[CTC] Trumka: Pacific Partnership needs reform before it will help workers

Tue Jul 21 06:09:14 PDT 2015

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/07/20/tpp-trans-pacific-partnership-trade-fundamental-reforms-nafta-column/30197797/ <http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/07/20/tpp-trans-pacific-partnership-trade-fundamental-reforms-nafta-column/30197797/>

Pacific Partnership needs reform before it will help workers: Richard Trumka

Trade agreement needs overhaul in labor rights, climate change and currency manipulation.

USA Today
By Richard Trumka 
July 20, 2015

The debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has just begun and workers in dozens of industries from every sector are going to have plenty to say about it.

The last six months mark a fundamental shift in how our nation approaches and evaluates international trade proposals. Since before the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA <https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/north-american-free-trade-agreement-nafta>), international trade has been treated as a "no-brainer," the sole purview of corporate and neo-liberal elites. Enactment of major deals was seen as a given, an assumed privilege of those who wrote the rules so they could profit from them.

Trade policies affect everyone

No more. 2015 has proved that trade is a core economic issue for all Americans, especially those whose work creates the profits in the first place. When the trade debate started to break though the Washington bubble, Americans got what we were talking about right away.

The campaign was democracy at its finest. In just four months, among many other tactics, workers and their allies made more than 2.6 million phone calls and wrote more than 32,500 handwritten letters to the House and Senate. Congress may have reluctantly given the president the authority to negotiate the TPP, but workers have made clear he has the responsibility to do it the right way. Here's how:

Currency manipulation

The final TPP must include rules against currency manipulation, as a bipartisan majority in Congress has demanded. For decades, currency manipulation has been used <http://www.epi.org/publication/stop-currency-manipulation-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership-millions-of-jobs-at-stake/> by U.S. trading partners, including Japan, China, Malaysia and Singapore, to gain a competitive advantage that shutters factories, hurts workers and devastates communities. The Economic Policy Institute estimates the U.S. could add as many as5.8 million jobs <http://www.epi.org/publication/stop-currency-manipulation-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership-millions-of-jobs-at-stake/> by eliminating currency manipulation. The continued refusal to include enforceable currency rules in TPP would not only guarantee more U.S. job loss, but undermine any remaining belief that U.S. trade policy is designed to benefit anyone but powerful global corporations.

Foreign corporations held accountable to courts

The TPP must also ditch the rigged legal system called investor-state-dispute settlement <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/03/26/people-are-freaking-out-about-the-trans-pacific-partnerships-investor-dispute-settlement-system-why-should-you-care/>, which lets foreign corporations opt out of the U.S. court system and sue U.S. taxpayers to recover lost profits by arguing that local, state, or federal laws or regulations violate their right to "fair and equitable treatment." This standard is so vague that the private tribunals that decide these cases have awarded huge sums on the basis of a legal argument as flimsy as "that's not fair." This system, by and for elites, is understandably unpopular. NAFTA was the first U.S. trade deal <http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/The-U.S.-Should-Follow-South-Africa-s-Lead-on-Investor-Rights-No-ISDS-in-the-TPP> to incorporate ISDS—a mistake that the president must fix if TPP is to gain support beyond the global companies who profit from the special privilege it gives them.

Strong rules of origin

The TPP must also include strong "rules of origin <http://www.usw.org/get-involved/rapid-response/They_Say_We_Say_on_FT_TPP.pdf>." Weak rules will provide tariff benefits to goods largely made in China and other countries outside the TPP. Strong rules will ensure that the majority of the benefits of the TPP go to countries that have an obligation to follow the TPP rules. For automobiles in particular — a key U.S. manufactured good <http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-car-exports-top-2-million-1423174695> — weak rules of origin will undermine U.S. employment throughout the U.S. automotive supply chain.

Labor and environmental rules

The labor and environmental rules of the TPP must not be merely enforceable, but alsoenforced. In their workplaces, America's workers have been living the race to the bottom for decades despite promises that each new trade deal will rectify the labor problems of the last. Threats to move work overseas and cut pay and benefits remain all too common. As recently as November 2014, the Government Accountability Officereported <http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-160> that U.S. enforcement of labor provisions in existing trade agreements is inadequate; we would call the enforcement efforts deplorable. Promises to "do better" may have been enough to secure fast track. They will not be enough to secure support for the TPP.

Climate change resolutions

Climate change commitments must also be included in the TPP. If they are not, U.S. efforts to reduce our emissions responsibly will be undermined by trading partners — closing factories and killing jobs in the process. In an astoundingly short-sighted move, Republican fast track supporters inserted a trade negotiating objective <http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/trade-tpp-climate-change-paul-ryan-20150610> restricting fast-tracked U.S. trade deals in addressing climate change.

Economic consequences

It's not just union members whom the president has to convince. Unlike other trade deals, leading economists are skeptical, and in some cases downright hostile, to the economic case for fast track and the TPP. The views of Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson, Robert Reich, Jeffrey Sachs and Ralph Gomory must be heard as well.

The opposition to granting Obama authority to negotiate a corporate trade deal was broad, deep and unprecedented. It took the elites by surprise, and brought the president's trade agenda to a halt before last-minute political maneuvering resurrected it by the slightest of margins.

We are not questioning whether or not we should trade more, but rather how to negotiate a very different kind of trade policy going forward. The tide has shifted. The new consensus, the new assumption, is that the economy must work for people, not the other way around.

Richard Trumka is president of AFL-CIO.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors <http://www.usatoday.com/reporters/boc.html>. To read more columns like this, go to theOpinion front page <http://www.usatoday.com/opinion/>.

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