Jordan Times
Tuesday, September 25, 2001
US Senate passes Jordan FTA bill
By Jim AbramsWASHINGTON — In a timely gesture to a key Middle East friend, the Senate on Monday approved an agreement that effectively removes all trade barriers with Jordan. The US-Jordan Free Trade Agreement, passed by a voice vote, also commits both countries to upholding worker rights and environmental standards.
The measure, already passed by the House, implements an agreement reached between the Clinton administration and Jordan last fall.
The administration of President George W. Bush strongly supports it.
His Majesty King Abdullah, who is visiting the United States this week, has backed the US anti-terrorist fight and “accordingly we should do whatever we can to reinforce Jordan's support,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus. “By implementing the Free Trade Agreement, we'll do just that.”
The first-ever trade agreement with an Arab nation “serves as a statement that our enemy is terrorism, not the Muslim world,” said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. US-Jordan trade is small in scale, amounting to only about $400 million last year, but the agreement has significance beyond the need to reward a valuable US ally.
Jordan would become only the fourth nation, after Canada, Mexico and Israel, to enjoy a virtually tariff-free relationship with the United States.
It would also be the first trade agreement that includes worker and environmental protections within the text of the agreement.
Democrats, along with labour and environmental groups, pushed hard for those provisions, hoping they will set a precedent for future trade accords, including major trade legislation Congress is trying to move this year that would give Bush “fast track” or enhanced authority to negotiate new multilateral trade agreements.
But the labour and environmental language met strong resistance from some Republicans who said it would give foreign countries unacceptable oversight over US laws.
“It creates a situation where we are literally transferring a degree of American sovereignty in labour and environmental areas to decision-making entities that will be beyond the control of the United States,” said Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas.
Gramm said he had decided not to oppose what he called a “dangerous” bill “because we have a crisis in the world, we need to reaffirm our relationship with Jordan, a critical country in a very important part of the world when we are at this very moment beginning to look toward a war with terrorism.”
A compromise on the labour and environmental issue was reached shortly before the House approved the agreement on July 31 when Jordan's ambassador to the United States, Marwan Muasher, and US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick exchanged identical letters stating that, if disputes arise, they would “make every effort to resolve them without recourse to formal dispute settlement procedures.”