by James Parks, Jan 31, 2007

Voters made it clear in the 2006 elections they wanted big changes in U.S. trade policy, which, because it’s skewed to benefiting corporations at the expense of U.S. workers,  has contributed to the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2001 and has put an increasing number of white-collar service-sector jobs at risk.

But President Bush doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. Today, speaking in New York City on the state of the economy, Bush called for extending trade promotion authority or “Fast Track.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says Bush isn’t listening to the real and serious concerns of America’s working people when it comes to our nation’s economic future.

Extending “fast track” authority would hamstring Congress’s ability to fix our broken trade policy at a time when working families are in dire need of a correction in course.

Rather than staggering blindly from one trade agreement to the next, our nation needs to regain our economic footing. To do this, we need a strategic pause to assess what have been the real and significant costs of our trade policy for working men and women in the U.S. and abroad. Absent an honest assessment, we will undoubtedly find ourselves on the same failed path.

Fast Track, narrowly passed by the Republican-majority Congress in 2002, allows the president to negotiate trade deals but prevents Congress from improving or rejecting harmful provisions by allowing only “yes” or “no” votes on final trade deals.

To read Sweeney’s statement, click here.
 
The AFL-CIO Executive Council in November 2006 heralded the changing winds on trade and laid out a new approach to trade that would make trade more fair and beneficial for all workers.
 
The council’s statement calls for a three-step approach to trade: