The National Association of Manufacturers has even started an "employee" trade education program to compel workers at the US base corporation to support their employer's trade positions.

How do we react to this education offensive: with an offense or a defense?

The free traders made a tactical decision in the fall of 1994 to improve the chances of their getting the 8th round of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) Passed to create the World Trade Organization (WTO) by pulling Fast Track out of the legislative package. Fast Track would have given the President the ability to negotiate trade agreements with Congress only being allowed to say yes or no to the whole package as compared to Congress being allowed to make changes to the agreement. President Clinton tried to get Fast Track in 1997, but when it was obvious he didn't have enough support in the US House of Representatives, the vote was cancelled.

The way this victory for our side was stated by Lori Wallach, Director Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch is that, "after seven years we have stopped what was seen in 1990 as unstoppable momentum for 'free trade' ... and sacked Fast Track altogether." This means that we should be able to move on to the second half of the long term agenda of "sack and replace."

Congress should be held, by its constituents, responsible for the results of free trade agreements on labor and the environment so they need to demand a real say in the formation of these agreements. Trade negotiators should not be able to remake domestic laws in their behind the scenes work.. Both the public and the Congress need a meaningful role in this process and Congress should be able to vote on and, if need be, make language changes to trade agreements prior to them becoming binding international agreements.

One reason fair trade advocates are not confident in moving
on to the offensive is that President Clinton announced in a September 1998 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations that the Administration will launch a campaign
in January to obtain Fast Track and Several other long-standing Administration trade agenda items. The free traders decided
to ask for all of their, obviously "extremist," agenda knowing that if they won -- so
much the better for them-- but if they lost, they could scale back and put up a knock-down, drag-out fight, (like they did for NAFTA) in 1999.

Anyone who cares about labor or environmental issues will need to get involved to make sure that "fair trade" wins this next, and hopefully, last battle.

The reason anyone who cares about the global environment needs to help oppose the free traders' agenda is that we need to ensure that trade and environmental policies are mutually supportive. The concept of using it up and throwing it out is not a concept we can afford to globalize.