TRADE: MAJORITY OF DEMS SUPPORTS MICHAUD, COMPLICATING AGENDA
By Peter Cohn

 

Never a bright prospect in an election year, the odds might now be even
longer for free-trade pacts in 2010 as a majority of the House Democratic
Caucus is supporting a bill to rewrite or scrap new agreements and a
handful of existing ones.

 

That could be bad news for a Trans-Pacific trade accord backed by
President Obama, as well as the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks, and
particularly for bilateral pacts with Colombia, South Korea and Panama
negotiated by former President George W. Bush.

 

The Obama administration is still shaping its trade policy and where it
fits within an increasingly crowded agenda, and House Democrats are clearly
going to be a significant factor. "If you want to change the thinking,
you've got to change the House's thinking," said National Foreign Trade
Council President William Reinsch.

 

Change might just have gotten tougher to come by. Trade skeptics received
an emphatic endorsement Friday when House Education and Labor Chairman
George Miller, one of Speaker Pelosi's most trusted allies, came out in
support of the bill by Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine.

 

Speaking at an event in Concord, Calif., with neighboring Democratic Rep.
John Garamendi, Miller had harsh words for the Doha Round and Colombia pact
in particular, where he has led an investigation into violence against
union members.

 

Workers in Colombia have been killed "at the direction of the government,
of the manufacturers, of the economic class in that country ... the idea
that it's all been taken care of now; no, it hasn't," Miller proclaimed
before an audience of Teamsters, longshoremen, machinists, auto workers and
others.

 

"If you organize in Colombia, you're liable to get killed when you're on
your way home," said Miller, according to a video clip of the event posted
online by the Contra Costa Times. "All through Latin America, you want to
organize a banana plantation? You want to organize a coffee plantation?
You'll find out that the military will be there and they'll burn down your
house. Happens every day."

 

The Colombian Embassy did not have an immediate comment. Miller went on to
say that developing countries negotiating in the Doha Round are recognizing
that the objectives of the United States could put them at a disadvantage.
"People keep wanting to have the Doha Round. ... The reason it's not
getting done, it doesn't work for enough nations. It's not fair," Miller
said. "They're saying, 'Enough. We want a new deal.' The Doha Round is, I
don't know, it's like hallucinations. These people can't let go of it. The
world has moved on."

 

Garamendi and Miller are the 128th and 129th voting members of the House
Democratic Caucus to endorse the Michaud bill. That gives Michaud a
majority of the 256-member Caucus, even if the eventual replacement for
Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii -- who is resigning next month to run for
governor -- declines to co-sponsor the bill.

 

The bill is not expected to become law, but it is considered an important
barometer on potential trade votes. While enough Republicans and
business-friendly Democrats could be counted on for majority support, House
Democratic leaders are considered unlikely to put forward a party-splitting
bill, particularly when they do not have a "majority of the majority" in
support.

 

"The fact that a majority of Democrats in the House are now co-sponsors of
the bill signals strong support for the change agenda that the president
campaigned on. It also signals that the majority of the Democratic Caucus
will not support the old trade model represented by the pending free-trade
agreements," Michaud said in a statement. "We need to push policies that
will reverse the damage caused by previous trade agreements so that we can
create jobs, not ship them overseas. Moving forward, I remain hopeful that
the administration will embrace a new trade agenda that is forward-thinking
and that protects U.S. jobs and businesses."

 

Garamendi, who won his seat in a special election last year, became a
co-sponsor on Dec. 16. His backing is instructive of the direction the
Caucus has taken -- Garamendi's predecessor in the 10th District was former
Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a leader of the pro-trade New Democrat Coalition.
Garamendi said at the Friday event that he would not support trade deals
"unless they provide the protection that every human being on this planet
should have," including labor, environmental and food safety standards.

 

Miller, a 35-year House veteran, has long been a reliable labor ally and
opposed all of the major trade deals dating back to the North American Free
Trade Agreement. Nonetheless, his endorsement was a coup for labor
officials and other progressive activists. He put out a statement Friday
announcing his support for the Michaud bill, but he saved his strongest
words for the actual event earlier that day. "These trade agreements -- I
didn't vote for any of them. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now,"
Miller said.

 

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, said the
majority Democratic support for Michaud's bill demonstrates the
administration must do serious outreach to lawmakers before pacts like the
Trans-Pacific Partnership can move. It also demonstrates that Obama should
recall his 2008 campaign rhetoric on trade, she said, which included a
pledge to renegotiate NAFTA.

 

Business groups argue shelving the trade deals will do nothing to create
jobs and could do the opposite. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others say
failure to move while global competitors gobble up international markets
risks shutting U.S. firms out and sacrificing exports and jobs. Reinsch
noted that the European Union and South Korea have agreed to lower barriers
to each others' goods and services, for example. "The minute the EU-Korea
agreement goes into effect, we're toast," he said.