How Fast Track Was Derailed: Lessons for Labor’s Future

The November 1997 defeat of “fast track” was arguably the AFL-CIO’s greatest public-policy triumph in a generation. The failure of Congress to extend presidential fast track negotiating authority—which would next have been used in an attempt to broaden the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to include Chile and other South American countries—came as an enormous shock to the Washington establishment and to the nation’s pundits. As late as mid-October, nearly every published commentary predicted that fast track would pass Congress by a comfortable margin. In the wake of fast track’s defeat, the press was quickly filled with howling editorials that generally included the words “protectionism,” “dinosaur,” and ...