Linking Trade to Worker and Other Human Rights
Concern that open trade could give an economic advantage to human rights violators is not new. Researchers Susan Ariel Aaronson and Jean Pierre Chauffour date it to nineteenth-century treaties banning first the slave trade and later products made by prisoners of war. The post-World War I creators of the International Labour Organization (ILO) saw a link between the organization’s functions and trade. And in the 1940s, John Maynard Keynes proposed—and 53 nations (including the United States) negotiated and signed—the Havana Charter, which provided for labor standards and their enforcement as part of a system of global trade governance. Congress declined to ratify the charter, however, and it never came into force. The global trade architecture we have, the World Trade Organization, does not account for human rights.
Starting in the late 1980s, both the United States and Europe began to include language seeking to promote human rights in bilateral and regional trade deals. In the subsequent decades, governments and activists have sought to address civil, political, and labor rights; abuses of women, children, and minorities; and the global problem of human trafficking, through language in trade deals. Advocates of these provisions argue that they are the right thing to do, in line with international and U.S. law, and also that they help American competitiveness by making it harder for countries to gain economic advantage by oppressing parts of their workforce or undercutting U.S. labor.
Even rights activists, however, debate how effective the provisions are. With very few exceptions, existing rights provisions are either entirely hortatory or not subject to any actual enforcement by international trade bodies. As discussed in the section on enforcement, activists have critiqued U.S. enforcement as weak, leading some to argue that rights are better pursued through other channels, while others argue for strengthened enforcement either at the domestic or international level.
Interest in labor and human rights in trade deals marks a major partisan divide; no Republican candidate has spoken out in favor of strengthening rights through trade. However, the revision of the U.S.-Mexico Canada free trade agreement (formerly known as NAFTA, now called USMCA) negotiated by the Trump administration requires parties to adopt specific laws related to the International Labour Organization Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and achieved agreement from Mexico to strengthen its domestic labor laws, protect collective bargaining, and reform the system for administering labor justice. Critics have noted that while this is a step in the right direction, these laws may be difficult to enforce in practice.
A number of Democrats have called for using trade to improve labor and other human rights conditions. The candidates differ widely, however, on where in the global trade machinery it makes most sense to put stronger standards.
Biden, Castro, and Yang have spoken in broad terms about strengthening labor standards in trade agreements; Sanders has additionally stipulated that such standards be binding. Other candidates—Harris and Steyer—reference “protecting” American workers without specifying labor rights, which by definition include the right to organize unions.
Warren proposes that observance of human rights standards be a precondition for new trade deals with the United States; countries would have to observe both the core standards for workers set by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and a broader set of internationally-recognized human rights in order to be eligible to negotiate trade deals. This is a very different position from the way trade talks have worked in recent decades. It also proposes the same standards for countries with widely varying levels of compliance with international human rights standards.
O’Rourke also had ambitious labor rights goals, but tending in a different direction; he proposed to work with all WTO members to put internationally-agreed labor standards (including some the United States has not ratified) into the ground rules for trade that are subject to enforcement, including combating child labor and protecting collective bargaining rights. Countries' failure to uphold these standards would be considered an unfair subsidy and subject them to countervailing duties. O’Rourke also said that new trade agreements should include other labor protections such as country-specific minimum wages.
Senator Booker and O’Rourke have explicitly linked their views on new trade deals to the health of labor unions in the United States, both referencing a desire to promote unionization at home in the context of negotiating trade deals abroad. Additionally, O’Rourke said that, when an industry stood to benefit from a new trade deal, he would require major employers to sign neutrality statements with labor unions.