National Conference of State Legislature’s resolution heralds change in way country views trade agre

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/13952

ubmitted by Jesse Russell on August 1, 2010 - 8:16pm
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A resolution passed by the National Conference of State Legislature’s on trade policies heralds a change in the way the country views our nation’s trade agreements. Doug Cunningham has more.

By Doug Cunningham

Sara Edelman is with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. She says the resolution reflects a widespread state and local realization that trade agreements like the upcoming Korea free trade agreement are not serving the interests of American workers, local communities and states.

: “They look at the way that we’ve created these trade policies over the past decade and a half that have not served their constituents and states, workers and consumers, and have decided that the process is not working. There’s not enough input from local and state policymakers involved in the process. So one of the thing the policy does is to really call for a new system going forward where the local policymakers, state policymakers can shape what these trade policies look like.”

One concern state legislatures have with trade agreements is too much foreign investor power to challenge state public health, environmental and land-use policies. They say states have spent enormous sums of money in recent years defending their policies against foreign investor challenges under NAFTA.