[mobglob-discuss] Press Release: Fast Track Passes House 215-212 at 3:30am

[Gordon Flett]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:                     Contact: Chris Slevin
(202) 454-5140
July 27, 2002 3:00 a.m.

Midsummer Night's Massacre:
Controversial 304-page Trade Bill Few Have Read Is Rammed Through
Congress at 3:30 AM by Razor Thin Margin

Statement of Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade
Watch:

This travesty of a vote will be remembered as the Midsummer Night's
Massacre, where growing popular concern about corporate-led
globalization was shot down in favor of a backwards policy combining
corporate managed trade and global deregulation of basic consumer,
environmental and other public interest standards.

Over the past decade, public opposition to NAFTA-style trade deals has
grown so strong that now the only way to move this policy is to ram
through at 3:00 a.m. in the dark of night 304 pages of legislation
combining five different trade bills which was unavailable for public or
congressional review until hours before the vote.

This Fast Track bill is supposed to set the next five years of U.S.
trade and globalization policy. If U.S. negotiators follow the
outrageous agenda in this bill, including a 31-nation NAFTA expansion
and global deregulation of food safety, accounting, energy and other
standards, the resulting agreements would be dead on arrival in Congress
and in the court of public opinion.

A tidal wave of hypocrisy ripped through Washington's wee hours. It
has been a tawdry spectacle to watch the GOP House leadership and
President Bush ramming through a "trade" bill which has as its main
agenda promoting massive global corporate deregulation just hours after
crowing about passage of new regulations aimed at the corporate crime
wave caused by the very sort of deregulation this bill promotes
globally.

The trade package included authorization to negotiate a 31-nation
Free Trade Area of the Americas NAFTA expansion, new limits on
enforcement of labor or environmental standards in trade agreements, a
modest Trade Adjustment Assistance program, and an expansion to more
nations of the investor-to-state lawsuits of the North American Free
Trade Agreement, which allows foreign corporations to challenge domestic
regulatory standards before trade tribunals if they limit future
expected profits.

  # # # #

Timi Gerson
Organizer/FTAA Coordinator
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
215 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, Washington DC, 20003 USA
tgerson at c... & www.tradewatch.org
Ph: + 202-454-5103, Fax: + 202-547 7392

"Go without hate. But not without rage. Heal the world." - Paul Monette
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