Baucus'd in on Trade

A coalition of groups are organizing to oppose renewing President Bush's fast-track authority for international trade deals. Their main target of the moment is Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade issues. Baucus favors extending fast-track, albeit with additional environmental and labor protections and added Congressional oversight.

As I reported in a recent profile of Baucus, the Montana Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution last month, by a vote of 45-5, urging their senior senator to oppose fast-track reauthorization. Subsequently, a group of seven US senators, led by Senator Sherrod Brown, asked for a meeting with Baucus to voice their concerns. "Years of job-killing trade agreements are taking their toll on workers and small business owners alike," Brown says.

A new progressive group, They Work For Us, began running radio ads against Baucus's position in Montana this week. "The Bush administration, surprisingly with Senator Max Baucus' support, wants the power to fast track these bad trade deals, costing Montana thousands of good-paying jobs and undermining our state's rights," the ad states.

Fast-track expires in June. We'll keep you on the legislative fight.

Comments (15)

1. Fast track is an anti-democratic charity to private concentrations of wealth (transnational corporations). Investor righs take precedence over human, labor and environmental concerns.

   "The average American worker is only making a nickel more per hour in inflation-adjusted terms than in 1973, the year before Nixon's Fast Track was first used to grab Congress' constitutional trade authority. In 1973, the average U.S. worker made $16.06 hourly in today's dollars. That same worker only makes $16.11 today despite U.S. workers' average productivity nearly doubling since 1973.[2] Better trade policy can do better for America's workers than this pathetic 0.28 percent raise. Were it not for trade agreements that pit U.S. workers in a race-to-the-bottom with poverty-wage workers worldwide, U.S. workers' wages would better track productivity increases, and workers in developing countries could fight to raise their wages also.

   Our Fast Track-enabled trade policy is suppressing U.S. wage levels. Trade's downward pressure on U.S. wages comes from both the import of cheaper goods made by poorly-paid workers abroad (displacing the market for goods made by better paid U.S. workers) and the threats during wage bargaining of corporations moving overseas. The result is growing inequality with workers losing while the richest few make massive gains.

   The pro-Fast Track Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that about 39 percent of the observed increase in wage inequality is attributable to trade trends.[3] But, such proponents of our current trade rules also cite trade theory to say that even so, U.S. workers win when imports increase because when production is done by low-paid workers overseas, we all can buy cheaper goods. Yet, the non-partisan Center for Economic and Policy Research applied the actual data to the trade theory. They found that when you consider the lower prices of cheaper goods versus the income lost from low-wage competition, U.S. workers without college degrees (the vast majority of us) lost an amount equal to 12.2 percent of their current wages. That is to say, under our current policy the losses in wages from trade outweigh the gains in cheaper prices from trade. For a worker earning $25,000 a year, this loss would be slightly more than $3,000 per year![4] Talk about unfair trade."

   http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp?formmode=view&id=5610

   Posted by Oustbush at 03/16/2007 @ 12:20pm

2. Feels good to beat Mask with his: "What, the same Sherrod Brown showing concern for human rights after voting for the Torture Amendment!!!???!!!??!"

   Posted by Oustbush at 03/16/2007 @ 12:26pm

3. Posted by OUSTBUSH 03/16/2007 @ 12:26pm

   Good for you!

   After all, if Sherrod stays loyal on "anti-globalism"...what's a few tortured detainees to get him in the Senate, huh?

   Posted by Mask at 03/16/2007 @ 12:38pm

4. BTW, I have no doubt Senator Baucus can be turned from the Dark Side on this....

   after all, it's not like allowing Bush to attack Iran without Congressional approval or nothing!

   Posted by Mask at 03/16/2007 @ 12:40pm

5. After all, if Sherrod stays loyal on "anti-globalism"...what's a few tortured detainees to get him in the Senate, huh?

   Posted by MASK 03/16/2007 @ 12:38pm | ignore this person

   Mask,

   You are the king of laying out the political calculation!

   Posted by Oustbush at 03/16/2007 @ 12:43pm

6. BTW, I have no doubt Senator Baucus can be turned from the Dark Side on this....

   after all, it's not like allowing Bush to attack Iran without Congressional approval or nothing!

   Posted by MASK 03/16/2007 @ 12:40pm | ignore this person

   All votes and all issues are not the same. The Iraq war resolution came at a time of political vulnerability for the Democrats: Max Cleland was thrown out as a Osama-sympathesizer as result of cheap and deceitful campaign advertising, for example. The public was still deeply misinformed regarding the war at the time, whereas free trade is unpopular with Americans; more a liabilty than asset. Oh crap, I just caught your describing war with "Iran" not Iraq as I misread it! Perhaps you have a point.

