Following much dithering and debate–first by the White House and then by Congress–the proposal to renew the president’s fast-track authority to negotiate free-trade agreements is expected to come up for a vote in the Senate Tuesday and in the House by the end of the week.
A close vote is predicted in both chambers, though there are no persuasive reasons why it should be so: The opening of new free-trade frontiers clearly is vital for the continued prosperity of the United States generally and the Midwest especially.
Last week’s yo-yo performance of the stock markets worldwide vividly underlined the inextricable economic links among all countries, large and small.
But globalization has been inexorably, if less dramatically, growing for at least the past decade. Regional free-trade pacts have formed in South America and Asia, and the European Union and economic giants such as China have made it clear they are ready and eager to negotiate with these new economic entities. The question for the U.S. is whether it wants to stake out a role in this new order or simply pretend that it isn’t happening.
Failure to approve fast-track authority now would most likely push the next vote until after the 1998 congressional elections and the presidential race two years after that. Economic equations are changing much too fast, particularly in this hemisphere, for the U.S. to wait that long.
Opposition to fast-track legislation continues to revolve around concerns that looser labor and environmental conditions in Third World countries give them an unfair competitive edge. Yet such conditions are much more likely to improve under the mutual prosperity and close engagement created by free trade than by maintaining or reinforcing economic barriers. The quality of both labor conditions and the environment along the U.S.-Mexican border, for example, has improved and will continue to as we cut through the thicket of tariffs and other obstacles that existed before the signing of NAFTA.
Yet even such concerns are premature in the current debate: All Congress would be granting the president is the authority to bargain with other countries in the knowledge that Congress would vote an entire deal up or down, not pick it apart piece by piece.
Essentially the question before Congress is whether the U.S. should aggressively pursue free-trade openings throughout the world. The answer should be an emphatic “yes.”
