Make ‘Fast Track’ the Road to Transparency
John O. McGinnis has it backward when he says that we do not need to extend fast-track provisions of trade promotion authority to cover environmental and labor standards (“ . . . No, Free Trade Needs a Free Rein,” Commentary, July 30). He claims that the cumbersome procedures of our regular legislative process “protect liberty” and “restrain special interests from getting benefits for themselves at the expense of the public.”
On the contrary, the more cumbersome the process, the more the special interests can get their way. Well-heeled interests can afford to hire lobbyists and analysts to pay attention to every step of a complicated process, while the general public only notices the final vote in Congress. Even so-called “fast track” does not mean that no amendments can be placed on an agreement after it is negotiated. What it means is that amendments can be offered only in committee--exactly one of those cumbersome procedures where special interests have the most sway. For instance, after renegotiating NAFTA, President Clinton added amendments to appease Florida orange growers whose votes were needed in a key committee.
Trade liberalization, environmental protection and labor standards all have one thing in common: They benefit the general public but often at the expense of big multinational corporations. What we need is a legislative process that requires more transparency. Imagine how much less influence special interests would have if all proposed amendments favoring some special interest had to withstand public scrutiny.
Matthew Shugart
Carlsbad
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Re Robert Zoellick’s “Stop the Complaints: With NAFTA, Everyone Wins,” Commentary, July 31: The glossy figure of a 104% increase in exports across our borders to our near neighbors does not include the reality of an excess of 80% of it coming back directly to the U.S. as assembled products. NAFTA has never been truly about trade. Its proper label, or nomenclature, should be the “Cheap Labor Treaty.”
D.J. Ponder
Torrance
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Southern California is more right than you may know in going to the barricades to keep Mexican truckers off your freeways. We’re just south of Vancouver and the Canadian border, and the danger and chaos on I-5 is tenfold what it was before President Clinton’s NAFTA.
Canadian behemoths might be spiffy clean, but their truck drivers are maniacs. It’s a problem across Canada--the only behavioral tic in an otherwise sedate, predictable, plodding national character. Add to that that they drive on I-5 with mindless delusions of grandeur because they know they’ll get a free pass from our cops in the name of NAFTA (it must be in the fine print somewhere).
Result: Canadian trucks go 10 miles over the speed limit, minimum; drive in whatever lane looks good to them; ride the bumpers of cars going the speed limit, even in the slow lane, even in bad weather; and only pull over at weighing stations if they’re in the mood.
If Mexican rigs are iffy instead of spiffy and CHPs look the other way, you’ll have all of the above and then some. Keep fighting.
Diane Broughton
Bellingham, Wash.
