Oh Man, Oman

David Sirota

July 21, 2006

David Sirota is The New York Times bestselling author of Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government—And How We Take It Back , (Crown, 2006). He is the co-chair of the nonpartisan Progressive States Network .

Thirteen years after the celebrated passage of NAFTA, few in Washington, D.C.’s elite circles like to talk much about America’s trade policy. It’s the kind of issue that is either discussed in a barrage of meaningless, dishonest “world-is-flat” non-sequiturs, or whispered about in hushed tones in a way you’d talk about a salacious sex affair.

That’s not surprising because on trade—as on no other issue—Congress has screwed ordinary Americans behind our back, publicly pledging loyalty to our interests while carrying on a steamy affair with Big Money interests that have bought our political process.

The latest tryst in this sordid affair came this week, with the passage of the Oman Free Trade Agreement . But now, as Americans’ job security, wages and benefits are being decimated, more citizens are pulling back the sheets and figuring out what's going on. Try as the Establishment might to hide the truth, Americans are realizing that the economic havoc being wrought on the middle class is fueled not by some inexplicable force of nature, but by corrupt trade policies that are the lovechild of politicians and Big Money—trade policies that undermine U.S. national security and deliberately force Americans into an economic race to the bottom.

Calling the Oman pact a “free” trade agreement is a deceptive misnomer. It is free only of provisions that would protect ordinary citizens, while it is chock full of ultra-protectionist measures designed to expand the profits of the corporations whose lobbyists wrote the bill.

This hypocrisy was spelled out to lawmakers in the lead-up to the vote by more than 400 religious, environmental, labor, human rights and consumer advocacy organizations that begged Congress to reject the deal. For instance, the nonprofit Citizens Trade Campaign  protested the exclusion of any provisions making the pact contingent on Oman verifiably improving its awful record of oppressing workers. In a letter to Congress, the group reminded lawmakers that Oman refuses to adhere to core International Labor Organization standards protecting workers rights to organize and that the State Department has documented forced labor and widespread human trafficking in Oman.

Similarly, environmental groups like The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and Friends of the Earth told lawmakers  that, like other destructive trade agreements, the Oman deal excluded language “to clearly require either country to maintain and effectively enforce a set of basic environmental laws and regulations.”

What’s in the trade pact is even worse than what isn’t. For instance, the nonprofit Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health warned lawmakers that the Oman pact cedes a lot of legal ground to pharmaceutical companies, at the expense millions, even billions, who need affordable, life-saving medicines. Meanwhile, Public Citizen exposed provisions allowing foreign governments to ow n critical U.S. national security assets such as our ports. That’s right—just a few months after the Dubai Ports controversy, in which politicians of both parties in Congress pledged to prevent foreign ownership of key security assets, those same politicians quietly inserted language into a trade pact that would cement the legality of such transactions for good.

A trade deal like this that rewards worker oppression, undermines Americans’ job security, promotes environmental degradation, encourages health industry price gouging and weakens America’s post-9/11 security is nauseating to most Americans.

But congressmen and senators are not most Americans. They live in a world where their job security has nothing to do with the public policies undermining ordinary citizens’ economic security, and everything to do with their ability to shake down corporate campaign contributions. It is a world, in short, where a travesty like the Oman Free Trade Agreement is celebrated because it is a vehicle to increase Big Money’s bottom line.

The lack of labor protections in the pact encourages American companies to either directly exploit Oman’s oppressed workers, or use the threat of outsourcing to Oman as a way to extract wage and benefit concessions from American workers at home. The lack of environmental protections provides an incentive for companies to move operations overseas, so as to reduce the overhead incurred by having to adhere to basic standards in the United States. The inclusion of restrictive drug patent protections—now a staple of U.S. trade policy—preserves pharmaceutical companies’ ability to price gouge by making sure impoverished nations can never move forward with producing lower-priced generic drugs to fight plagues ravaging their populations. And the provisions allowing foreign ownership of strategic national security assets sets a precedent that national security will always come second to the corporate profit motive.

