<div dir="ltr"><a href="http://fortune.com/2015/06/16/what-jfk-wouldnt-have-liked-about-obamas-trade-agenda/">http://fortune.com/2015/06/16/what-jfk-wouldnt-have-liked-about-obamas-trade-agenda/</a><div><br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:115%">What JFK wouldn't have liked about
Obama's trade agenda</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:115%"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font size="1">By <a href="http://fortune.com/author/sarah-anderson/">Sarah Anderson</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Anderson_IPS" target="_blank">@Anderson_IPS</a> JUNE 16, 2015, 10:17 AM EDT</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">As <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/06/12/obama-stunned-on-trade-defeat/">President
Obama </a>scrambles to salvage his trade agenda, his top
emissary to Japan is appealing to Democrats by lifting up one of the party’s
most beloved icons — her father.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">In “<a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/dad-jfk-free-trade-democrats-today-should-be-too-tpp-kennedy-118888.html#ixzz3dA8KDWjf">My
Dad, JFK, Was for Free Trade</a>,” Ambassador Caroline Kennedy wrote “For my
father, President John F. Kennedy, expanding trade was integral to America’s
prosperity and security.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">There’s no doubt trade was high on Kennedy’s agenda. He
championed the <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=8946#axzz1e2KUnkgS">Trade
Expansion Act of 1962</a>, which established the Office of the U.S. Trade
Representative and led to a successful “Kennedy Round” of multilateral trade
talks.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">The thing is, though, JFK would have a hard time recognizing
today’s trade agreements.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Back in his era, the main goal was tariff reduction, plain
and simple. Six European governments had just formed the Common Market, the
Brits were talking about joining, and Kennedy feared a Fortress Europe that
locked out American products.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">There are some 1960s-style tariff schedules in the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the 12-country pact the Obama administration
hopes to finalize—if they can get Congress to approve “fast track” trade
promotion authority.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">But that’s not why a diverse coalition of labor,
environmental, faith, immigrant, food safety, civil rights, and consumer groups
came together to block Obama’s trade package last Friday.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">What’s strengthened the opposition are the pact’s <a href="http://www.citizen.org/TPP">24 chapters</a> that have nothing to do
with old-fashioned trade in goods but instead impose rules on financial
services, sanitary standards, government procurement, and other domestic
policies. Such international rules simply didn’t exist in JFK’s day.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">The president who created the Peace Corps might have also
been surprised to learn that global health groups have been fighting TPP
provisions on patent rights for pharmaceutical companies. Based on <a href="https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip2/">leaked drafts</a> of the
intellectual property rights chapter, <a href="http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/tpp-trade-deal-will-be-devastating-access-affordable-medicines">Doctors
Without Borders</a> has called the TPP “the most damaging trade agreement
we have ever seen in terms of access to medicines for poor people.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Another major difference in today’s trade deals are the
rights granted to foreign investors. Back in Kennedy’s day, foreign
corporations couldn’t sue the U.S. government to demand compensation over
actions—including public interest regulations —that reduce the value of their
investment. That’s come about through the “investor-state” dispute settlement
procedures in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other
more recent trade and investment treaties.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">The <a href="https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/">leaked
draft of the TPP investment chapter</a> includes these investor powers, a
revelation that has united strange political bedfellows. In a piece applauding
Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren for speaking out on the issue, <a href="http://www.cato.org/blog/hyperbole-aside-elizabeth-warren-right-about-risk-investor-state">Daniel
Ikenson of the libertarian Cato Institute</a> wrote that these investor
rights raise “serious questions about democratic accountability, sovereignty,
checks and balances, and the separation of power.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">At a meeting I attended in the 1990s, a U.S. Trade
Representative (USTR) negotiator responded to concerns about environmental and
social impacts of trade agreements by saying these issues were secondary to his
primary job of advancing the interests of U.S. corporations. Afterwards, I
contacted one of my organization’s former board members, William Matson Roth,
who’d served as the second U.S. Trade Representative, after Kennedy had
established the position in 1962.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">“Was this his understanding at the time of USTR’s mission?”
I asked. “Absolutely not,” he said. The official aim of the <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-76/pdf/STATUTE-76-Pg872.pdf">1962
Act</a> that created the agency was “to promote the general welfare,
foreign policy, and security of the United States.” Because of this broad
mandate, there had been a big debate over where to situate USTR, he explained.
Should it be in the State Department? No — that would make it too politicized.
Should it be in the Commerce Department? No — it should not just represent
narrow commercial interests.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">USTR was given an independent perch within the government,
but that doesn’t mean our current negotiators have risen above narrow
interests.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Would JFK have been for or against the Trans-Pacific
Partnership? I don’t feel the need to speculate. What we do need is a debate
based on the actual content of our modern-day “trade” policies.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Sarah Anderson directs
the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington,
DC.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div></div>