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Fast Track was designed in 1974 for ACTUAL "trade" agreements. It was NOT designed to expedite a
...Corporate Dream List of environmental, labor, financial, safety, and labeling de-regulation, nor to expand intellectual property monopolies.
It was designed so that agreements actually pertaining to reducing tariffs, duties, and other limited, trade-related issues could be negotiated, and the negotiated trade agreement voted on without amendment.
It was NOT designed to provide an expedited, no-amendment, limited-debate path to over-ride environmental, labor, financial, health and safety laws, and regulatory authority by federal, state, and local governmental entities, all in one fell swoop.
And it certainly was not designed to implement wide ranging revisions of federal, state, and local laws whose enforcement would be handed over to essentially sovereign "Investor-State Dispute resolution" tribunals whose decisions can not appealed to the courts.
The history of the role of Congress, and the history of Fast Track, is relevant:
The Trade Act of 1974 established a Fast Track process in which legislative changes in existing law which were required to bring the US into compliance with a negotiated trade agreement would be handled with an expedited process in which no amendments were allowed.
The initial negotiations under the GATT, including the Kennedy Round (the 6th session of GATT negotiations) were conducted prior to a Fast Track process, under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962:
Under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Congress granted the President authority for five years to enter into agreements that negotiated the reduction or elimination of tariffs. The act also expanded Congress’s role in the negotiating process by requiring the President to submit for Congressional review a copy of each concluded agreement and a presidential statement explaining why the agreement was necessary.
It allowed the President to conclude the GATT Kennedy Round (1963-1967), the last round in which tariff reduction was the primary focus of trade negotiations. . . . .Along with a number of tariff reduction agreements, which were covered by the congressional trade agreements authority, the GATT member countries reached agreements in the Kennedy Round in two areas related to nontariff barriers (NTBs), that is, laws and rules other than tariffs that are used to restrict imports. The first was a customs valuation agreement that would have required the United States to eliminate the American Selling Price method of pricing goods at the border. The second was an anti-dumping agreement that would have required changes in U.S. anti-dumping practices.
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33743.pdf
It was thus in the context of a world in which the "non-tariff barriers" requiring changes in US law were 2 specific clearly trade related issues (customs valuation and anti-dumping regulations) that the Fast Track process was enacted enacted in the Trade Act of 1974. As these non-tariff issues required changes is US law to bring laws into compliance with the agreement, and the issue of changing US law relating to non-tariff issues had not been clarified in the act authorizing the Kennedy Round (the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, in which Congress granted the President authority, for 5 years, to enter into agreements that negotiated the reduction or elimination of tariffs) the Trade Act of 1974 initiated a Fast Track process whereby changes in existing law needed to bring the US into compliance would be handled in an expedited manner (Fast Track) with no amendment.
The 1974 Fast Track process was subsequently extended through 1994, at which time it lapsed until 2002, when it was re-authorized until 2007.
But what is designated a "Trade Agreement" in 2015 bears little resemblance to the Trade Agreements for which the "Fast Track" process was designed 1n 1974:
In 1974, Congress judged it appropriate to authorize the president to negotiate tariff reduction and a limited number of non-tariff issues that were nevertheless strictly trade related, and have the subsequent agreement voted on expeditiously with limited debate and no amendments.
For Congress in 2015 to be asked to re-enact a no-amendment "Fast Track" process, but apply an agreement which overrides wide-ranging non-trade areas of law (including but not limited to environmental, labor, financial, intellectual property, health & safety), negotiated with corporate input and in unprecedented secrecy, is an entirely different matter.
We are in a different world in 2015.
Corporate lawyers certainly understand that each of these individual changes to environmental, or labor, or intellectual property, or other law would be extremely difficult to get through Congress, and would rightly generate intense debate, and that it is far easier to make these changes part of a "trade" agreement that Congress cannot amend, but have only the option of rejecting the entire package.
The evolution of "trade" agreements to be all-encompassing vehicles for changing non-trade related law was certainly not anticipated when the Fast Track process was created in 1974.
