Why on Earth Are Hillary and Obama Supporting Pro-Corporate Trade
Deals?
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted November 13, 2007.
It's a perfect blend of bad policy and losing politics.
With the announcement that Hillary Clinton will join Barack Obama in
supporting a new trade deal with Peru that passed in the House last
week -- the first in a series of "free-trade" deals that are based on
the deeply unpopular NAFTA model and being pushed through Congress by
the Bush administration -- the divide between the two Democratic
front-runners and the American electorate couldn't be clearer.
There's certainly no constituency for it within the universe of
Democratic primary voters -- all of the Peruvian and most American
unions oppose it, as do key environmental and anti-poverty
organizations -- and it certainly won't win any "swing" voters to the
party or make the Democratic brand more popular in any battleground
states.
I asked Todd Tucker, research director of Public Citizen's Global
Trade Watch, who really stands to benefit from the deal. He didn't
hesitate before rattling off a dozen multinationals including
Citigroup, Occidental Petroleum and Wal-Mart, all of whom, according
to Tucker, have "put their full might into getting the Peru deal
passed, including showering millions in congressional campaign
donations since January alone." Tucker told me their wish list
includes "privatized social security systems for Citi,
rainforest-destroying oil extraction for Occidental, and a push to
Wal-Mart's efforts to buy out Peru's retail sector, just as they did
in Central America just days after Bush signed [the Central American
Free Trade Agreement]." In addition, General Mills, (and the Grocery
Manufacturers Association PAC, which supports it) wants the deal to go
through because it grows most of its canned veggies in Peru
(decimating onion, asparagus and pea farmers in the United States) and
is now moving its processing facilities down there. Citibank, along
with other financial services firms, wants the deal because it would
allow the firm to sue the Peruvian government for damages if
progressive activists succeed in reversing a disastrous social
security privatization scheme that's screwed over millions of Peruvian
retirees.
The rest of the field has come out in opposition to the Peru
agreement, and one candidate, Dennis Kucinich, has gone so far as to
call for abolishing the WTO. But like Obama and Clinton, Joe Biden,
Christopher Dodd and Bill Richardson are all enthusiastic,
self-described "free traders." It's John Edwards, considered a distant
third in the race by the punditocracy, who is making the Peru deal
into an issue that he hopes will speak to the candidates' overall
judgment as well as their concern for issues of economic justice.
"Like the failed free trade agreements before it," he said in a
statement, "the Peru Agreement puts the interests of the big
multinational corporations first, ahead of the interests of American
workers and communities."
Supporting the NAFTA model does speak to the candidates' judgment.
Obama said that he'd vote for the Peru deal because "it contained the
labor and environmental standards sought by groups like the AFL-CIO,"
but the AFL-CIO released a statement saying that, because of "several
issues of concern to working families," the AFL-CIO "is not in a
position to support the Peru FTA." "Labor and environmental
protections" are a scam -- Tom Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, said that his members were "encouraged" by assurances that
the deal's labor provisions "cannot be read to require compliance."
Obama went on to insult the intelligence of a crowd of New Hampshire
residents by explaining: "We cannot draw a moat around the U.S.
economy because China is still trading, India is still trading." But
objecting to these new NAFTA-style deals has nothing to do with moats.
We already have a treaty with Peru, and 150 other countries, that
established a rules-based trading system, complete with a
dispute-resolution process. It's called the WTO, and fair trade
activists -- many of whom also happen to make up a large chunk of the
Democratic party's base -- already object to that institution's
consistently giving too much to investors without paying more than lip
service to protecting other stakeholders. No real Democrat should talk
about "moats" when we have binding trade deals in place covering 98
percent of the planet.
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