 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
Eyeing Al Gore’s Trade Record — Nervously
A week before the House approved the North American Free Trade Agreement in November 1993, Vice President Al Gore debated — and generally ripped apart — H. Ross Perot on national television for the latter’s opposition to the trade pact. It was considered a key moment that helped to secure the last 20 House votes needed for passage of NAFTA.
And again, at the end of 1994, Gore engaged in some noticeable arm-twisting to obtain congressional support for the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade — which led to the creation of the World Trade Organization — over the opposition of labor unions. Taken together, these actions served to clearly separate President Clinton and the vice president from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and its bedrock support among organized labor.
Yet seven years later, when the House was considering extending permanent normal trade relations to China this spring, Gore was almost invisible according to business lobbyists disappointed with the vice president’s apparent lack of enthusiasm on the issue. Gore, now his party’s presumptive presidential nominee and mindful of the Democrats’ core labor constituency, has been walking a tightrope between wholehearted support of free trade with no strings attached — and support of a trade policy that gives labor a seat at the negotiating table. It has left many in the high-tech community perceiving Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, as the better candidate when it comes to free trade agreements.
Bush has never said that trade agreements should be tied to labor or environmental provisions — and trade is rapidly becoming a key information technology policy issue.
"It is harder to find a bigger anti-labor group than high tech," said Tom Watson, CEO of ChangingOurWorld.com, a philanthropy Web site. Watson is a Gore supporter and has helped the vice president’s campaign raise money in New York.
Gore Keeps Trade In Mind
But Gore supporters vigorously dispute any contention that the vice president, if elected, would do anything but vigorously pursue a free trade and open markets policy. As part of his agenda for spurring continued growth in the new economy, Gore notes on his campaign Web site that he will work to open new markets by expanding free and fair trade.
"No administration has a better trade record than Clinton-Gore," said Greg Simon, Gore's former chief domestic policy advisor who now runs a high-tech consulting firm and advises the Gore campaign on high tech issues. "They shepherded through NAFTA, they are about to shepherd through PNTR. They have done telecom agreements, intellectual property agreements, and global warming agreements. I'm not sure what people are afraid of. What more do people need to know?"
Add to that record is Gore's recent appointment of Commerce Secretary William Daley as his campaign chairman. Daley — the son of legendary Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and the brother of current Mayor Richard M. Daley — clearly was picked for his political acumen. But it helps Gore that Daley has twice lobbied on behalf of the Clinton administration to pass trade agreements. He headed the effort to pass NAFTA before joining the Cabinet, where he oversaw last month’s successful Houses passage of PNTR. And Daley, if named to another Cabinet post in a Gore administration, could be highly influential on trade policy.
But despite Gore's record and the recent campaign addition of Daley, many in the high-tech community fear he is beholden to the powerful grassroots organization that is labor. Putting aside the PNTR vote, business groups have been hard pressed to match the ability of labor unions to organize and energize a large number of constituents to both lobby and vote. And labor has consistently argued that free trade hurts the blue-collar worker because it leads to companies sending jobs overseas.
"Gore cares passionately about the environment and cares about labor," said Nancy Roman, an analyst with the G7 Group, a legislative consulting firm with Wall Street and high-tech clients. "If he emphasizes that in agreements, that puts brakes on the free trade model."
The business community became particularly nervous about where Gore's heart was on free trade when he sent a letter this past Feb. 18 to the National Association of Manufacturers, stating that "future trade negotiations ought to include in the fabric of the agreement both labor and environmental components."
According to Joanne Thornton, a trade analyst with the Schwab Washington Research Group, "This implies that trade concessions could be withdrawn in retaliation for trading partners' failure to adhere to agreed environmental and labor standards,"
The significance of such comments is that achieving a number of trade agreements with foreign countries in the future is likely to be a lot more difficult. Developing countries in particular chafe at being told that they must adhere to environmental and labor standards—particularly when the United States long ago came into world power without having to adhere to anyone else's ideas of what labor and environmental standards should be.
Future Pacts Test Trade Commitment
Potentially contentious trade agreements that the next occupant of the White House will have to deal with include the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) pact and presidential trade negotiating authority — formerly known as fast track. FTAA would expand NAFTA to beyond Mexico and Canada into Latin America and South America.
Trade experts say NAFTA has had mixed results, with some states — mostly on the Canadian border — suffering from increased price competition, and other states — mostly on the Mexican border — benefiting. Texas, in particular, has seen its economy diversify beyond oil and agriculture to biotechnology and high tech industries. This, in turn, has contributed to Bush’s perception that expansion of free trade is the best economic policy, according to sources close to the campaign.
"Since these agreements have been signed, there has been an increase in jobs in the U.S.," said Kathryn Hauser, director of international trade for the Information Technology Industry Council. "There have been some winners and some losers, but overall the U.S. economy is better."
Fast track enables a president to negotiate a trade agreement and send it to Congress for approval on an accelerated basis. Under such authority, Congress could in no way amend the agreement: Members could only vote yes or no, and the debate has to be completed within a limited time. Fast track authority expired at the end of 1994 after GATT passed in Congress. A major lobbying effort by the Clinton administration to renew that authority in 1997 was unsuccessful.
Other trade issues to be dealt with by the next administration will include sanctions reform and negotiating the second Information Technology Agreement, known as ITA 2. The latter would be an expansion of the original ITA, which called for the phaseout of tariffs on various information technology products, such as computers and semiconductors. ITA 2 talks fell through when last year's WTO meeting in Seattle unraveled. Hauser said the business community will also advocate that the next administration push the WTO to develop an ongoing trade liberalization process — rather coming together every several years for a major multilateral trade agreement among the 135 plus countries that are now in the WTO.
"Our product cycle is every 18 months, so we have to have a constant process of trade liberalization," Hauser said.
Still, polls indicate that the public might be on Gore’s side on trade issues. One conducted by USAToday this spring showed that Americans remain divided over whether free trade is beneficial. The survey found that 43 percent said free trade is good because it helps the economy, while 45 percent said it was not because it costs U.S. jobs.
"I think you'd have to be incredibly naive to think that every trade agreement doesn't have a labor or environmental component," Simon said. "It isn't new. It's just that we've been talking about it a lot more than in the past and the Seattle demonstrations make it clear that the public expects labor and environment to be part of the discussion. That doesn't mean you won't have the trade agreement."
Dave McCurdy, head of the Electronic Industries Alliance and a former Democratic member of Congress from Oklahoma, is confident that the business community has nothing to be nervous about — and that Gore will indeed successfully push through the needed trade pacts to keep the new economy growing.
"Both gentlemen are internationalists in their view and in their positions," McCurdy said of Bush and Gore. "And I don't think the campaign will change that. Any administration has the responsibility to keep the economy growing and expanding trade does that."
 | - by Bara Vaida |
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
