VOANews.com (original link)

US Business Group: Include Other Issues in Trade Talks
Linda Cashdan
Washington
18 Jul 2001 15:06 UTC

Labor and environmental issues should be included in future international trade negotiations, according to an alliance of U.S. business leaders and academics. The Committee for Economic Development viewpoint is a departure from the traditional position of the U.S. business community.

Business wants new free-trade agreements. Liberals insist such accords must include worker and environmental protections.

Spokesman Elliot Schwartz says the Committee for Economic Development wants to forge a compromise that will end the domestic deadlock on trade in Congress. Under U.S. law, Congress gives the President authority to negotiate international trade agreements. Since that authority expired in 1994, Congress has refused to reinstate it.

As a result, Elliot Schwartz says, the United States has watched from the sidelines as other nations have signed bilateral and regional trade accords. "Europe and Chile and Mexico. Look around the world," Mr. Schwartz says. "There have been a number of free-trade agreements that do not include us. A free-trade agreement from which you are excluded puts you at a disadvantage. So we are finding now that some businesses are disadvantaged in international trade because we are not part of these economic agreements."

Mr. Schwartz admits endorsing the idea of incorporating labor and environmental standards in trade accords is a change for the business-based Committee for Economic research. "This group has always been progressive thinking about trade and investment and about international economics," Mr. Schwartz explains. "But I would credit the protestors for these labor, and environmental issues. This is departure in terms of this group's thinking about the importance of those issues."

Will the report change the thinking of the rest of the U.S. business community? That, Mr. Schwartz says, remains to be seen. "I think most of the business community the Chamber of Commerce and so on would rather not talk about the labor and environment issues and would just rather follow ahead with the very good case for free trade."

Mr. Schwartz says the Committee believes the only way to get free trade agreements is to talk about those other issues as well.