A "no-amendment" up-or-down-only requirement which was designed for, and might have make sense in 1974 for tariff reduction (and for other non-tariff but strictly trade associated negotiations/agreements), when applied to 21st century negotiations which overturn environmental, labor, financial, intellectual property, health and safety law and regulations at the federal, sate, and local level, becomes (rather than a method of lowering "trade" barriers) a vehicle for corporate undermining of democratic process.
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Dispute-Resolution" tribunals which allow corporations to sue local, state, and federal governmental entities for loss of anticipated profits, and whose decisions can not be appealed.
Here's the New York State Atoorney General's discussion of how state laws are gutted:
http://election.democraticunderground.com/10026540024
This overriding is not limited to environmental law:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/jim-hightower-global-trade-deal-corporate-coup-detat
http://www.laprogressive.com/tpp-nightmare/
Fast Track was developed in 1974 to address issues including the fact that trade agreements bind us to provisions that may, and often conflict with our existing laws. This is dealt with by enabling legislation. Subsequently, the evolution of ISDR tribunals make all levels of government liable for the "loss of profits" due to their existing laws.
"And how does fast-track 'expedite' anything? How does it limit debate?"
"Any Congressman who doesn't like it or who even has a bad vibe about it can vote 'No'."
The entire point of Fast Tract is to expedite the process by prohibiting amendments, and requiring an up-or-down vote on the unamended agreement within a specific time framework, and to then, after denying Congress input into their Constitutionally assigned duty to regulate foreign trade and commerce, place Congress in the position of only having the option to approve the unaltered agreement or reject it in entirety and be labelled "obstructionist".
You haven't been paying attention (when you assert "No one is going to sue a country for not allowing said company to build coal-burning plants within their borders. No one is going to sue a country for not allowing said company to drain all its water. This is just bogus fear-mongering."
It's already happening with the "trade" agreements already on the books:
A Bloomberg investigation this month shed light on the corruption and biases of purportedly neutral arbitrators. For example, Swiss law professor Gabrielle Kaufmann-Kohler sat on an international tribunal involving Argentina. She failed to disclose that she sits on the board of UBS, which holds shares in one of the companies in the case she was deciding. Argentina sought to remove Kaufmann-Kohler from the bench, but was unsuccessful.
....Arbitrators with neoliberal biases often decide cases in favor of corporate interests at the expense of a country’s ability to protect its citizens and enact regulation.
For example, in 2010, tobacco giant Phillip Morris initiated a case against Uruguay, contending that the tobacco regulations recently enacted by the government violate the BIT between Uruguay and Switzerland. The company has threatened to sue Australia over its tobacco regulation as well, and, as Investment Treaty News reports, has pushed the U.S. Trade Representative’s office to include strong investment protections for tobacco trademarks in the TPP.
Another example: In 2009, Swedish energy corporation Vattenfall initiated the first investor-state case against Germany (for $1.4 billion) over the country’s environmental measures related to coal power, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). The corporation sued Germany again in 2012, this time for $3.7 billion, after Germany decided to phase out nuclear energy following the Japanese Fukushima disaster.
http://tcf.org/blog/detail/why-the-trans-pacific-partnership-could-leave-us-at-the-mercy-of-corporatio
And your portrayal of the respective roles of the the roles of the executive and legislative branches ("Congress does not get to meddle in the treaty with Iran, for instance. They do not get to dictate every handshake Obama makes, as with Cuba. Now they can pull the purse strings all they want . . . ) is, to put it mildly a little unbalanced.
Here's more balance from the Congressional Research Service:
The U.S. Constitution assigns express authority over the regulation of foreign trade to Congress.
Article I, Section 8, gives Congress the power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations ... ”
and to “ ... lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises.... ” In contrast, the Constitution
assigns no specific responsibility for trade to the President. 3 Under Article II, however, the
President has exclusive authority to negotiate treaties and international agreements and exercises
broad authority over the conduct of the nation’s foreign affairs. Both legislative and executive
authorities come into play in the development and execution of U.S. trade agreements.