The Oman pact followed what has become a well-rehearsed script and a well-trodden path for all trade deals. The White House first introduced the bill in the U.S. Senate. Trade deals typically start in this club of multimillionaires because lobbyists know the institution’s politeness and courtesy manifests itself as obedience and subservience to corporate wishes. And like clockwork, when the Oman pact came up for a vote, 10 Democrats—including progressive icons like Sen. Barack Obama—joined with 50 Republicans to pass the bill easily.

The pact then moved to the House—a corrupt institution under the Republican leadership, to be sure, but one where by virtue of its size, things can be more unpredictable, especially in an election year. With a House majority in sight in 2006, Democrats should have viewed the pact as a perfect vehicle for defining Republicans on both corruption and national security. A defeat of the pact in the House would generate major headlines for the party on both scores, helping them contrast themselves with the GOP. And defeat was possible—more than enough maverick Republicans defied their leadership and indicated their opposition to the bill.

But rest assured, the forces pushing the trade pact weren’t worried. As with nearly every trade pact that has come down the pike in the last two decades, a handful of Democrats joined with most Republicans to give the White House the votes it needed to overcome its own principled GOP mavericks, and undermine the majority of Democrats who voted against the pact. Those turncoats included lawmakers like Reps. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calf., Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., Greg Meeks, D-N.Y., and Bill Jefferson, D-La., who represent districts with nearby ports that, thanks to their votes, can now be owned by foreign governments. Shocking? Not really. After years of corporate-funded organizations like the Democratic Leadership Council and its high-profile disciples like President Bill Clinton polluting the Democratic Party with never-actually-substantiated rhetoric about the supposed benefits to workers of these sell-out deals, lobbyists know they have a reliable cadre of Democrats willing to undermine their own party in deference to Big Money.

Undoubtedly, there is a silver-lining, especially in considering the long view. Congressional margins in passing such trade deals are getting smaller. The recent Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was passed by just two votes in the House. The Oman trade pact—which was originally expected to pass by a very wide margin—passed by only eight votes. That’s real progress from just a few years back when similar trade pacts passed by wide gaps.

Additionally, while trade has in the past been treated as an apolitical, bipartisan, Washington consensus issue, it is now being used as a potent political weapon on the campaign trail by a new breed of populists. At least three Republican lawmakers who voted for CAFTA voted against Oman after the Democrats challenging them for re-election energetically attacked them for their original vote. Likewise, in Ohio, Democrat Rep. Sherrod Brown is putting his courageous efforts to reform America’s trade policy at the center of his campaign to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Mike DeWine. Pundits have, not surprisingly, attacked Brown for his focus on trade—but polls show he is now in a statistical dead heat with DeWine, meaning trade could be a deciding issue in the most politically important state and most important Senate race in the country.

Also not to be forgotten is how trade is forging powerful new coalitions between seemingly disparate interests. Just last week, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC)—enemies on many issues—teamed up in hosting a summit at the National Press Club that launched a campaign to radically reform America’s trade policy for the better. The AFL-CIO wants its members’ economic rights protected. USBIC, which represents small, family-owned domestic manufacturers, wants a trade policy that stops creating unfair advantages for giant multinational corporations that outsource jobs. The two could make quite a team, especially in educating different constituencies all over America about how trade policy affects citizens’ livelihood.

The debate over the Oman pact may be over, but the trade issue is not going away. The White House is pursuing new trade pacts with countries such as Malaysia—a country that essentially outlaws a minimum wage. It is also pushing a trade pact with South Korea that could include language to permit North Korea and its enslaved population to be included. As these and other deals come before Congress at the same time more Americans economic lives are destabilized, populist anger will continue to froth, regardless of the happy-talk that flows out of Washington.

More Americans will want to know why their government is selling them out. More Americans will ask why we aren’t using America’s incredible economic leverage to craft trade policies that force other countries to end their oppressive policies as a condition of doing business with us. More Americans, in sum, will demand an end to the X-rated affair between Big Money and our government that is fueling a never-ending race to the bottom.