Trade Pacts Vs. Cuddly Kittens Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Earlier this week, there was a story on the NY Times business pages about promising negotiations between Congressional Democrats and USTR that would put worker rights, environmental standards and the right to make generic versions of key medicines into some pending South American trade pacts, thus moving back toward the status quo Clinton of trade pacts that at least don't undermine existing international law in those areas, and possibly allow for progress on them.

Today, and I expect for some days to follow, there will be MONSTER HEADLINES about the presence of dangerous and potentially toxic chemicals in imported (from China) wheat gluten that went into tainted pet food.    

This story has the potential to do for trade negotiations what years of carefully thought-out advocacy on American jobs, environmental impacts, the harm of US trade subsidies to poor developing-country farmers, etc. has failed to do:  bring them to a grinding halt.  It will get covered everywhere.

And it is a huge safety issue:  human food produced in the US is safer than it has ever been, thanks in no small part to Clinton-era requirements for testing of foods popular with children put in place in the wake of the Alar scare; but we import more food from countries with laxer standards (some of those laxer standards now being required by our trade agreements; see my first paragraph) than ever before. 

EPA says the risks from pesticide residues on imported foods were four times as high as the risks from domestic foods back in 2003 -- and that's human foods, where there's a higher level of scrutiny.

In the end, Americans will want it all:  out-of-season raspberries from South America, cheap frozen veggies from China, discount dog food AND US-level safety standards.  There's the potential for an almighty ruckus until they get it. 

That raises some interesting opportunities for progressives:  first, a terrific example of why standards and globally-agreed rules of the road matter, and second, a door for reframing trade as a means to ends and not an end in itself.

But it also poses big risks, chief among them reinforcing the idea that everything we take in from overseas is potentially risky, and the only answer is to close our doors:  to products, people, international institutions, etc.  That's not an approach that works for progressives' core ideas in the long run, but some will find it awfully tempting in the short run.

ps.  Pebbles up there was photographed for the Associated Press by Reed Saxon, and sadly s/he (Pebbles, I mean) did not make it, according to USA Today.

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