Today, I have two very specific questions for Sens. Obama and Clinton that have nothing do with whether they would choose pearls over diamonds, what underwear they might don or how much they paid for a haircut but, rather, what they would do as president in handling trade around the globe. I hope these questions advance the discussion on trade among the candidates’ partisans, from a tit-for-tat on who said what in the past because, frankly, we’re ignoring a much, deeper danger from so-called "free trade". Either the candidates do not understand the dangers to their agenda posed by so-called "free trade" or, more worrisome, they understand the dangers quite well and are intentionally glossing the threats over.

The CLC was supposed to be funded, partly by the U.S., via a $2 million-a year appropriation, which would have meant that, over the period between 1993 and 2005, the CLC would have had $22 million from the U.S.. But, as Public Citizen found:

In another example of the gap between promised authorizations and actual funds appropriated to such programs, the CLC has only been granted $7.2 million of the $22 million it was authorized to receive from the United States as of 2005, or less than a third of the promised amount.

  Here’s a useful analogy. In the U.S., we have accepted, under Democratic and Republican Administrations alike, that injury, illness and death in the workplace are a cost of living in the wonders of the "free market". We make a show of enforcement—-the same show being proposed for NAFTA enforcement—-but the truth is that the system embraced, in a bipartisan way, does very little to ensure a safe workplace.

  Here’s what the AFL-CIO found in its 2007 report [the emphasis is mine]:

At its current staffing and inspection levels, it would take federal OSHA 133 years to inspect each workplace under its jurisdiction just once. In seven states (Florida, Delaware, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Maryland, and South Dakota), it would take more than 150 years for OSHA to pay a single visit to each workplace. In 18 states, it would take between 100 and 149 years to visit each workplace once. Inspection frequency is better in states with OSHA-approved plans, yet still far from satisfactory. In these states, it would now take the state OSHA’s a combined 62 years to inspect each worksite under state jurisdiction once.

The current level of federal and state OSHA inspectors provides one inspector for every 63,670 workers. This compares to a benchmark of one labor inspector for every 10,000 workers recommended by the International Labor Organization for industrialized countries. In the states of Arkansas, Florida, Delaware, Nebraska, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, the ratio of inspectors to employees is greater than 1/100,000 workers.

When the AFL-CIO issued its first report "Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect" in 1992, federal OSHA could inspect workplaces under its jurisdiction once every 84 years, compared to once every 133 years at the present time. Since the passage of the OSHAct, the number of workplaces and number of workers under OSHA’s jurisdiction has more than doubled, while at the same time the number of OSHA staff and OSHA inspectors has been reduced. In 1975, federal OSHA had a total of 2,405 staff (inspectors and all other OSHA staff) responsible for the safety and health of 67.8 million workers at more than 3.9 million establishments. In 2005, there were 2,208 federal OSHA staff responsible for the safety and health of more than 131.5 million workers at 8.5 million workplaces.

  Now, the current OSHA budget proposed for 2008 is $490 million. Yes, that’s a Bush budget. But, even in Democratic Administrations, OSHA was underfunded given the task described above.

  So, think about that for a moment: we have an entirely inadequate system in this country just to watch over safety and health in the workplace, funded at a miniscule level of several hundred million dollars—and, yet, we even more ludicrously proposed to oversee labor rights enforcement over three countries (the U.S., Mexico and Canada) at a laughingly pathetic and criminal level of a couple of million bucks?

  Senators, how do you propose to change that scheme? By raising the budget for enforcement 10 times to say $20 million per year? Or go wild and hike it 50 times to $100 million per year—still a pittance compared to our own failed system here in the U.S. Pick a number.

  The fact is enforcement is a farce. It was a farce created to buy a few votes to jam NAFTA through a Democratic Congress. It was a farce accepted by the labor movement,, which, weak as it was (and continues to be) felt that it was the best deal it could get in the face of a Democratic president (and his Labor secretary) who was a full-throated champion of so-called "free trade."

   We need to recognize it as a farce and stop playing rhetorical political gamesmanship.

   The problem is not enforcement of NAFTA. It is NAFTA itself and its very conception and framework.

   The most basic problem, hold on to your hats, is that so-called "free trade" agreements have little to do with trade; that is, the reducing of tariffs and eliminating of quotas. You got it—it’s just a marketing phrase, a very effective one, that obscures what most of the so-called "free trade" agreements like NAFTA (administered under the World Trade Organization) do.

  These deals have created a set of rules whose basic premise is: protect capital and investment. That means, among other wonderful benefits, expand monopoly patent rights on drugs and other goods; expand intellectual property rights (that means the rights not of individual authors but corporations); privatize and deregulate services (because it worked so well in the U.S., huh?); and weaken, cut or "harmonize" food safety laws.

  Over a number of months in this election season, I’ve focused in particular on the Chapter 11 provisions of so-called "free trade" deals like NAFTA. John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich were the only two candidates in the Democratic primary who were willing talk about the threat of the Chapter 11 rights imbedded in so-called "free trade".

  These rights encourage U.S. companies to move offshore, as well as open up basic U.S. environmental, health, zoning and other laws to attack (they allow a company to argue that a pro-labor or pro-consumer law constitute an unfair trade barrier and, therefore, needs to be eliminated).