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33743.pdf
In 1974, delegating to the President authority to negotiate actual foreign trade agreements and providing a no-amendment "Fast Track" process, the Congress recognized advantages of doing so with regard to agreements that were actually about trade.
With regard to Iran & Cuba, those relationships are foreign relations which are within the constitutionally assigned duties of the president (and they are not within the "foreign trade" area which is constitutionally assigned to Congress).
But that is totally different from the process we are currently witnessing where all manner of federal, state, and local law (environmental, financial, labor, health and safety) are overridden by a "trade" agreement that is then attempted to be presented to Congress in an expedited fashion, with no ability to amend.
This was not what Fast track was intended for when it was designed in 1974, and it is not good for the health of democratic process in 2015.
...a successful route to bypass democratic rule, and intimidate governmental entities:
Canada and Mexico have so far been the biggest losers in this scheme. The U.S. government has faced several Chapter 11 lawsuits but has not lost a case. But all three countries have had to pay huge sums in legal costs, or in fees paid to arbitration courts. In all cases, the losers are ordinary citizens, because the money to placate corporations and pay these expenses comes from the public purse. And forever more, policymakers will have to think twice about passing any law to protect the public from corporate excesses. Mexico has lost at least five disputes under Chapter 11, totaling more than $200 million in penalties, and many more cases may result from the privatization of mining concessions in the country. According to the Mexican Ministry of Economy, today there are 857 mining projects planned or in operation — of which two thirds are destructive gold and silver operations, which can badly pollute soil and drinking water. Any future legislation to halt or curb any of these projects could incur a claim under NAFTA rules, since the great majority of foreign mining companies in Mexico are of U.S. or Canadian origin.
Indeed, as the Institute for Policy Studies noted in the report “Mining for Profits in International Tribunals,” extractive industries are increasingly using investment protection rules under free trade or bilateral investment agreements to sue governments when public resistance, environmental assessments, or legal decisions interfere with destructive mega-projects. More than half of these ISDS cases, under NAFTA and other agreements, have been filed against Latin American countries. . . . . . Canada, meanwhile, has lost or settled five NAFTA Chapter 11 cases, totaling over $157 million in compensation paid to foreign companies. Billions of dollars remain in dispute.
Two recent cases are instructive. In the first, Lone Pine Resources is asking for $250 million to compensate investors for Quebec’s publicly supported partial moratorium on fracking for natural gas under the St. Lawrence River. In the second, Eli Lilly is demanding $500 million for twice failing Canada’s more stringent test for proving a patent’s utility, resulting in the company losing patents (albeit at the end of their lifespans) for blockbuster anti-depression drugs. The Eli Lilly case is a direct attack on the independence of Canadian courts, and the Lone Pine Resource case wages war on the ability of Canadians to protect their environment.
Chapter 11 (of NAFTA) has served as a model for more than 3,000 bilateral investment treaties existing today. Many of them are contained under other free trade agreements, and the number of investor-state cases is soaring rapidly. There are today at least 500 pending corporate lawsuits against government decisions, and corporations are continually discovering how to use the ISDS to extract huge sums from public treasuries without even having to make tangible investments. . . . . .The “chilling effect” that these rules put on governments is now undeniable. The mere threat of an investment lawsuit can be enough to discourage new public interest legislation that could interfere with a corporation’s expected profits.
http://canadians.org/media/nafta-20-model-corporate-rule
First, you stated (in Reply 12) "No one is going to sue a country for not allowing said company to build coal-burning plants..", calling such concerns "bogus fear-mongering.." Then when you were shown that corporations were already suing for billions related to coal plants and nuclear plants, as well as numerous other examples of challenges to various laws & regulations through the ISDR process, you shifted to arguing that the claims were not successful.
The reality is, that even disregarding the hundreds of millions of dollars in successful claims by corporations challenging environmental and other laws, that there is a chilling effect on democratic processes. This includes, not only federal law, but state and local law.
Our Congress is now being asked to use a Fast Track process designed for tariff reduction, to advance an agreement containing a process that corporations are using to bypass all manner of regulations.
These are areas that Congress should not surrender their authority and duty to amend and provide guidance.
