Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI) yesterday (Nov. 10) said despite efforts by officials from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to seek more support from Democrats for free trade agreements, USTR has shown little willingness to compromise on labor issues.
USTR has not offered to change its long-standing position that FTA labor provisions should only require a country to enforce its own labor standards, which Democrats have rejected as insufficient, he said in an interview.
“It’s good that they are reaching out,” Levin said. “The question is what they have in their hands.”
Levin said he discussed his demands with U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman that FTAs generally and the Andean FTA in particular include labor provisions obligating countries to adhere to the five core labor standards of the International Labor Organization. But, USTR seems to be “stuck in cement” to the enforce your own laws standard, he said.
For example, Levin noted that USTR has not seriously considered offers made by its FTA partners to strengthen labor provisions. During a September visit to Washington, Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo said Peru would be willing to incorporate the ILO’s basic labor standards into the FTA and provide for an enforcement mechanism.
But, Levin noted that USTR officials have downplayed this offer in meetings he had with them following Toledo’s visit. Levin said USTR suggested that Toledo had not really meant to make this offer.
Levin said Democrats will continue to push for labor provisions in FTAs that require labor laws to conform with the ILO five core labor standards. He said they want these provisions to be enforceable in the free trade agreement the U.S. is now negotiating with the Andean countries. “It’s been our basic position for years,” he said.
It would be a “dreadful mistake” for USTR to insist on labor provisions in the Andean agreement which would be a “carbon copy” of the labor chapter in the Central American Free Trade Agreement, he said. The CAFTA requires that parties enforce their own laws.
Levin repeated his long-standing position that incorporating international labor standards into free trade agreements is critical to ensure that the benefits of globalization are spread to all levels of society.
Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Americas Regina Vargo late last week again reiterated USTR’s interest in rebuilding the bipartisan coalition for trade agreements. In a Nov. 4 speech, she said Portman has made this one of his top priorities.
She said she thought this was “particularly true with respect to labor, where our FTAs offer so much potential to improve the labor conditions in our FTA partners.” But, Vargo declined to comment on whether it would be possible to gain more Democratic support for the Andean FTA without making some changes to the provisions in the labor chapter.
Vargo also signaled that it is unlikely the Andean FTA talks can be concluded by the end of the year, as demanded by Andean negotiators. She said the U.S. also wants to bring the negotiations to a close, but that it would be “incredibly challenging” to do so, because the talks are “uneven in their progress.”
Vargo noted that while some areas of the negotiations are advanced or done on a technical level, others have a substantial amount of work remaining.
Several sources said the parties remain far apart in their negotiations on intellectual property and agriculture, which are among the most contentious areas of the talks.
The next round of talks for the FTA that the U.S. is negotiating with Colombia, Ecuador and Peru will begin in Washington on Monday, Nov. 14.
“I think we all recognize that the time has come to advance the issues and take some concrete decisions,” Vargo said.
Meanwhile, President Bush met with President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, President Alfredo Palacio of Ecuador and President Alejandro Toledo of Peru on Nov. 4 while attending the Summit of the Americas in Mar de Plata, Argentina.
The Andean leaders had planned to ask Bush for more flexibility from the U.S. in negotiating the agreement, but sources said the meeting didn’t result in any concrete commitments by Bush.
Two negotiating groups have met since the chief negotiators last met in Washington in mid-October.
The group on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures met Nov. 1-2 and sources said negotiators made no progress. Andean negotiators saw the U.S. as backtracking in its position since the last two negotiating rounds in Miami and Cartagena, Colombia in August and September.
In these previous meetings, Colombia and the U.S. had discussed setting up guidelines to establish working groups to address specific SPS issues. Although the U.S. had made a proposal on such guidelines in the previous round, it withdrew it during last week’s meeting, one source said. The U.S. was expected to present a revised SPS proposal this week, the source said.
In September, the Andean side stepped back from its demands that a working group on SPS have its own dispute settlement mechanism in light of U.S. opposition. But Colombia continues to push for an effective way in which the working group could ensure that SPS issues critical for market access could be addressed.
Negotiators were meeting this week from Nov. 8 to 11 in Washington to work on intellectual property issues, including less sensitive issues such as trademarks, geographical indications, enforcement and copyright.
They did not address hot-button issues such as U.S. proposals to extend patents or the Andean proposal on biodiversity to protect the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples, sources said.