[CTC] Brown: IPEF trade pillar should be dropped due to lack of labor standards

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Brown: IPEF trade pillar should be dropped due to lack of labor standards

Inside US Trade
By Dan Dupont | November 10, 2023

The Biden administration should drop the trade pillar from the Indo-Pacific
Economic Framework for Prosperity, Senate Finance Committee member Sherrod
Brown (D-OH) demanded on Thursday, decrying a lack of enforceable labor
standards.

“As the administration works to finalize the Indo-Pacific Economic
Framework, they should not include the trade pillar,” Brown said in a brief
statement that calls for the “entire trade pillar” to be excised.

“Any trade deal that does not include enforceable labor standards is
unacceptable,” he added. “That goes against everything I stand for -- and
everything we successfully fought against when we led the opposition to the
Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

Brown did not elaborate and his office did not respond by press time to a
request for comment.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which leads the trade pillar
talks, declined to comment.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the framework’s progress said the office
had been in regular communication with Brown and his staff about his
concerns.

Brown was one of the architects of the rapid-response mechanism added to
the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement -- a key tool the U.S. has used many times
to force facilities in Mexico to improve worker rights.

Sources have told Inside U.S. Trade that IPEF negotiators have discussed a
type of facility-specific labor mechanism for the trade pillar. Ahead of a
seventh negotiating round underway this week in San Francisco, sources said
the U.S. was seeking ambitious labor outcomes with provisions subject to
dispute settlement.

“If there’s a labor chapter, I think it will be fairly robust,” one source
said late last month.

In a summary of the fifth IPEF negotiating round in Thailand, held in
September, the government of New Zealand said the parties had made progress
on core labor provisions “relating to internationally recognised labour
rights, including the adoption and enforcement of those rights.”

The 13 participants in the trade pillar “also discussed areas of
cooperation to lift labour standards and processes for dealing with
complaints about labour standards,” the summary says -- a possible
reference to a facility-specific complaint mechanism, a source has told
Inside U.S. trade, suggesting USTR was pushing for one that would be
“stronger” than that included in the IPEF supply chain pillar that was
largely concluded in May and might be signed next week at an IPEF
ministerial, also in San Francisco.

The supply chain pillar’s mechanism would allow parties to address “labor
rights inconsistencies,” according to the text. Under that pillar, parties
will be required to establish a reporting mechanism to receive and address
labor complaints on specific facilities. -- Dan Dupont (ddupont at iwpnews.com)



Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20231110/3be8f121/attachment.htm>