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Standing Up to NAFTA
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews)
Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP) - Dec 18, 2007
via Counterpunch - Dec 20, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/carlsen12202007.html
Standing Up to NAFTA
By Laura Carlsen
Every hour, Mexico im****ts $1.5 million dollars worth of agricultural
and food products, almost all from the United States.
In that same hour, 30 people-men, women, and children-leave their homes
in the Mexican countryside to take up the most dangerous journey of
their lives-as migrants to the United States.
No matter what one's stance on these two fundamental phenomena of our
age-economic integration and immigration-one thing is absolutely clear:
they are related.
As the final phase of implementation of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) approaches, the debate remains disappointingly stuck
in ideologically defined terms. Proponents of the free trade model
point, not surprisingly, to increased trade as proof of its success.
Opponents cite negative impacts from the point of view of their
respective sectors, issues, and interests.
In January 2008 NAFTA enters its last stage of implementation in which
all remaining tariffs on corn, beans, and other sensitive agricultural
products will be eliminated. With severely negative impacts predicted
for Mexican farmers and an ac***ulation of social problems in all three
countries, this phase obliges policymakers to finally take NAFTA to
task for how it has affected the daily lives of North American citizens.
Applying the NAFTA model elsewhere in the world, U.S. negotiators have
hammered through "free trade agreements" (FTAs) bent on prying open new
markets for U.S. products and guaranteeing favorable conditions for
investors. These are laudable objectives, but for too long they have
ignored the fact that this narrow focus has high social costs in our
country and in the partner countries.
There comes a time when we have to determine whether those social costs
are worth the benefits and consider a change in course.
To do this, we need comprehensive studies that look at the
macroeconomic data and statistics, but also at livelihoods,
communities, and families.
Two Towns
The reality reflected in carefully selected numbers too often hides the
devastation in human lives. Two towns-El Paso, Texas and Nochixtlan,
Oaxaca-illustrate some of the real costs of NAFTA.
Shortly after NAFTA went into effect, companies located in El Paso
began an exodus over the border. The textile industry was the hardest
hit. The community organization Mujer Obrera re****ts that between 1994
and 2007 some 50,000 apparel workers lost their jobs. Two-thirds of
them were women, mostly of Mexican descent. As companies closed shop,
women workers lost their jobs and the county of El Paso, now tied for
the third poorest county in the nation, never found a way to compensate.
As a result, poverty has increased by over 30% since 1999 and today
nearly one of every three El Paso residents lives in poverty, 57% of
them women. Federal money under NAFTA for retraining programs has been
insufficient and misdirected, as former workers are either poorly
trained or trained for jobs that do not exist in the community. Year
after year, El Paso drops down in average income.
What has happened is no longer due primarily to job loss. Most of the
poor are working poor, according to the 2005 census. They have lost
income because employers are paying less and more people are employed
in the informal sector. Under this post-NAFTA scenario, women and
children bear the brunt-a full 45% of women-headed households live
below the poverty level.
Nochixtlan, Oaxaca also suffered under NAFTA, but in a very different
way. In the small Mixteco Indian community of southern Mexico, corn
farming sup****ted nearly all the inhabitants in one way or another.
After centuries of misuse, the land suffered from one of the worst
erosion rates in the world and chemical farming had depleted the soil.
Then, lower yields were combined with the impact of increased im****ts
under NAFTA that drove the domestic price of corn down 59% between 1991
and 2006. Nochixtlan farmers began to abandon their farms, and today
the Mixteca region of Oaxaca has one the country's highest rates of
out-migration. Here, too, no government programs came to the rescue or
even attempted to soften the blow.
But El Paso and Nochixtlan have something else in common besides
tragedy-the tremendous will of the community to pick itself up and move
on. In El Paso, the seamstresses have created a community development
plan that includes food gardens, a restaurant, an im****t business, and
a daycare service. All are small scale but they are serious attempts to
create sustainable jobs that fulfill human needs.
In Nochixtlan, a farmers' organization has built trenches to stop
erosion, started a reforestation program that has planted three million
native variety trees to date, and instituted sustainable farming
techniques. As they attempt to save their village, they are also
contributing to the global battle against global warming and
environmental decline.
The efforts of both are slowly reviving their communities. But they
need help.
U.S. trade policy sent these communities into deep crises. A new trade
policy can help pull them out, and avoid a similar fate for other
communities.
The terms of NAFTA must be modified to permit government regulation of
basic food production and supply, and provide policy instruments so
poor Mexican farmers are not forced to compete with subsidized large
companies for their own markets. The petition to withdraw corn and
beans from the free trade agreement and sup****t small farmers and food
sovereignty is not a blow against free trade precepts but a
common-sense demand for public policy that places lives and livelihoods
first.
