Research On Labor Rules Of The American Free Trade Agreement

Labor Standards issue has been internationally controversial. Since it failed to get thespecific labor standards into the WTO system, the United States turned the way to Free TradeAgreement(FTA) for improvement. After the2002Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), theBush government signed a series of FTAs to obtain the biggest trade opportunities forAmerican farmers, workers, families and consumers, all of which have included the laborrules. When the TPA expired in2007, the Democrats and Republicans negotiated and signednew trade policy agreement, which is known as the Bipartisan Agreement on Trade Policy(BATP). This new agreement makes amendments to the labor rules and asks the followingFTAs between America and other countries to put them inside. The American Strategy onlabor rules is essential to future’s multilateral trade negotiation and has deep influences on thedeveloping countries, so this paper would like to discuss labor issues of American FTAs, onthe basis of a lot of materials. Through the analysis of the labor rules from both the theoreticaland practical perspective, this paper tries to explore a way of improvement for developingcountries, especially for China.Part I talks about the international foundation, policy foundation and the legal foundationof the labor rules in American FTAs.Part II is the evolution analysis. This part first discusses the FTAs signed during the2002TPA period, and then focuses on the later FTAs under the new trade policy, namely theU.S.-Panama FTA, the U.S.-Colombia FTA and the U.S.-South Korea FTA.Part III mainly examines the differences of labor rules between the American theEuropean Union, the DR-CAFTA and the South American Common Market (MERCOSU).Part IV involves the influences of American labor rules and China’s measures. Knowingthe significances of American labor rules to trade rules as well as trade relations, this partgives suggestions for China on how to face the labor issues in the future’s negotiation.