Claude Barfield explores the background to and implications of the House vote changing its fast track rules to avoid taking up the Columbia trade agreement: The Fast-Track Trade War (The American, May 7 - hat tip to Simon Lester at the International Economic Law and Policy Blog: What's Going on with Fast Track?, May 8). This is a fascinating article.
Barfield says that "The entire episode transpired over a 48-hour period, and it left the White House and pro-FTA business lobbyists stunned and disarmed." I can't believe they were stunned because they were unaware of the actions the Democrats might take. The Administration must have been aware of what might happen and it chose to take a big risk - without a contingency plan - by forcing the issue.
Barfield only talks about internal Democratic strategy planning in January. But this action by the Democrats was not just discussed within closed Democratic circles at that time, it was also in the press. Doug Palmer wrote a story on this for Reuters in January: Will the Columbia FTA debate destroy the idea of "fast track"? (The Custom-House, January 20). At Global Trade Watch Todd Tucker was also talking about this: Bush to circumvent Congress on Colombia FTA? (January 2). So it was in the air.
The Palmer story followed earlier news reports that the Administration would try to force the issue, and I assume it was floated by Democratic sources as a signal to try and head off just the unilateral action the Administration ultimately took.
I'm not certain about the scope of the damage (although I do think there has been some damage) from this peek at the Wizard of Fast-track behind his curtain (Bad News From the Beltway, The Custom-House, April 9, 2008). My impression was that Pelosi tried to limit the precedent: she noted that it was a reaction to the Administration's deviation from past norms and that it was limited to the Columbia agreement. Moreover, what is the difference between the House effectively deep-sixing the agreement through this parliamentary maneuver, or more formally refusing to ratify it?
Just by way of context for this post, I think that the House's delay in taking up this agreement, the Administration's forcing of the issue, and the House's rule change (rather than more formally voting the agreement down) were all against U.S. interests.
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