BY GAETAN WHISTON
ST. PAUL, Minnesota - William Clinton's administration suffered a sharp blow when it was forced to postpone until next year a vote on legislation that would have given the U.S. president greater powers in negotiating trade deals. Early on the morning of November 10, supporters of the bill announced that they were six to eight votes short of a majority in the House of Representatives, despite weeks of heavy campaigning and deal-making to convince legislators to vote for the proposal.

The bill would require Congress to vote up or down trade agreements negotiated by the president with no amendments. The White House is seeking this "fast track" authority, which every president has had since the 1970s, in order to more easily develop a "free trade" zone throughout the Americas. The goal is to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), established in 1993, between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, throughout the hemisphere by 2005.

House minority leader Richard Gephardt, a probable contender for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2000, led the charge against the "fast track" authority. He had the backing of the AFL-CIO officialdom, who campaigned vigorously for the bill's defeat on the basis that the U.S. government needs to utilize other trade measures to protect jobs in the United States.

Around this question there is an increasing convergence between the union tops, liberal Democrats, and ultrarightists such as Patrick Buchanan. Writing on the "fast track" debate in September, Buchanan stated, "If I sound like [John] Sweeney on the issue of protecting the wages of our workers and keeping manufacturing at home, it is because, on this issue, I agree with the AFL-CIO leader." In his November 12 syndicated column, Buchanan declared, " `Global free trade has lost its allure, and economic nationalism is now in the saddle." He hailed Clinton's forced retreat as a victory for "Middle America and working men and women."

Forum discusses `fast track' debate
The issues involved in this debate were discussed at the Militant Labor Forum here November 7. The panelists included Steven Suppan from the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Mark Adams, member of the executive board of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union, Local 6-75, which is affiliated to the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, a loose formation of labor, environmental and women's rights groups; and Doug Jenness, author of Farmers Face the Crisis of the 1990s, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of St. Paul in the recent elections, and a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 9198.

Suppan stated that the expansion of NAFTA is aimed at strengthening Washington's hand in the World Trade Organization. He said that big-business interests are part of trade discussions, but "civil society" is not and needs to be represented at the negotiating table. He urged everyone to immediately call their representatives to urge them to vote against the "fast track" legislation.

Adams, who works at a 3-M plant in St. Paul, stressed the importance of pressing the Clinton administration to include clauses for the protection of workers rights and the environment in all trade deals. He has visited border towns in Mexico a number of times and described the difficult conditions workers face in the plants there. He said NAFTA and "fast track" are "agreements for capital" where workers from the United States and Mexico are pitted against each other. He proposed raising the "wages of workers in Latin America as a way to stop corporations from destroying jobs in the U.S."

Jenness also explained why he opposes NAFTA and its expansion. "This has nothing to do with free trade," he said. "It has more to with setting up a protectionist fortress in the Western Hemisphere, to strengthen the competitive edge of U.S. businesses over their rivals in Europe, Japan, and other countries."

He also pointed to the wrenching effects of NAFTA in Mexico, where a violent transformation is taking place. "Peasants are being driven off the land at an accelerated pace and into the cities in search of jobs," he said. The goal of U.S. capitalists, Jenness explained, "is to transform Mexico and other countries in Latin America into platforms for exporting manufactured goods. In Mexico both U.S. and Mexican capitalists have profited, while the conditions of millions of Mexicans have worsened. "

It's also false that a hemispheric free-trade zone is going to solve the problem of jobs as Clinton and others claim, Jenness said. "This has already been shown in Mexico where the jobless rate has gone up." Moreover, support to this perspective would tie workers to helping big sectors of the capitalist class increase their profit rates, undermining the development of independent working-class resistance.

Solidarity, not `protect U.S. jobs'
Jenness said he thought the union officialdom's campaign against "fast track" and NAFTA has many problems that are an obstacle to the struggle of working people. "I reject the idea," he said, "that there can be `fair trade' as long as the world is dominated by big capitalist monopolies and is divided between a handful of oppressor nations and a great many oppressed nations." As long as these conditions exist, he stated, trade relations are going to be unequal and no legislation or trade sanctions are going to alter that.

"A central problem with the campaign waged by labor officials," he explained, "is that it is an obstacle to developing and deepening solidarity among workers of different countries. By accepting the use of tariffs, quotas, and other such measures to `protect U.S. jobs,' they put `our jobs' ahead of advancing a course that can help forge a common struggle. The argument sort of comes down to this: `You workers in Mexico are so miserably exploited and face such horrible antiunion conditions, and corporations pay no attention to protecting the environment, so U.S. businesses shouldn't set up shop there and keep the jobs in the United Sates where standards are higher.' Couldn't Mexican workers turn around and say, `Unemployment is higher here so we should have the jobs here.' "

Jenness also explained that even when the capitalists agree to environmental and labor safeguards, these get cynically turned into mechanisms for protecting U.S. manufactured goods. He cited the example of how U.S. packinghouses have fought to keep European meat products out of the U.S. market on the usually spurious grounds that they don't live up to the "high" U.S. inspection standards.

The problem with many union officials' approach, Jenness continued, is looking at workers of Mexico and other countries "as victims and not as fellow combatants. Workers on both sides of the border are exploited - often by the same companies. We should get together and fight together against our common plight."

To wage a united fight, Jenness proposed organizing around the demands of a shorter week with no reduction in pay in order to spread the available work. "This is a demand that doesn't pit `our' jobs against `yours' but can help draw workers closer. The fight for a shorter working day had historically been an international fight and there's no reason it can't be again," Jenness said.

Jenness also called for canceling the foreign debt of countries oppressed by the economically advanced imperialist countries. "This would help establish links between workers of the United States and Canada on one hand and those of oppressed countries like Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil on the other," he argued.

Both these demands, Jenness summed up, can be the basis of the labor movement organizing a struggle that it is not tied political and economically to policies of one or another section of the ruling capitalist class.  
 
 
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