[Announce-DAN] The Next Big Battle: Fast Track

["David Martin" <p_hayze@hotmail.com>]

What reduces democracy and increases poverty?  You guessed it: Fast 
Track and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

When the proposed "Millennial Round" of WTO trade negotiations 
collapsed in face of mass protest in Seattle last year, US 
Transnational Corporations (TNCs) began their search for new weapons 
of "free trade."  The signs are clear: they have set their sights 
on "fast track" authority for the next US President and an expansion 
of NAFTA throughout the Americas under the FTAA.  

Early next year, well-funded corporate lobbyists will swarm 
Congressional offices to persuade the new Congress to grant "fast 
track" authority to the President. "Fast Track" minimizes democratic 
controls over trade treaties. Under "Fast track," the US President 
negotiates a trade treaty with consultation from the Congress, but, 
in return, the Congress votes on the treaty within 90 days of its 
conclusion and without amendments. Public scrutiny and debate are 
minimized as the trade treaties are negotiated in secrecy and then 
voted on quickly. Without much public awareness and with enough pork-
barreling, corporations and their presidential lackeys can railroad 
trade treaties through Congress---the fast track!. 

Clinton used "fast track" to pass NAFTA and to create the WTO. But 
when the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, they let "fast 
track" authority elapse. This has handicapped the Clinton 
Administration's ability to conclude any major trade agreements 
since. Few governments want to run the risk of negotiating a treaty 
that will later be changed by the US Congress.

For that reason, corporate lobbyists intend to push "fast track" 
through the new Congress before the  Free Trade Area of the Americas 
(FTAA) negotiations in Quebec City in April 2001. These negotiations 
began in 1994 at the Summit of the Americas in Miami (ominously 
abbreviated as the SOA). The FTAA negotiations stalled when Clinton 
lost "fast track" authority but have recently been given a boost by a 
summit in Santiago, Chile 1998 and a new significance with the 
collapse of the WTO round last year. 

The FTAA is built on the model of NAFTA and is designed to "lock in" 
structural adjustment  and neoliberalism in the Americas. The FTAA 
will protect US TNCs from expropriation, tariffs, and regulation, 
while forcing local farmers and industries to compete with US 
subsidized agribusiness and TNCs. The consequences for the Latin 
America's poor and their environment will be devastating. A defeat 
of "fast track" in Congress combined with a mass protest at the 
Summit of the Americas could be a knock-out blow to the FTAA. 



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