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The use of Fast Track for NAFTA demonstrates how the process can obscure meaningful analysis of a proposed trade agreement's actual binding terms. Potential legal, public health and environmental implications can be overlooked. An increasingly broad set of domestic law issues are implicated in current international commercial negotiations, ranging from food safety policy to access to medicine. The sovereignty and public policy implications of the NAFTA Chapter 11 investor-to-state cases argue against the extension of NAFTA to the rest of the Western Hemisphere. In an historic first, the 2001 National Environmental Scorecard of the League of Conversation Voters has scored the Dec. 6, 2001 fast-track vote in the House of Representatives. For the first time, LCV has ranked trade legislation alongside such traditional environmental concerns as drilling in the arctic, arsenic standards for drinking water, and EPA enforcement. |