| Pyrrhic Victories |
4 August 2003
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Singapore, Chile Get Free Trade Ratification
While everyone's gaze was focused on Iraq, North Korea and Kobe Bryant, the US Senate approved free-trade treaties with Singapore and Chile. The Bush administration has committed itself to expanding trade in a tariff-free world, and these are two small steps toward that goal. The are much bigger steps in increasing the power of the presidency at the expense of the Congress.
Not that such a swing in power is inherently wrong. Congress is by nature a quarrelsome, cumbersome entity deliberately created to gridlock most of the time. It is difficult for an administration to negotiate a treaty of any sort with a foreign power, and then return to negotiate with 100 senators over the deal. For that reason, Congress enacted the "fact-track" concept, giving the White House the authority to cut deals abroad and have the legislature ratify the agreement on an up-or-down vote.
Regrettably, free trade is not the sort of issue that is suitable for such treatment. Matters of national security affect every citizen, and therefore, can be dealt with in such a way. Altering economic rules creates winners and losers because the benefits that free trade provide to the whole nation are not equally shared. The fast-track approach denies senators the power to hold up the deal and apply pressure on the rest of the government to ameliorate the suffers of the few at whose expense the many will gain.
This lack of power results in a general hostility toward free trade that one sees among many labor leaders and environmentalists. Fast-track has created a situation in which their concerns are largely ignored by treaty makers, and therefore, their losses are not mitigated either in the treaty or in legislation. Free-traders would do well to acknowledge this fact and build a broader coalition -- the alternative might be an administration that chooses not to pursue the policy at all.