Evizda

Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said this week that it is unlikely that a Fast Track trade bill will come before lawmakers for consideration before April.

According to Reuters, “Hatch said talks on the trade bill, seen as key to finalizing the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), were ‘stuck’ over Democratic demands to allow unsatisfactory deals to be taken off the fast track.”

While the delay affords time for Republican leaders to line up votes in favor of the corporate-friendly trade agreement, it also provides a window for “a long overdue serious national debate on our global trade and tax policy,” writes Robert Borosage, founder and president of the Institute for America’s Future, in an op-ed published Friday.

A good starting point for that debate could be the alternative trade strategy (pdf) released this week by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)—a set of broad principles “to establish standards for U.S. trade policy that put workers first, balance trade deficits, and improve labor and environmental protections around the world.”

“The CPC seeks more trade, but on terms that will strengthen working families, not sabotage them,” Borosage writes.

The Caucus charges that since implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, “the U.S. has lost millions of jobs in key sectors like manufacturing, wages have stagnated, and the standard of living for working families has dropped.” Current trade deals up for negotiation, such as the TPP and the equally troubling Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe, offer the American people more of the same, the progressive lawmakers say.