Congress moved on Oct. 12, 2011, to approve three major trade deals supported by President Barack Obama, easing restrictions via new agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.

During the campaign, Obama promised that new trade agreements would include protections for labor and the environment. We recently examined that promise in a previous update (see below for more details). We found that while the agreements do have some protections, they don't meet stricter standards that Obama talked about during the campaign.

The standards depend on some technical legal specifications for international trade, and the different trade agreements use the standards in different ways. The differences are not trivial, either.

For example, Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich. and the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, favored the Korea and Panama agreements. But he opposed the Colombia agreement because he said there will be problems enforcing negotiated protections for labor.

Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group that monitors trade, has opposed all three agreements, saying they do not match up with Obama's campaign promises. They produced a detailed comparison of what Obama promised and what the trade agreement with Korea contains. Public Citizen said the Korean government has used its laws to imprison labor leaders, and employers have used police to break up labor union activity. Those laws could continue to be used if the current agreements stay in place.

The group also opposes provisions that allow companies to dispute laws that hurt their businesses and to make those challenges in special tribunals outside of the host country's normal legal system, seeing them as a way for companies to skirt laws designed to protect workers and the environment.

Public Citizen issued a scathing statement after Congress gave its approval. "This represents a complete flip-flop for President Obama, who won crucial swing states by pledging to overhaul our flawed trade policies,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "So it is no surprise that a sizeable majority of Democrats in Congress voted against these agreements, against Obama and for American jobs.”

The Obama administration, on the other hand, has said the trade agreements do include labor and environmental standards, and ones that are tougher than NAFTA. For example, the agreements included bipartisan standards hammered out during the Bush administration on May 10, 2007, and subsequently known as the May 10 standards.

The administration also pointed out that the Korea agreement has been endorsed by the United Auto Workers and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Obama praised the agreements in a statement issued by the White House shortly after Congress approved them.  "Tonight's vote, with bipartisan support, will significantly boost exports that bear the proud label ‘Made in America," support tens of thousands of good-paying American jobs and protect labor rights, the environment and intellectual property," Obama said.

The agreements have now been finalized by Congress. While it's clear they do include some form of environmental and labor protections, it's also clear they fall short of the more specific promises Obama made during the campaign. We continue to rate this promise Compromise.