Why Certain Trade Agreements Are Approved as Congressional-Executive Agreements Rather Than as Treaties

Certain trade agreements (e.g., the NAFTA and the GATT Uruguay Round agreements) have been approved by majority vote of each House of Congress rather than by two-thirds vote of the Senate - that is, they have been treated as congressionalexecutive agreements rather than as treaties. The congressional-executive agreement has been the vehicle for implementing Congress' long-standing policy of seeking trade benefits for the United States through reciprocal trade negotiations. In a succession of statutes, Congress has authorized the President to negotiate and enter into tariff and nontariff barrier (NTB) agreements for limited periods, while mandating that NTB and free trade area agreements negotiated under this authority could enter into force for the United States only if approved by both Houses in a bill enacted into public law and other statutory conditions were met. The same approach was proposed in 104th and 105th Congress legislation intended to authorize the negotiation and entry into new trade agreements. Such legislation was discussed in the 106th Congress, but no bills with broad fast-track trade agreement authorities were introduced. The President is seeking such authority from the 107th Congress, with various legislative approaches being proposed and discussed. On February 27, 2001, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit dismissed an appeal challenging the constitutionality of the NAFTA because it was not entered into as a treaty, the court ruling that the issue was a nonjusticiable political question (Made in the USA Foundation v. United States, No. 99-13138, 2001 WL 194857).


This package includes following files:

#	File Name	Document Date	Order ID:	Number of Pages	Price
1	97-896_3_28_2001.pdf	Mar 28, 2001	97-896	6	$19.95	Add to Cart

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