Vineland Revisited

[Judy]

 Let's not lose sight of what many of the protesters in Quebec City were/are
concerned about.

> It's Not About "Free Trade"
> By Mark Weisbrot
>
>
> "People of the same trade seldom meet together,
> even for merriment and diversion, but the
> conversation ends in a conspiracy against the
> public . . ." So wrote Adam Smith more than two
> centuries ago, and it is equally true today.
>
> Quebec City is now host to numerous meetings of
> these "people of the same trade" - - the
> businesspeople who have access to the secret text
> of the "Free Trade Area of the Americas." The fact
> that the heads of major corporations such as Merck
> and IBM can read the draft of the agreement, while
> the press and the public are kept in the dark,
> speaks volumes about what is being negotiated.
>
> With the enthusiastic support of the Bush
> administration, leaders of 34 nations are now
> gathering in Quebec to discuss the FTAA. The name
> of this treaty is misleading: it is not primarily
> about "free trade." In fact, this agreement will
> almost certainly strengthen some of the most
> expensive, economically wasteful, and (in the case
> of life-saving pharmaceuticals) deadly forms of
> protectionism. These are the patents, copyrights,
> and other monopolies commonly grouped under
> "intellectual property rights."
>
> While tariffs rarely increase the price of a good
> by more than 20 or 25 percent, patent protected
> prices can be ten or twenty times the competitive
> price. One of the main purposes of these "free
> trade" agreements is to expand this lucrative form
> of protectionism across international borders.
>
> Brazil has already run into trouble in the World
> Trade Organization for its laws dealing with the
> manufacture and import of generic AIDS drugs.
> These laws have formed an important part of
> Brazil's remarkably successful program for
> treating AIDS. Brazil has provided
> "triple-therapy" drugs -- the same ones that cost
> $12,000 a year to treat people here, but can be
> produced for as little as $500.
>
> Generic AIDS drugs have enabled Brazil to provide
> treatment to almost all who need it, cutting the
> death rate from AIDS in half. But Washington is
> currently challenging Brazil at the WTO,
> contesting part of the Brazilian law that allows
> for the manufacture and import of these generic
> drugs.
>
> Agreements like the FTAA also expand protections
> for foreign investors, giving them rights that
> they would not be able to win in their home
> countries. There was a little-noticed provision in
> NAFTA that allowed foreign investors to sue
> governments for regulations that infringed on
> their potential profits. This has turned out to be
> an environmental nightmare.
>
> For example, the US- based Ethyl corporation (the
> one that brought us the lead in leaded gasoline)
> brought a complaint against the Canadian
> government in 1997. For public health reasons,
> Canada had prohibited the import of another
> potentially dangerous gasoline additive known as
> MMT.
>
> This additive was effectively banned in the United
> States. But the fear of losing the NAFTA lawsuit
> was enough for Canada to repeal its law, and pay
> $13 million dollars in damages to Ethyl.
>
> Now imagine extending these NAFTA provisions to 31
> more countries and you can see why environmental
> organizations are adamantly opposed to the FTAA.
> They're not the only ones. Workers in the United
> States, Canada, and Mexico have now had seven
> years of experience with NAFTA -- the FTAA's pilot
> program -- and it hasn't exactly turned out to be
> the "win-win" deal that they were promised.
>
> For the United States, the main problem has been
> the loss of relatively better paying manufacturing
> jobs, and the downward pressure on wages as
> companies move or threaten to move south. Canada
> has also lost a good part of its manufacturing
> sector, and income inequality has worsened
> significantly. Mexico has seen declining real
> wages for its workers, as well as falling income
> for the self-employed (a much larger part of the
> labor force than it is here).
>
> For Latin America as a whole, the last two decades
> of "free trade" have been an economic train wreck.
> Income per person has grown about 7 percent over
> the last 20 years, as compared with 75 percent in
> the previous two decades.
>
> In Quebec a "wall of shame" -- as press reports
> have described it -- was constructed to keep
> protesters away from the meeting. Three miles of
> chain link fence and concrete abutments were
> supposed to compensate for the meetings' lack of
> legitimacy among the populace.
>
> The WTO and NAFTA are the product of a
> decades-long effort to rewrite the rules of
> international commerce in ways that ignore the
> needs of most of humanity, as well as our natural
> environment. But humanity is catching up, and has
> learned some lessons. The misnamed "Free Trade
> Area of the Americas" will not withstand public
> scrutiny.
>
> Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for
> Economic and Policy Research (www.cepr.net) in
> Washington, DC.
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