‘Less bad’ trade deal is not good enough

It’s a familiar story by now. NAFTA-style trade agreements, written with little input from citizens or our representatives, are implemented with country after country and drive American jobs overseas to nations with minimal labor, environmental and human rights protections.

Maine alone has lost more than one-fourth of our manufacturing jobs, nearly 24,000 jobs, since NAFTA took effect in 1994 – a staggering figure in our state of 1.3 million people. Our communities struggle with the loss of infrastructure and culture, and often find it impossible to create equivalent jobs in terms of wages, benefits and security.

Service sector jobs too are increasingly outsourced, and the threat of outsourcing puts significant downward pressure on the wages of jobs that remain. Businesses struggle to compete in the race-to-the bottom against cheap goods produced through the exploitation of workers and the destruction of the environment.

It’s a familiar story, but it is a story that we must continue to tell. In several weeks, Congress is likely to vote on a new “free” trade agreement, this time with the country of Peru. It has already been voted on in the House and Senate Committees, where Sen. Olympia Snowe – in spite of her rhetoric on supporting fair trade – voted in favor of this new deal. The Peru trade deal is, like previous agreements, based on the NAFTA model that has been recognized as a failure for workers and communities here and abroad.

As our Maine delegation considers this bill, they must keep in mind the core issues at stake. Will this trade deal support and protect workers here and abroad, will it maintain and increase good jobs here at home, and will it protect our nation’s sovereign rights to promote the economic, environmental and public policies we choose? Will this trade deal help workers in developing countries to not only produce goods for America, but also to buy American-made goods? Will the deal enable our domestic industries to continue to produce quality products

for our communities, or will it limit consumer options further as store shelves fill with foreign goods – which may or may not be safe for our families? Will it work to balance our trade deficit or will it continue to inflate it, further endangering our future?

The Peru trade deal contains certain improvements in the labor and environmental provisions, for which current Congressional leadership should be commended. However, the changes made do not create fair trade, and do not even pass the “do-no-harm” test that labor, environmental and citizen groups have demanded at the minimum. The actual changes in the text, produced after intense negotiations between the new Congress and the administration, fall far short of what is needed to support labor and environmental reform in partner countries and to level the playing field to support businesses here at home.

Instead of requiring strong, clear labor standards, such as the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) core labor standards, the new text only includes adoption of the ILO’s vague declaration of rights – and states that the declaration can be subject to interpretation by foreign courts. Conversely, the strongly stated provisions in NAFTA that allow multinational corporations to challenge our domestic health, environmental and other public polices are expanded in the Peru trade agreement, with no modifications. The Peru trade deal also includes NAFTA-style procurement rules that ban “Buy America” and anti-offshoring policies. Startlingly, the trade agreement also requires the U.S. to accept imported foods from Peru that may not meet our safety standards – an issue of serious concern considering our recent food safety disasters.

Furthermore, the increased labor and environmental protections will only be meaningful to the extent that the Administration enforces them – a cause for alarm both based on the current administration’s track record on accountability and based on the history show a lack of enforcement of labor protections in trade agreements. As we saw with the Jordan trade deal, negotiated in 2000 and touted as a new model with strong labor protections, such protections were virtually meaningless because they were not enforced. Since the Jordanian free trade agreement has taken effect, sweatshops, forced human trafficking and workplace violence have increased across Jordan.

The Peru trade deal is not only opposed by U.S. labor groups, environmental organizations, human rights groups and small businesses, it is also opposed by Peruvian unions and community organizations. They believe that the trade agreement will not help workers in their country, will limit the sovereignty and development of their country, and will further exacerbate the labor, human rights, and environmental abuses their communities face.

Trade with other countries can be beneficial for communities here and abroad, can serve to increase economic opportunities in Maine and across the country, and can lift the standards and opportunities in partner countries. The current congressional leadership should be applauded for recognizing and beginning to address the negative

aspects of past trade agreements. However, our elected representatives should not support a trade deal simply because it is “less bad” than previous agreements. After all, it is our livelihoods, communities, economic opportunities, public policies, and fundamental labor and human rights that are at stake.

Elsie Flemings of Bar Harbor has worked on trade issues in Maine, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. She can be reached at elsie.flemings@gmail.com.