   Posted by Oustbush at 03/16/2007 @ 12:51pm

7. Mask The Constitution says what bush can do as regards to attacking Iran not the non binding thing the Democrats wanted to attach.

   Posted by i'm nobody at 03/16/2007 @ 1:15pm

8. You are the king of laying out the political calculation!

   Posted by OUSTBUSH 03/16/2007 @ 12:43pm

   Hmmm...now, given that example (Senator Brown voting FOR the Military Commissions Act as a US House Rep in order to win his Senate seat last year)....

   WHO was doing political calculations?

   Posted by Mask at 03/16/2007 @ 1:15pm

9. Posted by OUSTBUSH 03/16/2007 @ 12:51pm

   I'm not sure how "unpopular free trade is"...after all the President who pushed and signed NAFTA got re-elected, while the third party candidate who ran against NAFTA and him in 1996, got less votes than he did in 1992.

   Posted by Mask at 03/16/2007 @ 1:19pm

10. Posted by I'M NOBODY 03/16/2007 @ 1:15pm

    Agreed....but don't you think it would have been NICE to show that Congress can unite behind REMINDING him???

    Posted by Mask at 03/16/2007 @ 1:19pm

11. Mask I'm not impressed with non binding resolutions,attachments,or impassioned speeches.Congress needs to exercise it's authority under the Constitution and end the pointless killing of our troops.If they aren't going to do that then stop the window dressing and move on to other business.

    Posted by i'm nobody at 03/16/2007 @ 1:37pm

12. Posted by I'M NOBODY 03/16/2007 @ 1:37pm

    You realize in two posts, now.....we TOTALLY agree.

    Posted by Mask at 03/16/2007 @ 1:46pm

13. I'm not sure how "unpopular free trade is"...after all the President who pushed and signed NAFTA got re-elected, while the third party candidate who ran against NAFTA and him in 1996, got less votes than he did in 1992.

    Posted by MASK 03/16/2007 @ 1:19pm | ignore this person

    Mask,

    Clinton is a charismatic speaker but we've had a number of years to assess the results of the trade agreements. I don't find your comparison with Nader convincing since a third party candidate will never win regardless of what they offer. You are using Clinton's 1992-96 success to measure current disatisfaction with trade deals? I'm sorry to inform you how inconvenient reality is to your thesis.

    "A September 2005 German Marshall Fund (GMFUS) survey revealed that 57 percent believe that freer trade destroys more American jobs than it creates, and 58 percent of Americans would favor raising tariffs for imported goods if it meant protecting jobs -- a higher number than in Germany, France, or Great Britain. Healthy majorities believe that trade primarily benefits multinational corporations at the expense of small businesses."

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR200609 1401140.html

    Posted by Oustbush at 03/16/2007 @ 3:54pm

14. Posted by OUSTBUSH 03/16/2007 @ 3:54pm

    OUST, my third party candidate reference was to ROSS PEROT, not Ralph Nader. Perot, who debated AGAINST NAFTA, and was opposed by....AL GORE on Larry King Live.

    As much as Hillary has never apologized for her vote for war in Iraq....Bill has NEVER apologized for NAFTA. Nor have the conservative Democrats who voted with the Republicans.

    Same polling of free trade was done back in 1993 and it came to nought. Sherrod Brown and the "fair trade" guys can whoop up all they want, but this ONE fight is tough...and it's about fast-track authority to Bush, who nobody wants to give ANY authority.

    Nobody calling for a repeal of NAFTA, GATT, WTO. Nobody calling for tariffs (the only way to REALLY do anything about trade). And typically the Democrat solution (even the anti-free trade guys) is more about "job re-training" than restricting trade.

    Why? Because despite the "big talk" from the guys in the old Rust Belt, nobody wants to see a pair of underwear at Wal-mart go from $2 a pack to $5 a pack and take the blame for the SHORT-term effects on the consumer (AKA voter)...no Repub...and no Dem.

    Posted by Mask at 03/16/2007 @ 4:46pm

15. Interesting points about NAFTA. But remember that NAFTA increased U.S. trade with democracies whereas WTO is about exporting America's industry to sweatshop dictatorships including our No. 1 nuclear threat, China.

    Posted by samcrossett at 03/16/2007 @ 6:35pm