June 5, 2001

REBUILD CONSENSUS FOR INTERNATIONAL TRADE

INCLUDE LABOR AND ENVIRONMENT IN FUTURE AGREEMENTS

Dear Colleague:

We are writing to invite you to sign the attached Dear Colleague to express your support for including labor and environmental provisions in future trade agreements.

The five-year lapse in trade promotion authority and the increasing public concern over the direction of U.S. trade and investment policy offer clear evidence that we need to rebuild a national consensus for international trade. To develop that consensus, we must include labor, environment and other issues of public concern in future trade negotiations. We believe these provisions must be enforced with tested, meaningful remedies.

We hope you will join us in signing this letter and advancing these important principles. If you have any questions or would like to sign, please contact Fernando Gomez (202-225-3605) or Michael Smart (202-225-2611).

Sincerely,

MARTIN FROST EARL POMEROY

Member of Congress Member of Congress

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Rebuild Consensus for International Trade

Include Labor and Environment in Core Text of Future Agreements

Dear Colleague:

The impasse over Fast Track and heightened concern about U.S. trade and investment policy have brought us to a new era in the trade debate. The public has rejected the old approach to trade, which excluded labor, environment and other issues of significant public interest from international trade negotiations. To rebuild a national consensus for trade, we must incorporate these issues on equal footing with commercial concerns in future trade agreements.

Specifically, labor and the environment should appear in the core text of future agreements with meaningful and proven methods of enforcement. We can see no reason why labor and the environment should be treated differently than other commercial concerns. Just as trade agreements prohibit countries from gaining unfair advantage through the use of subsidies and below-cost sales, so too should they prohibit the unfair advantage gained through violation of fundamental labor and environmental protections. Such prohibitions must be strongly enforced and include the prospect of trade sanctions.

Although we are encouraged by the emerging consensus that labor and the environment should be addressed in trade negotiations, we are concerned that some proposals offered recently amount to nothing more than mere "fig leaves." The shortcomings of these proposals are as follows:

• Monetary Fines. The only experience with fines to date, the NAFTA labor side agreement, includes such cumbersome procedures and minimal fines that violations have been largely undeterred. Unless they are enforced by trade sanctions, fines can be ignored with impunity.
  
  
• Side Agreements. There is no reason why labor and environmental should not enjoy equal status with commercial concerns in the core text of agreements.
  
  
• International Labor Organization. The ILO has never enforced labor rights against any country and does not have the authority the procedures or the will to do so.
  
  
• Negotiating Objectives. Simply including labor and environment in the negotiating objectives, without incorporating the issues in the agreement itself, is inadequate.

In our judgment, addressing labor, environmental and key public interest issues in future trade agreements is necessary to establish meaningful standards for acceptable practices in the global economy. We believe Congress should learn from past experience and insist that international agreements must protect workers' rights and the environment. We believe this will help markets function efficiently, improve the allocation of resources within and among developing and industrialized countries, and raise incomes and growth.

Sincerely,

MARTIN FROST EARL POMEROY

Member of Congress Member of Congress