There must be mechanisms of flexibility when the terms of trade
threaten livelihoods, food security, or health. This flexibility has
been lacking in NAFTA and other FTAs. Negotiations have been
inflexible, with developing countries finally giving in to terms they
know will harm part of their population. The pound of flesh exacted
from poor countries in exchange for access to the U.S. market in the
end hurts both partner countries and the United States , since the
terms of the agreements exacerbate inequality and close off
op****tunities, leading to increased immigration.
U.S. negotiators call this success but the long-term price in
international relations will be high and the immediate price is the
rejection of U.S. trade policy we see in many Latin American countries,
accompanied by resentment of the United States for the terms of
imposition.
There is a false dichotomy presented to us that divides
protectionism-seen as an evil of the past-and free trade as the only
path to the future. Free trade has even been presented as synonymous
with freedom in the political realm and the Western Hemisphere
****trayed as divided between the democratic open-market sup****ters and
nations searching to mitigate the polarizing effects of trade and
investment liberalization. Until we reject ideological posturing and
analyze the real impact of FTAs we will never arrive at more just and
viable trade policies for all our countries and a more prosperous and
stable hemisphere.
To develop a sustainable and fair trade policy this debate must become
less dogmatic and more pragmatic. It's time to take a close look at
what really is happening under these agreements and be open to
corrections or creative changes in course. Communities have already
begun to do that and a new trade policy can find many pointers in these
local experiences.
1) Trade policy should be accompanied by aid for sustainable
development:
U.S. aid to Mexico should be used to encourage efforts like Nochixtlan
and compensate for damage done by NAFTA by funding new economic
initiatives. NAFTA's extension, the Security and Prosperity Partner****p
(SPP) has gone off in the complete opposite direction. Instead of
directing aid and programs to regions negatively affected by the
agreement, it has facilitated terms for transnational cor****ations-the
only sector of society directly represented in its negotiations. Most
recently, the SPP process has led to Plan Mexico and a tenfold leap in
proposed U.S. aid to Mexico-but for enforcement, intelligence, and
military equipment. This creates a grave danger of militarizing a
politically polarized Mexico and increasing the possibility of
conflict. Creating healthy employment in the United States and Mexico
would have a far greater impact on reducing the illegal drug trade than
surveillance planes.
2) We need comprehensive studies:
For too long we have ignored or sought to patch over the serious
problems generated in the United States and Mexico by NAFTA. We have
abundant information on trade flows from the USTR, but little on the
real consequence on real human lives. It's past time to call for
studies that *****s the economic data but also re****t on changing
social indices even when direct cause and effect with NAFTA is
difficult to ascertain.
The results then should be heeded. One of the very few studies of NAFTA
in Mexico by the General Accounting Office concluded years ago that
there was a pressing need for rural compensation funds. Nothing was
done. Since then many of the predicted negative impacts have occurred,
and there has been no policy response whatsoever.
3) A moratorium should be called on all new FTAs, including the three
remaining before the U.S. Congress: South Korea, Panama, and Colombia.
The moratorium should last until new studies of the immediate and
long-term impact of FTAs have been thoroughly evaluated so as to
determine whether this model works. The three FTAs before congress
should be rejected not just for the particular cir***stances of each
case but because the FTA model is seriously flawed as an instrument of
a constructive trade and foreign policy.
What we already know about NAFTA-style Free Trade Agreements is that
along with increasing trade, they generate inequality. Adopting a trade
policy that widens the gap between rich and poor here and abroad does
nobody a service in the long term. Unless we change course, the social
costs of our current trade policy will grow over the years and what we
already see-unemployment and underemployment in our communities and
abroad, environmental degradation, natural resource depletion, and
growing gaps between those who benefit and those who are harmed-could
develop into more serious problems of instability and widespread
poverty.
A new policy would assure predictability and stable markets for U.S.
producers, guarantees-not privileges-for U.S. investors, and basic
rights for workers everywhere. It will imply a more active role of
governments in balancing a competitive open-market system with
protection of weaker sectors and the common good.
It will also mean denying some of the demands large cor****ations make
in the name of competitiveness. But that's healthy. If there is one
thing we've learned from the growth of inequality under NAFTA, it's
that trickle down doesn't work unless you squeeze from the top.
Companies must recognize responsibility for the communities whose labor
and resources go to make the products they sell and the profits they
reap.
Powerful interests will complain, but greater fairness for all-between
employers and employees, the United States, and its partner
nations-will build a more peaceful and stable world for the future.
And that will benefit all of us.
[Laura Carlsen (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org) is director of the Americas
Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org) in Mexico where she has worked
as a writer and political analyst for two decades. ]
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