Levin Unveils Plan for TPP Talks, Targets Vietnamese Labor, SOEs
The top House Democrat on trade released a report on Sept. 18 that reiterates a call for more congressional influence on U.S. free trade agreements and trade policy in order to ensure FTAs best serve U.S. workers, the economy and the environment. House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Sandy Levin, D-Mich., is urging trade policymakers to include the principles of the “May 10th Agreement,” brokered in 2007 among lawmakers, in all U.S. FTAs. That pact focuses on worker rights, environmental protections, access to medicine and human rights.
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Vietnam poses a particular challenge on labor rights in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, said Levin in the report. “Before Congress considers TPP, Vietnam’s labor laws and regulations must be amended to implement the labor obligations in the agreement, and a special monitoring and enforcement structure in place to ensure compliance going forward,” he said. Levin also urged the administration to back off its TPP tobacco carve-out proposal. A TPP agreement should also include strengthened measures on sanitary and phytosanitary measures, he added.
The report also says the U.S. should require export market access in its FTAs through confronting currency manipulation, state-owned enterprises and Japanese auto market restrictions. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said recently TPP partners have not yet discussed currency in the negotiations (see 14050123). The Vietnamese are also demanding mass exemptions on SOE rules in a TPP agreement, observers say (see 14091028). “The administration’s proposal has faced significant resistance from some TPP partners, many of whom employ significant numbers of SOEs and would benefit from a weakening in the text,” said Levin. “While it appears that the parties are beginning to coalesce around the text of the general obligations, some of the parties now appear to be pushing for exceedingly broad country-specific carve-outs for particular SOEs.”