  These deals allow companies to attack prevailing wage laws, recycled content and renewable energy policy remain.

  These deals still contain agriculture rules that displace millions of peasant farmers increasing hunger, social unrest, and desperate migration.

  These deals still allow food safety limits that require us to import meat not meeting our safety standards.

  These deals still allow drug companies to extend patent rights that undermine affordable access to medicine.

 These deals still let U.S. firms, such as Citibank, demand compensation if, for example, Peru (now the beneficiary of a so-called "free trade" deal supported by both Sens Clinton and Obama) tries to reverse course and end its awful social security privatization.

 Question #2: Senators, you both have extensive plans to deal with the crisis in health care reform and climate change. Do you realize how current global trade rules threaten to undermine your proposals, if they were to become U.S. law?

  I am not going to rehash the arguments about whose health care plan is better or who is more serious about climate change. The fact is that any of the proposed plans are headed for oblivion if significant changes are not made in global trade agreements.

  Public Citizen just released today a detailed analysis entitled "Presidential Candidates’ Key Proposals on Health Care and Climate Will Require WTO Modifications". I encourage you, whoever you support, to read this report.

The basic conclusion is this:

Significant changes not yet being discussed by the candidates must be made to existing U.S. trade pacts in order to implement the candidates’ priority health care and climate crises proposals. Changes to these agreements are also necessary for candidates’ domestic policy goals of creating jobs, countering wage inequality, rebuilding America’s manufacturing sector and infrastructure, and improving food and product safety and to succeed.

I’ll just highlight some of the key points made in the 29-page, heavily footnoted report. A quick reminder: the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the global organization that enforces rules negotiated in trade deals. It operates with virtually no oversight by our elected officials and rules on cases with virtually no input from elected representatives of any country. Corporations can bring cases before the WTO, arguing that national laws interfere with so-called "free trade" and seek their removal and/or the awarding of damages to the poor, aggrieved corporation—damages, by the way, that you end up paying as a taxpayer.

Let’s start with health care. Both Sens. Clinton and Obama have proposed health care reform that would bring, to one extent or another, broader coverage to millions of Americans. But, as the Public Citizen report points out, the WTO rules:

…forbids "measures which restrict or require specific types of legal entity or joint venture through which a service supplier may supply a service,"  which would forbid requirements that certain health services be provided only on a not-for-profit basis.

Both the Clinton and Obama plans propose some risk-pooling scheme as a way of reducing costs. Well, that provision would be challenged by foreign health insurance providers because:

"…under these expansive WTO rules, a new risk pooling system that has the effect of stopping foreign insurance firms from establishing new insurance businesses – for instance, because as a start up they cannot meet the requirements set for access to a risk pool of prospective U.S. clients – qualifies as a WTO-forbidden restriction on market access, even though that is not the intent of such a policy."

Want to reduce drug prices. Sorry, the WTO won’t allow that under its General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS):

Programs that interfere with or limit the distribution of pharmaceuticals are prohibited…absent changes, GATS and other "trade" agreements would provide a new avenue and new grounds for multinational pharmaceutical firms and their allies to attack these important governmental policies, which have generated billions of dollars in taxpayer and consumer savings and could save more if nationally implemented as the Democratic candidates propose. To the extent that formularies may result in limiting the distribution of medicines by foreign pharmaceutical firms, including giant Swiss, French and German firms operating within the United States, they could be considered a GATS-prohibited "exclusive service suppliers" list"

Let’s move to climate change. As the report points out:

Mitsuo Matsushita, a member of the WTO tribunal that ruled against the U.S. Clean Air Act in the WTO’s first dispute resolution case in 1996, notes that by signing the WTO, governments have already empowered the WTO to "allow Member Nations to challenge almost any measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enacted by any other Member."

Just take one example. Many advocates of addressing climate change have proposed, as have the two Senators, that the government extend loan guarantees and tax benefits for alternative energy that would also strengthen U.S. manufacturing. Guess what?

Many subsidies to green industry advocated by the presidential candidates could run afoul of the WTO’s Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM), especially since an exception initially included in this agreement for one-time environmental upgrades sunset in 2000. A subsidy as defined by the SCM’s Article 1 includes any financial contribution by a government that amounts to a conferred benefit to a ("specific") goods-producing industry or enterprise. This includes grants, loans, equity infusions, loan guarantees, tax credits and other fiscal incentives, government purchases, provision of government services, or any of the foregoing instruments funneled through a private body acting on the government’s behalf.

  And I haven’t even mentioned the threats to instituting more stringent fuel mileage requirements, banning coal-fired plants or phasing out incandescent light bulbs—all of which would be ripe for challenge by large corporations.

  Of course, the proponents of so-called "free trade" will proclaim that such a scenario is far-fetched or preposterous.

  Really? Does anyone doubt that, based on their track records and faced with the loss of potential profits of billions of dollars, global corporations in energy, health care or pharmaceutical companies would hesitate for even a nano-second to make use of any tool at their disposal to scuttle legislation that squeezes their bottom lines? Well, I’ve got ocean-front property in Nevada—-yes, it’s a futuristic bet on the post polar-cap era—-to sell you.

  So, Senators, if we could dispense with the current side-show around NAFTA and get down to brass tacks, let’s have a serious discussion about what you would do about trade rules.