NAFTA doesn’t stand for freedom

In the Congress this week, Rep. William Thomas of California is seeking to get a vote on legislation in the House to grant the administration fast-track negotiating authority. If granted, this would give the president the ability to negotiate trade agreements and then give them to Congress for an up-or-down vote – after only 20 hours of debate.

No amendments would be allowed. Congress took this power away from President Clinton in large part due to the negative consequences of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

The Bush administration wants this ability especially to win passage for Free Trade of the Americas Act (FTAA), which is currently in negotiations. In effect, the FTAA would expand NAFTA to include the entire hemisphere.

In lobbying for fast-track approval (now called trade promotion authority), the Bush administration’s top negotiator, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, used the image of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as reason to pass the legislation. In addition Zoellick said, “This president and this administration will fight for open markets. We will not be intimidated by those who have taken to the streets to blame trade – and America – for the world’s ills.”

Zoellick’s use of our national tragedy to wrap a specific – and unpopular – legislative agenda in the flag is underhanded politics- at best. Further, Zoellick’s choice in singling out “those who take to the streets” – like the 50,000 people in Seattle or the 50,000 people in Quebec – and placing them side by side with the terrorists who murdered over 6,000 innocent people really stretches the imagination.

NAFTA is unpopular for some pretty good reasons. More than 260,000 have qualified for a special NAFTA retraining program as they have lost their jobs due to NAFTA. Similar trade deals- in particular the Caribbean Economic Recovery Act – helped facilitate the move of over a 1,000 good shoe jobs in the Bangor area alone to “Free Trade Zones” in the Dominican Republic. People who lose their jobs to a company which decides to relocate so to pay workers 57 cents an hour have every right to be upset.

Today, the U.S. manufacturing center of the automotive industry is northern Mexico – not the Midwest. The largest private-sector employer in Mexico is General Motors. Before NAFTA, we had a trade surplus with Mexico – today we have a $35 billion deficit. As we slip into a recession and our country comes under attack, Zoellick seems to think that workers who might protest the loss of their jobs are attacking America. What about the patriotism of GM who sent the jobs abroad in the first place?

And the story in Mexico has not been pretty either. Wages today are 21 percent below what they were before NAFTA went into effect. People in moderate poverty (earning less than $3 a day) increased 4 percent from 47 to 51 percent since NAFTA began while more than 4 million additional Mexicans have entered the ranks of those in sever poverty (living on less than $2 a day).

Though free trade is not the only factor that has caused the greater disparity of wealth in our country, it is an important one. As the price of production has gone down with more and more manufacturing relocated to low-wage production sites around the world, profits have gone up- and so have CEOs’ salaries. For example, if you look at the time period from 1990 until today, if the minimum wage grew at the same rate as CEO pay, it would be $24.13 an hour. By 1999, the average salary in of CEOs was 458 times more than production workers.

Perhaps the most sinister part of NAFTA, which has barely been discussed in this country, is its provisions for bankruptcy protection. In effect, this allows companies to sue governments for profits they might have made had a government not got in their way. And the companies are winning. Metalclad, a U.S. company, sued the Mexican government to allow them to reopen a toxic waste dump. A secret three-person tribunal ruled in favor of the company, forcing the Mexicans to pay the company $17 million. After Canada banned the carcinogen MMT, a gasoline additive, Ethyl Corporation, a U.S. chemical giant, successfully sued under NAFTA and won $13 million as well as a repeal of the ban on MMT.

It is not good for democracy when secret tribunals get to decide what is healthy – or not- for people in our own communities. For democracy to be real, the development of such laws must be a clear and open process.

Today, the president calls for us to be unified. And we should be unified against the terrorists who killed more than 6,000 people. And we should be unified for something.

This is not the time to introduce unpopular, poorly debated or discussed legislative agenda’s. These trade agreements deserve a thorough and thoughtful discussion. Reps. John Baldacci and Tom Allen should vote against these trade promotion authority, while Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins should call their party leadership and tell them not to introduce such divisive legislation at this time.

It is time for this country to unite – not around fear and greed- but around our strengths. America has great traditions of freedom – of speech, the press and of nonviolent protest. We are a country of democracy and laws – which have enabled us to become a tremendous place where incredibly different people live in peace. We also have a core principle of fair play. Now is the time – more than ever – for all of our leaders to remember these principles before they jump into action.

Jack McKay, of Bangor, has worked on trade and employment issues for more than10 years.