HUB and Procurement Preferences Threatened

Don’t let the federal government trade away HUB and Texas Procurement Preferences!

The state of Texas has agreed–sight unseen–to the government procurement provisions of CAFTA, a trade agreement set to go before Congress this summer.
 
If we don’t get Texas off of the list of states affected by this section of CAFTA, Texas will have to revise state law to eliminate all procurement preferences.

Texas currently has preferences for the following:

·         Products made By Persons with Disabilities
·         Recycled, Remanufactured, or Environmentally Sensitive Products
·         Energy Efficient Products
·         Texas Agricultural Products
·         Texas Produced Supplies, Materials, or Equipment
·         Texas Resident Bidders
·         U.S. Produced Supplies, Materials, or Equipment
 
It is also likely that the CAFTA rules will negatively impact the Historically Underutilized Businesses Program.
 
The recently released text of the CAFTA agreement reveals that the procurement provisions explicitly prohibit consideration of any source or origin preferences for products purchased by the state, or any non-performance-related requirement of suppliers.

There are a lot of really bad things about CAFTA. But this is one section we can do something about now. We have until Congress votes on the agreement to get Texas removed from this one section. The vote may come as soon as the end of June, so we need to act NOW to get our state off the list.

To find out more, and to help us get Texas off the CAFTA Procurement list, please contact Lesley Ramsey at the Texas Fair Trade Coalition, at Lesley@TexasFairTrade.org, or (512) 472-1915.


Lesley Nicole Ramsey
Co-Director, Texas Fair Trade Coalition
1405 Montopolis Drive
Austin, TX 78741
tel: (512) 472-1915
fax: (512) 389-2899
email: Lesley@texasfairtrade.org