the 100-member state House. Meanwhile, similar resolutions have been taken up by the Utah and New Jersey state legislatures.
Indiana’s resolution is more general in its rebuttal of U.S. trade policies, while Utah’s and New Jersey’s are more specific. Only Utah’s has passed both legislative chambers. In Indiana, the text of SCR 16 states in its opening paragraph:
“A concurrent resolution urging the Congress of the United States to place a moratorium on new free trade agreements, to review current free trade agreements and policies of the United States, to investigate and review participation of the United States with international trade organizations, and to ensure that the agreements, policies and participation are in the best interests of the citizens of Indiana and the United States.”
So Indiana’s wording, like that of Utah, suggests these protests are not necessarily ironclad—there is room left for “review” to “ensure” such trade agreements are in the “best interests” of the citizenry.
Still, SCR 16, which is relatively brief, drives home the point that Indiana lost “approximately 102,000 manufacturing jobs” between January 2000 and January 2004, and that “manufacturing results in three to seven jobs created for each manufacturing job.”
The resolution adds that “. . . free trade agreements and policies of the United States with other nations have severely affected United States manufacturing industries and the workers the industries employ.”
SCR 16, in an apparent reference to the World Trade Organization that the United States government helped create and joined in 1994, notes that “ . . . participation by the United States in international trade organizations may imperil the success of United States manufacturing.”
SCR 16 also states “ . . . foreign nations such as China have engaged in a wide range of unfair trading practices, including the manipulation of currency, subsidization of industries and the dumping of below-cost subsidized products into the United States market.”
Indiana’s resolution summarizes that “. . . U.S. manufacturers cannot compete with foreign companies who pay a fraction of the salaries paid to U.S. manufacturing employees, provide no health benefits to their workers, do not have to comply with safety and environmental regulations, pay no pensions and receive government subsidies. . . .”
Indiana state Sen. Timothy Lanane, a Democrat from Anderson, played a key role in authoring SCR 16. In a press release from his office, Lanane said that testimony he heard in committee meetings indicated that current trade policies also allow foreign interests to “violate U.S. patent protections”.
Sen. Allie Craycraft (D-Selma) co-authored SCR 16, which is to be sent to President Bush and congressional leaders.
UTAH AGAINST FTAA
Both chambers of the Utah legislature passed a resolution that more specifically calls on the U.S. government to say “no” to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, which would expand the highly controversial 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement—now covering
Canada, the U.S. and Mexico—throughout the Western Hemisphere.
S.R. 1 initially was OK’d on Jan. 25 by Utah’s Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee. Passed 21-7 by the full state Senate on Feb. 7, the resolution “urges the United States Congress to oppose any agreement for the United States to enter into a Free Trade Area of the Americas.”
On Feb. 18, the Utah House passed H.R. 9, a similar resolution,
by a 61-8 vote.
There may be equivocation in the Senate version. It states that the Utah Senate “urges that the United States not enter into the FTAA until the nation has had more experience and greater understanding of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization.”
S.R. 1 also:
• Refers to the U.S. as a “world leader in pushing for free trade, which is a hallmark of our capitalistic society. . .”
• Says “free trade only thrives when there is a level playing field of government regulations between trading partners
. . .”
• Says manufacturing jobs “have plunged from 19.3 million in 1980 to only about 14.6 million today, in large part because of these types of trade issues . . .”
• “. . . The United States consistently bows to the wishes of the WTO, only proving the words of Texas Rep. Ron Paul to be prophetic: ‘The most important reason why we should get [out of the WTO] is to maintain our nation’s sovereignty. We should never deliver to any international governing body the authority to dictate what our laws should be.’”
• “. . . Both the WTO and NAFTA, through the use of trade tribunals, now claim the sovereign authority to overrule decisions of American courts and make awards to foreign businesses for violations of trade agreements.”
In New Jersey, an anti-FTAA measure, A.C.R. 210, reportedly was introduced in the state Assembly in October of 2004 with a couple of co-sponsors. It passed the Assembly’s Labor Committee and reportedly is awaiting action by the speaker of the Assembly to schedule it for a floor vote.
The Business Roundtable, an elite lobbying group for transnational interests, recently released a white paper calling 2005 the most important year since 1963 for passing more trade deals.
The Roundtable is a staunch supporter of NAFTA, the 1994 GATT-WTO agreement and is fighting hard for passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the FTAA this year.
Amid claims by the Roundtable that established and proposed trade deals promise “open markets” for U.S. exports and more “economic growth,” the state of Indiana and its neighbor, Michigan, have been among the hardest hit in terms of job losses. Indeed, much of the nation is reeling from massive industrial and high-tech job losses.
Opponents of these transnational trade deals insist that NAFTA, GATT-WTO, CAFTA and FTAA proposals not only ensure that America’s best jobs and its tax base will be among the nation’s top exports, but also that national borders would be diluted or erased under the FTAA, which would economically and politically merge the Western Hemisphere into a European Union-style super state with a resulting unregulated migration of people from one nation to another in this “age of terrorism,” creating a very perilous situation.
|
|
