Sometimes, it's hard to connect the dots between things that happened twenty years ago--because we don't teach real history in schools and Crazy Birds is more popular than reading a book. So, people who are correctly suspicious/opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership don't necessarily get the connection to the phrase "fast track" and don't remember NAFTA which passed, thanks to Bill Clinton, back in 1993 (it came into force January 1994). So, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch lends a hand today with a really great piece of analysis.
It's called Prosperity Undermine: Fast Tracked Trade Agreements’ 20 Year Record of Massive U.S. Trade Deficits, American Job Loss and Wage Suppression. What I think is worth doing is citing the key points in the 52-page report and, by all means, read it all.
So, let's build this "house" slowly. What the hell is "fast track"?
Fast Track was a U.S. procedure established in the 1970s for the negotiation and congressional approval of trade agreements. It delegated to the executive branch various congressional constitutional authorities, including Congress’ exclusive constitutional authority to “regulate Commerce with foreign nations.” In particular, Fast Track allowed the executive branch to select countries for, set the substance of, and then negotiate and sign trade agreements–all before Congress had a vote on the matter. Under Fast Track, the executive branch was empowered to write lengthy implementing legislation for each pact with normal congressional committee processes, such as legislative amendments in committee mark ups, circumvented. These executive-authored bills altered wide swaths of U.S. federal law to conform domestic policy to each agreement’s requirements. And, once passed, the trade agreements and implementing bills become federal law, and thus pre-empt state law.
Moreover, Fast Track was unique in that it also delegated to the executive branch control of the schedules of the House and Senate with respect to consideration of trade agreements. Fast Track empowered the executive branch to force a congressional vote on such implementing legislation and the related agreement within a set amount of time, regardless of the views of congressional leaders. Sixty legislative days after the president submitted to Congress whatever agreement he signed and whatever legislation he wrote, the House of Representatives was required to vote on the package. A Senate floor vote was required no more than 30 days later. Under Fast Track, normal congressional
floor procedures also were waived when Congress voted on the final pacts and implementing legislation. All amendments were forbidden and congressional debate
was limited to 20 hours. Agreements were passed by simple majority votes, even in the Senate.
The above can be simply distilled to:
fast track took away your democratic power as citizens because the people you vote for to represent you in Congress have essentially no say in shaping these trade deals that effect every aspect of the economic and environmental fabric of life.
And then:
Fast Track enabled the negotiation and expedited passage of 16 agreements, including the 1994 NAFTA, the 1995 WTO [World Trade Organizations], and various expansions of the NAFTA model (including the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) passed in 2005 by a one vote margin). The last grant of Fast Track expired in June 2007, but Fast Track’s extraordinary procedures nonetheless applied to the agreements signed with Korea, Colombia and Panama under the previous authority and passed in 2011[WTO bracketed explanation added]
And what did we get as a result? I'm just highlighting here most of the headings in the report, each of which provides details and makes the case, individually and as a group, that these putrid trade deals--the babies of Republican and Democratic presidents--play a key, if not original, role:
1. Prior to the establishment of Fast Track and the trade agreements it enabled, the United
States had balanced trade; since then, the U.S. trade deficit has exploded.
2. Food imports into the United States are soaring, destabilizing family farmers and posing
unchecked safety risks.
3. Six million American manufacturing jobs–1 out of 3–have been lost during the Fast Track era.
4. Offshoring of American jobs is moving rapidly up the income and skills ladder.
5. Devastation of American manufacturing is eroding the tax base that supports U.S. schools, hospitals and the construction of such facilities, highways and other essential infrastructure.
6. WTO, NAFTA and NAFTA-expansion agreements ban Buy American and forbid federal and many state governments from requiring that U.S. workers perform the jobs created by the outsourcing of government work.
7. U.S. wages barely increased in real terms since 1974, the year before Fast Track was first enacted, even as American worker productivity doubled.
8. Trade agreement investor privileges promote offshoring of production from the United States to low-wage nations.
9. Manufacturing workers displaced by trade have taken significant pay cuts.
10. Trade policy holds back wages even of jobs that can’t be offshored.
11. The bargaining power of American workers has been eroded by threats of offshoring.
12. Even accounting for Americans’ access to cheaper imported goods, the current trade model’s downward pressure on wages outweighs those gains, making most Americans net losers.
13. Powerful sectors obtained protection in NAFTA and WTO-style pacts, raising consumer
prices.
14. The inequality between rich and poor in America has jumped to levels not seen since the robber baron era.
15. Longstanding economic theory states that trade will increase income inequality in developed countries.
16. Official government data show that big businesses have crowded out U.S. small and medium enterprises (SMEs) under NAFTA.
17. Under the Korea FTA, U.S. small businesses have seen their exports to Korea
decline even more sharply than large firms.
18. U.S. small and medium businesses are not helped by NAFTA-style deals.
Despite all this:
Yet, in the face of the relentless evidence that our past trade agreement model is not working, President Barack Obama’s administration has doubled down on the old model with the TPP. The 2011 Korea FTA was based on an expansion of the NAFTA text and the Korea pact literally served as the U.S. opening offer for the TPP negotiations.[emphasis added]
And so all this talk and hand-wringing about inequality, raising the minimum wage (a paltry, pathetic proposed hike to $10.10-an-hour) and education is pointless when the president, and his enablers in the Democratic Party and among "liberals", continues to push a trade agenda that undercuts, by a big margin, everything else.