An Urgent Call to Join the Movement Against the Corporate "Trade" Deals

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/20-0



***SNIP


Ever since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was proposed more than 20 years ago, critics have warned about the negative implications of “free” trade treaties and other efforts to deregulate global trade and investment. Today, after two decades of deregulation, the impacts are exactly as feared: endemic unemployment and economic ‘precarity’, massive social dislocation in the global North and South, a widening gap between rich and poor, financial instability, growing hunger and food insecurity, and the weakening of public interest laws meant to protect people and the environment. Meanwhile, global corporations and big banks have grown larger and ever more powerful.

Thanks to “free” trade treaties, corporations have become unfettered and less rooted to place: in a global “race to the bottom” they can move wherever wages and benefits are low, and where tax rules and social and environmental laws are weak. This race imposes a downward pressure on wages, and compels every level of government to reduce sorely needed taxes and protective regulations, or risk losing businesses and jobs. As footloose corporations and speculative capital move from one place to another in search of profit, they leave behind shattered communities, economic insecurity, gutted regulations, and forced bankruptcy.

At the time of its ratification, proponents of NAFTA promised that it would stimulate job creation and economic prosperity. Two decades later, the treaty has become notorious for its disastrous effects on both sides of the Mexican-US border. For instance, Public Citizen has found that nearly 5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the US alone since NAFTA and the WTO took effect, with over 60,000 facilities closing down or moving elsewhere. During the same period, NAFTA uprooted millions of Mexican farmers who were unable to compete with imports of heavily-subsidized US corn dumped into their local markets. An estimated 2 million Mexican smallholders have been forced out of farming altogether since NAFTA’s inception. And contrary to the claims of NAFTA’s proponents, new jobs have not materialized to replace the destroyed livelihoods.

“NAFTA on steroids”

Despite all the evidence, policymakers continue to promote further corporate deregulation via trade treaties. The latest and most far-reaching treaties include the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP, also known as TAFTA). The scale of these new treaties is truly massive: the TPP includes the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, while the TTIP is being negotiated by the US and EU countries. The countries negotiating the TPP account for roughly forty percent of global GDP, leading some critics to call the treaty “NAFTA on steroids”. Together, the TPP and TTIP would create “free trade” zones encompassing the vast majority of global trade.

[Laelth]

1. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[rurallib]

2. There really is no "free" trade.