WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. has drafted a plan to resolve labor and environmental disputes under future free trade agreements, seeking to balance the divergent concerns of Congress and foreign trading partners.
The proposed dispute-resolution process for labor and environmental disagreements follows guidelines in the trade promotion authority bill Congress narrowly approved over the summer. It comes ahead of a new round of talks in November with Chile and Singapore, which are in line for free trade agreements as soon as this year.
"There's a strong sensitivity in the developing world that any provisions are going to be used as protectionist measures," a senior U.S. trade official told reporters Wednesday at a background briefing.
The draft plan would go some way to addressing this sensitivity by requiring only that countries in free trade agreements enforce their own labor and environmental laws, rather than international or foreign standards. This approach is sometimes referred to as the Jordan model after a provision in a free trade agreement the U.S. signed with the middle eastern country in 2000.
The draft proposal for future agreements would also allow fines for abrogation of these laws to help pay to bring the offending country into compliance.
Developing countries' concerns about international labor and environmental standards helped sink the 1999 World Trade Organization talks in Seattle. And the three-year Doha round of WTO talks, launched last November, conspicuously avoids these standards.
U.S. trade officials said Wednesday they are addressing labor rights and the environment mainly through bilateral talks, as the subject isn't ripe at the WTO and participants in a proposed hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas have yet to agree even on how to talk about it.
The officials said this year's U.S. trade legislation found a delicate balance on labor and environmental issues that their draft can realize. Among other things, the proposal would prohibit participants in free trade agreements from eroding worker rights and environmental standards to attract foreign investment.
Officials gave hypothetical examples, such as a country that allows violation of its clean water laws to reduce domestic production costs or violation of union-organization rights to lower labor costs.
Based on evidence of a violation of internal labor and environmental standards, U.S. citizens, including union and environmental group leaders, could file a complaint with the U.S. government, which would decide whether to take the complaint to the foreign government. Likewise, free-trade-agreement participants could file complaints about U.S. practices.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. NoNonsense English offers this material non-commercially for research and educational purposes. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, i.e. the media service or newspaper which first published the article online and which is indicated at the top of the article unless otherwise specified.