Friday, January 09, 2015YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-13 Ohio, says that awarding President Obama the power to push international trade deals through Congress with little or no debate would encourage a trade policy that drains American jobs and damages the country's middle class.
"These issues of trade have decimated the middle class in the United States of America," Ryan said Thursday.
The congressman is part of a coalition of Democratic lawmakers, labor, environmental organizations and consumer advocacy groups that held a press event in Washington yesterday in opposition to give the president Trade Promotion Authority – better known as "fast track."
Fast-track authority is a measure first passed by Congress in 1974 that grants the executive branch the power to negotiate international trade agreements without the House or Senate offering amendments or instituting a filibuster. The premise is to guide a trade agreement through the congressional approval process as quickly as possible.
The Obama Administration is seeking to renew fast-track authority as it negotiates the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a 12-nation pact that opponents say, were it to pass, threatens American jobs and poses risks to food safety.
The administration is also working on a new trade proposal with the 28-nation European Union.
"To push a trade agreement into the House of Representatives and not ask our opinion -- we're the ones that see the imbalance of labor standards," Ryan said, noting his constituents who have lost their jobs because of plant shutdowns he says resulted from unfair trade. "We're the ones seeing the negative effects,” the congressman said, “so we should be considered."
Ryan, a vocal advocate of trade reform, said that earlier trade agreements approved through fast track have had a disastrous effect on the entire economy.
"These trade agreements have a ripple effect through our communities," he said. "The teachers feel it because there's no tax base to pay teachers more, the local government folks who do economic development, who do job and family services, who do job re-training -- they're not having the budgets they had because these trade deals have decimated local government funds."
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3 Conn., who is leading the charge against fast track, called those opposed one of the "broadest coalitions" ever established since she joined the House 24 years ago.
"All of these diverse viewpoints are united in their opposition to fast track, a power that is designed to ram trade deals through Congress without hearing a debate or the opportunity to amend," DeLauro said.
Trade deals, she continued, have an impact that goes far beyond commercial relations with other countries. "They can compromise the quality of the food we eat,” the Connecticut Democrat said. “They can raise the prices that we pay for medicine. They can attack our environmental regulations, weaken our financial regulations and stop our government from supporting American businesses."
DeLauro said that deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, passed through fast track during the Clinton Administration, made it easier for major manufacturers to ship American jobs to Mexico. "Fast track would be another insult to the American worker," she charged.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-9 Ohio, noted that since NAFTA was approved in 1994, the U.S. trade deficit has ballooned by $9.5 trillion while the country shed more than 47 million jobs.
"This is the day of reckoning," she said. "I'm fighting to add economic justice to the way this nation conducts its business."
As such, these trade agreements should be transparent and subject to full debate before Congress, opponents say.
"That's why fast track is so dangerous," said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. "It allows politicians to speak out of one side of their mouth to voters, and the other side to special interests. The AFL-CIO doesn't just oppose fast track, we're going to fight actively to kill it."
U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-5 Mich., whose district includes the hard-hit Flint region, told those in attendance that 79,000 in his community were once employed in the manufacturing sector. That number has since dwindled to 10,000 since the 1990s. "We've lost 90% of our jobs, all after these trade agreements were negotiated theoretically to strengthen the American manufacturer," he stated.
Without any insight on the particulars of a trade pact, Kildee said, he's unable tell his constituents whether it's good or bad for the American people.
"It's not free trade. It's fake trade," Kildee declared.
The last fast-track authority measure expired in 2007. President Obama asked Congress to renew it two years ago. The last Congress adjourned without acting on the matter.
However, the new Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday he is open to awarding the president fast track authority.
Pictured: Coalition news conference Thursday on Capitol Hill.
Copyright 2015 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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