[CTC] Reminder: IPEF org sign-on letter closes on Tuesday

Fri Feb 24 06:25:56 PST 2023

Hi everyone,

Thank you to the roughly 400 groups who have signed the letter below on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).  The final deadline for signatures is Tuesday, February 28.  If your organization hasn't signed the letter yet, please do so now at:  https://forms.gle/mfoi5uUseBRgR8ZJ8 <https://forms.gle/mfoi5uUseBRgR8ZJ8>  

U.S. negotiators are expected to introduce their proposals on critical labor, environmental and digital trade issues during a key IPEF negotiating round in the coming weeks.  Now is the moment for us to speak out and influence rules that will cover roughly 40% of the global economy and become a template for future trade deals.  

Groups currently on the letter include: Amazon Labor Union, American Friends Service Committee, Amnesty International, Center for Digital Democracy, Communications Workers of America (CWA), Food & Water Watch, Greenpeace USA, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, International Women’s Alliance, National Association of Consumer Advocates, National Family Farm Coalition, National Organization for Women, Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, Public Citizen, Presbyterian Church USA, Sierra Club, Sunrise Movement, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, United Methodist Church GBCS, United Steelworkers (USW) and hundreds of others.

I hope your group can join!  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks again,

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826

Organizational Sign-on Letter on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF)
Add your organization by Tuesday, February 28 at: https://forms.gle/mfoi5uUseBRgR8ZJ8 <https://forms.gle/mfoi5uUseBRgR8ZJ8> 

Dear President Biden:

As organizations whose constituencies continue to experience the harm caused by past corporate-centered trade agreements, we have a strong desire to work with your administration to advance goals you have described for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) — particularly in terms of a long overdue shift in direction for U.S. trade policy that finally places working people and climate action at the center. We write today with shared views about IPEF terms that will be necessary for the pact to meet important labor, family farm and environmental goals, as well as recommendations for a more transparent and participatory process.

To begin, we are heartened by and appreciate reports that IPEF will not include some of the damaging provisions found in past trade agreements, such as the anti-worker, anti-environment and anti-democratic investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system and public procurement terms that could undermine “Buy America,” “buy local” and “buy green” programs.

The list of countries selected as initial IPEF partners, however, includes many with records of labor rights violations, including unionist assassinations, human trafficking, forced labor, child labor and more. To advance your administration’s promised worker-centered trade model, IPEF must include strong labor rights commitments based on standards set in the International Labor Organization’s core conventions, and it must also include facility-specific enforcement mechanisms, building off the Rapid Response Mechanism in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). IPEF signatory countries must also be required to make the changes to their labor laws necessary to align them with their new IPEF obligations before the pact is signed by the United States. IPEF must take steps forward relative to the USMCA, not backward, on labor rights and labor enforcement.  

In terms of IPEF’s climate provisions, “a step forward” will not be enough. Given that previous U.S. trade agreements, including the USMCA, fail to even mention the term “climate change,” IPEF will need to be particularly ambitious in its climate provisions if it is to help the United States and Indo-Pacific region achieve their climate and environmental justice goals. Among other environmental measures, IPEF must require that countries adopt, implement and maintain binding climate standards, and must likewise extend swift-and-certain enforcement mechanisms to those provisions. 

On the matter of “digital trade,” IPEF’s terms must not be allowed to undermine the administration’s domestic anti-monopoly and tech regulation agenda by locking in international rules that threaten consumer privacy, data security, worker rights, civil rights, algorithm justice and competition policy here and throughout the Indo-Pacific. In comparison to the USMCA’s digital terms, any data flow guarantees or limits on safeguarding where data can be processed or stored must be scaled back significantly in any IPEF deal, with much broader exceptions added to better protect Americans’ personal data, as well as to protect good-paying jobs in the digital economy. IPEF also must not include provisions that create special secrecy guarantees for Big Tech firms’ source codes and algorithms so that they can evade the pre-review and audits that are a feature of many criminal justice, civil rights, worker rights and other bills and the administration’s AI Bill of Rights. As well, an IPEF must not establish non-discrimination terms similar to those included in the USMCA and Trans-Pacific Partnership that capture policies with “discriminatory effects” based on larger entities being more impacted by facially neutral policies of general application. Non-discrimination rules in IPEF must be limited to de facto discrimination or such rules will undermine competition policy efforts as well as labor laws and other public interest policies. As your administration, Congress and other IPEF countries all work hard to rein in Big Tech abuses, IPEF must not be used as a backdoor to undermine those efforts.

Likewise, IPEF’s other provisions in both the trade pillar and other three pillars must also contribute to the creation of a worker-centered, climate-friendly trade model. For instance, so-called “Good Regulatory Practice” provisions must not replicate the terms of past trade proposals aimed at delaying, weakening and destroying future public interest policies before they are even created. And any agricultural provisions should allow for the creation of strategic food and grain reserves and other public investment in agricultural resilience and local food systems, include measures to stop land grabs and otherwise protect the human rights of farmers and farm workers, and set floors, rather than ceilings, when it comes to food safety and fair price measures for producers and consumers

Finally, the United States’ requirement that IPEF negotiating parties sign confidentiality agreements undermines the ability for an informed citizenry to provide input on policy that impacts their livelihoods and communities; we urge you to terminate these confidentiality agreements. We also urge you to publish upcoming U.S. IPEF proposals for public comment prior to tabling them, including those on critical chapters like labor, the environment and digital trade that we understand will be tabled soon, in addition to all other texts. And we urge the United States and other countries to publish proposals and any draft composite texts at the close of each IPEF negotiating round. A more transparent and participatory negotiating process for IPEF would allow for a wider set of interests to provide informed input and ensure equitable treatment of communities which are not part of the official U.S. trade advisor system most representing corporations who now have access to U.S. proposals and other confidential IPEF texts. Reversing an unnecessarily bureaucratic and obtuse trade negotiating regime requires operating in a transparent manner and would facilitate broader public support and confidence among civil society organizations .

We look forward to being partners with your administration throughout the IPEF negotiating process so that any final deal corrects the errors of past trade pacts and becomes a useful model for future agreements that deliver real benefits to people and planet.

Sincerely, 

Add your organization now at: https://forms.gle/mfoi5uUseBRgR8ZJ8 <https://forms.gle/mfoi5uUseBRgR8ZJ8>

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