The Bradenton Herald | September 2, 2003
No trade agreement has sounded more laudable than the Free Trade Area of the Americas with its stated goal to provide "free market access to goods and services for the entire continent." Even the North American Free Trade Agreement doesn't quite match its clarion call.
Perhaps you've never heard of the FTAA, but surely you've heard of NAFTA. That includes Canada, the U.S. and Mexico and was enacted in 1993. Shortly after NAFTA became reality, secret deliberations for the establishment of the FTAA commenced. It is targeted for completion by 2005.
Indeed, some refer to FTAA as NAFTA on steroids or NAFTA on Viagra, ostensibly because it would extend this so-called "free" trade fiasco from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from Alaska to the tip of Chile and Argentina, but even more to be feared is the projected expansion of trade in services as well as trade in goods. "Services" include everything that "you can't drop on your foot," including health care, education, water, electric utilities, telecommunications, construction, mail delivery, banking, food safety, transportation, prisons, environmental protections and much, much more.
FTAA is scary, very scary.
Many of us might use the terms "free trade" and "fair trade" interchangeably, not aware of their vast difference in meanings. "Fair trade" denotes the attempt to be just to all who are affected in any way by the transaction. "Free trade" refers to procedures or rules that allow transnational corporations to make the process of trade in goods and services easier and more profitable for themselves.
Groups that are agitating against FTAA in its current form, such as the Florida Fair Trade Coalition, the Citizens Trade Campaign and the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, are doing so precisely because they have followed NAFTA's effects on the U.S. and Mexican economies and have found them to be detrimental. Small farmers on both sides of the Rio Grande are losing their farms. Mexican peasants are still risking their lives to come to the U.S. Many thousands of the jobs have been lost in the U.S. and Canada. The viability of U.S. wheat, winter fruit, and vegetable and tomato production has been undermined. There are even tomato growers in Manatee County who say that NAFTA has been harmful for them.
The aforementioned groups monitoring the FTAA negotiations are not against trade per se. They believe there are helpful alternatives to the rules that, presently, appear to be similar, not only to NAFTA's but also to the GATTS, one of many separate agreements included in the World Trade Organization. The complex agreements will contain extensive constraints and obligations for governments, while they create only privileges and protections for multinational corporations.
Perhaps you also remember the hue and cry from labor, human rights and environmental groups when no negotiating teams were set up to deal with their concerns as NAFTA was being negotiated. Because of the persistent outrage from these rejected groups, "side agreements" attempting to deal with their concerns were negotiated eventually. Criticism that the side agreements had no teeth has lingered and some cite the continuing deterioration in the maquiladoras as evidence. Wouldn't one think that the FTAA negotiators would have learned by the intensity of the fight from labor and environmental groups when NAFTA was being planned that it might be smart to add groups on labor, the environment and safety and human rights to its nine negotiating teams? It might have been smart, but they didn't do it. They were too busy negotiating provisions like NAFTA's Chapter 11 that allows corporations to sue governments when environmental or public health laws negatively impact expected corporate profits.
Believe it or not, the rules being negotiated would allow investors to demand compensation for any government's acts, including public interest laws, that might not only diminish the corporation's potential profits but also might be "more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of the service." Under these rules, governments could lose the ability to limit such activities as oil drilling, hotel and resort development, golf courses, waste incineration, concessions in national parks, etc. Conceivably, a phosphate company or a power company might be able to sue a county for threatening its profits if the county insisted on environmental standards that the company thinks are too onerous. Particularly appalling is the "national treatment" rule that would entitle private foreign corporations to equal rights to compete against local public service providers for funds to perform public services. For instance, if a community subsidized public transit, the community would have to subsidize equally all companies seeking to provide that service. Privatization of water collection and water delivery are real possibilities under such a system. Water privatization has already been tried unsuccessfully in several cities in this country under NAFTA's Chapter 11.
About 100 years ago when Theodore Roosevelt was president, this country believed that regulation of corporations was necessary to protect the common good. Let us not forget corporations like Enron too soon. Regulation of corporations is still necessary to protect the common good. Checks and balances are important, not only for a democratic governmental system but also equally for the private sector. The adage, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely," applies not only to a lone dictator or to a governmental system, but it also applies to transnational corporations that have been successful in forging all rules of business to their own advantage.
Jo Williams
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