USCIB Letter to Congress Supporting the Trade and Tariff Act of 1988

August 12, 1998

Honorable Trent Lott

United States Senate

487 Senate Russell Office Building

Washington, DC 20510-2403

Dear Senator:

On August 3, representatives of eight environmental groups wrote to you and other Senators, urging the rejection of the Trade and Tariff Act of 1998 which, among other things, would give the President new Fast Track trade negotiating authority.  These groups asserted that this bill was the wrong legislation at the wrong time.  They called for a new form of Fast Track authority that would, in effect, give environmental, social, and labor concerns priority over traditional trade negotiating objectives.

The arguments in that letter are flawed, and the alleged “evidence” to support them is both inaccurate and misleading.  This paper is intended to help your deliberations over Fast Track by pointing out the fallacies of that presentation. 

The environmentalists’ letter demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding about the purpose of -- and procedures for --  trade negotiations that are international in scope; involve compromise, tradeoffs, and reciprocal treatment; and rely on multilateral cooperation to enforce trade disciplines and achieve market liberalization goals.  The U.S. environmental community believes that international trade rules and international bodies such as the World Trade Organization do not give sufficient priority to environmental concerns.  Their preferred approach, as evidenced by the three cases referred to in their letter, is unilateralism.  That is, rather than working for improved international disciplines on trade and the environment, the U.S. should unilaterally limit or ban trade despite our international obligations.  Their call for a “new form of trade negotiating authority” is therefore contradictory because they reject the notion of balancing interests in a trade or investment negotiation since, in their view, that would mean compromising environmental principles and ceding the right of unilateral action.  That is the stance they have taken in the negotiations for a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and probably their real position on Fast Track.