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Congress Considers New Trade Legislation

© Bryan Johnson

It is unusual in an election year for politicians to support free trade initiatives. But that is precisely what is happing in Washington. Congressional leaders agreed this week to have a vote giving President Clinton the controversial "fast track" negotiating authority he requested from Congress last year. The so-called "fast track" legislation allows the President to negotiate trade agreements and submit them to Congress for up or down votes without amendment.

Proponents of the legislation argue that such an Executive Branch power is needed because the intracacies of negotiating such deals require the U.S. to forward an agreement with its trading partners in a way that prevents Congress from changing the contents of the deal during debate. Without such power, U.S. trading partners would not negotiate an agreement that they know will be changed in Congress.

Indeed, such authority has been used in the past to negotiate the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as well as the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

A similar move to pass fast track legislation was initiated by the White House in 1997, but the measure was pulled at the last minute because Democratic opposition to the bill threatened to kill it. To avoid the embarassment of losing a vote because of opposition in the President's own party, Clinton requested Congress to withdraw the legislation altogether.

Now, however, the political dynamics of the debate have changed. With the continuation of the Asian financial crisis, its expansion into U.S. export markets like Russia, and the possibility of the eventual expansion of the financial crisis into Latin America, the U.S. agricultural industry is putting its muscle in getting fast track passed as soon as possible.

Faced with the threat of lagging U.S. agricultural exports, American farmers want to expand trade to other regions of the world to make up for their lost exports to East Asia and to Russia (which equal as much as $5 billion less than last year). Thus, while the U.S. agricultural lobby did not actively oppose the legislation last year, they are more aggressively supporting it this year.

But opponents of the bill see politics at work. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) said, "What the Republicans are doing is dangerous politics and bad policy. Worried about their internal conflicts and their alienation of the business community as a result of their failure to act on IMF refunding, Republicans are trying to change the subject and cover their flank by bringing up fast track."

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