Posted on 10/11/2005 10:51:58 AM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Senator Max Baucus has long successfully posed as a staunch defender of U.S. trade laws – this despite having supported all the recent trade deals that have either actually weakened those laws or rendered them irrelevant. But last month, the Montana Democrat's true colors were never clearer.
During the fight in 2001-2 over Presidential fast track trade negotiating authority, one of the most controversial issues was whether to permit the administration to put the future of U.S. trade laws on the table for negotiation in the next round of world trade talks. These laws – aimed at helping U.S. producers combat predatory foreign trade practices like subsidies, dumping, and intellectual property theft – were already greatly weakened by the 1994 Uruguay Round trade agreement that created the World Trade Organization. Still, they retained some bite, and therefore gutting them further or eliminating them altogether has since been a top priority of multinational outsourcers (whose foreign-produced exports to the United States could suffer), foreign governments and foreign corporations, and free trade extremists.
The Bush administration insisted on making the trade laws negotiable. Otherwise, Congress was told, other countries would never offer concessions of their own. But the White House's real aim was protecting Washington's time-honored strategy of sacrificing the interests of domestic manufacturers (the trade laws' chief beneficiaries) for promises of market opening in agriculture and services – allegedly industries of the future.
A major advocate of keeping the trade laws out of the negotiations was Senator Baucus, who flatly declared, "These laws should not be on the agenda at all. I do not accept the position that it was impossible to launch [the Doha round of world trade talks] without negotiating on trade laws."
The hard-liners were defeated on this issue by legislative trickery, but this fall, North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan revived the issue by proposing to block funding for U.S. government participation in any trade negotiations involving U.S. trade laws. Who led the successful opposition to Dorgan? None other than Max Baucus. Declared U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman after the outsourcers' victory, "I want to praise Senator [Charles] Grassley and Senator Baucus for their strong leadership on this critical vote."
Max Baucus has every right to support outsourcing and foreign-produced goods flooding into the U.S. market. But why doesn't he have the courage and the honesty to do it openly?
"Democrats Frustrated at WTO Negotiations on U.S. Antidumping Law," by Bruce Odessey, International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State, February 6, 2002;
"US Trade Representative Rob Portman Statement Praising Senate Action on Dorgan Amendment," The Office of the United States Trade Representative, September 15, 2005
"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
--Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816. FE 10:69
ping
Senator Baucus could just be the dullest man in American politics. Wow. I don't believe there's an angle on him.
But they love him in Montana. He's been in the Senate for a lot of years.
Good work, Max. Whatever it is you do. Yawn.
Senator Baucus could just be the dullest man in American politics. Wow. I don't believe there's an angle on him.
But they love him in Montana. He's been in the Senate for a lot of years.
Good work, Max. Whatever it is you do. Yawn.
There are too many conservatives in Washington, who are only conservative when they think we are looking.
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