On Sept. 5, the United States, Canada and Mexico finished the second round of talks on renegotiating a new North American Free Trade Agreement. The AFL-CIO laid out 17 ways that NAFTA needs to be improved so that we can have a North American economy that works for families, not just global corporations. So how well are the U.S. negotiators doing at creating a better deal for workers? Not well.
Granted, it is early in the process, and we don’t know a lot yet, but that’s part of the problem.
Our number one recommendation was that negotiators should be more transparent, most importantly by making public the rules they’re proposing for the new NAFTA. So far, the U.S. negotiators are failing. There has been no improvement in making the process open to the general public. As working people know, if we are not at the table, we are on the menu, so this grade is crucial.
In some important areas, the United States has not made proposals, including on labor and tax dodging. In other important areas, such as rules of origin or Buy American, the U.S. proposals are incomplete. Basically, this progress report has a lot of incomplete grades.
Is the U.S. team doing well in any areas at all? Well...the positions on enforcement and state-owned enterprises are a good starting point but need to go much further.
In sum, the U.S. negotiators need to up their game. If I were still a teacher and the U.S. negotiators were in my class, I’d be calling the parents tonight to work out an improvement plan to make sure they could pass my class. Of course, there is still plenty of time left to bring the grade up, but the question is whether the U.S. negotiators are motivated to improve or whether they just want to keep recycling failed trade ideas that will add up to another pro-corporate, anti-worker deal.
Stay tuned....
Note: If the texts are secret, how does the AFL-CIO know if the proposals are good or bad? The AFL-CIO has a seat on the Labor Advisory Committee, which has access to some U.S. proposals. However, because the texts are classified, we cannot reveal the details of any proposals.