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Massachusetts foreign policy
Local officials are taking diplomacy into their own hands
By Pete Williams
NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 Frustrated by perceived lethargy at the State
Department and seeking to strike a tone with their constituents, more and
more local governments are making their own foreign policy moves. At the
same time, these local efforts to boycott goods from countries run by
military regimes or to support freedom in communist lands have raised
constitutional issues about the right of local officials to make decisions
that conflict with national foreign policy.

WHATS THE BEST way to get a military dictatorship like Myanmar, the former
Burma, to improve its human rights record?
The State Departments most recent report said the military government in
Myanmar severely represses basic rights by jailing political opponents and
forcing citizens into labor. The U.S. governments approach has been to
criticize Myanmars regime, but a full-blown boycott of business ties has
been ruled out.
Some activists in Massachusetts thought that was wrong. So they began to
lobby state lawmakers. Two years ago, a member of the Legislature persuaded
his colleagues to pass a law forbidding the state to buy from any company
that also does business in Myanmar:
If you are in Burma, we are not going to do business with you, because we
believe that foreign investment is one of the supports of the military
government of Burma, said Rep. Byron Rushing.

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE U.S.?
That rubbed some American corporations the wrong way. A coalition of
companies challenged the law in court and late last year, a federal judge in
Boston declared the states boycott to be unconstitutional.
The ruling said that because the law was passed solely to sanction Myanmar
for human rights violations, it infringes on the power to regulate foreign
affairs. Under the Constitution, the federal government has exclusive
authority over foreign policy, according to the ruling.

The business groups also argued that the law would make no difference in
Myanmar. And, they said, when added to federal restrictions on doing
business with a growing list of countries, trade limits imposed by states

are hurting American companies in world markets.
The combination of the federal level unilateral sanctions and at the state
and local level adds up to a very large number of sanctions that have
finally gotten our partnerships or customers, said Frank Kittredge of the
National Foreign Trade Council, an industry group.
Now, Massachusetts is appealing the court decision in a case thats
attracting a nationwide following.

WIDE IMPLICATIONS
At least 23 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York,
along with two counties have laws like the one in Massachusetts, aimed
mostly at companies that do business in Myanmar and a few other countries.

Advocates of these laws have argued that similar measures helped pressure
the government of South Africa to make democratic reforms during the
apartheid era.
They also point to a more recent example. When U.S. cities threatened to
limit contacts with companies doing business in Switzerland in 1997, they
pushed the Swiss government to disclose new information about gold that
wound up in Swiss banks after the Nazis  seized it from Jewish victims of
the Holocaust.
Legal scholars who support Massachusetts have said states have a right to
boycott companies they dont like, just as any shopper does.
Its leadership by example, said Professor Robert Stumberg of Georgetown
University Law School. Its putting your money where your mouth is. And it
s a kind of dealing in a global economy that avoids the heavy-handed
regulation and instead uses market power.
But are these local trade laws constitutional? A federal appeals court hears
oral arguments on that question in the spring. Its a case likely headed for
the Supreme Court.

NBC News correspondent Pete Williams covers the courts from Washington.