His vote for Dennis Hastert as house speaker earned him the scorn of fellow democrats, and Traficant claims that is the reason he was given no committee assignments. The Summit of the Americas, held this weekend in Quebec City, was attended by the leaders of all 34 democratic nations in the hemisphere. Only Cuba was excluded from the summit. Before leaving, all had signed the Quebec Declaration- a document proposing and outlining the Free Trade Area Of The Americas which calls for a free trade zone across the hemisphere by the year 2005. The summit drew an estimated 30,000 protestors.
Critics claim that free trade is bad for both workers and the environment.
Among the injured are 45 protestors and 46 police officers. The president has indicated that he plans to sign a treaty which bans the use of a dozen chemicals that are regarded as being hazardous. During the month of March, the Bush administration received criticism for backing off of a campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, blocking Clinton plan to reduce allowed levels of arsenic in drinking water, opposing the restrictions placed by the Clinton administration effecting mining on federal land, and for rejecting the Kyoto treaty for reducing greenhouse gasses. So far, April has seen the Bush administration taking a decidedly more environmentally friendly stand by supporting enhanced protection for wetlands, support for the Clinton plan requiring companies to report lead emissions, and now the support for the afforementioned global treaty to ban certain harmful chemicals. Some analysts are now saying that we're in the early stages of another bull market, citing April 4th as the day it began to turn around.