Fast Track Battles and Opinion Polls

  
As part of the last-minute maneuvering aimed at the House of Representatives to fight passage of the Trade Promotion Authority requested by President Bush, the Citizens Trade Campaign, part of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, published the following news release:

Farbrizio, McLaughlin & Associates released a poll on December 5th, which sampled 1,000 voters throughout the nation over December 2-3, 2001. Sample: 1,000 voters. Margin of error: +/- 3.1 percent. The actual data and questions will probably be posted on our web site (www.tradewatch.org).

The Trade Watch people consider that the summary findings are not ambiguous:
By a 47-33 percent margin, voters believe that Congress should use normal legislative procedures, not fast track, to consider trade agreements. This margin rises to 54-26 percent when respondents are reminded that fast track gave us NAFTA and the last WTO agreement.

By 61-23 percent, voters reject the view that without fast track, other countries won't negotiate with a market as big as the United States.

By 59-18 percent, voters believe that concrete goals, like boosting American employment and incomes, should be the top priority of U.S. trade policy, not abstractions like "strengthening U.S. leadership in the global economy."

By 66-14 percent, voters believe that new trade agreements should include "strong guarantees of worker rights and environmental protections" - unlike the Thomas fast track bill.

And by 70-16 percent, they favor "limiting imports if they threaten American jobs" over expanding imports if these jobs may be threatened.

None of these results is new or particularly startling. Previous survey information has been almost the same. Polls have not been much of a factor in previous tight Congressional votes on trade, such as the effort to normalize trade relations with China or NAFTA. However, the results make it clear that opposition to free trade is not confined to a few radical protectionists, as the USTR would have us believe.