[mobglob-discuss] For Free Traders Like You

[Gordon Flett]

For Free Traders Like You: DERAIL THE 5TH MINISTERIAL OF THE WTO 

Call of the Hemispheric and Global Assembly against the FTAA and the WTO
Mexico City, May 11-12, 2003 

We, the participants in this historic Hemispheric and Global Assembly
against the Free Trade of the Americas and the World Trade Organization,
held in Mexico City on May 11-12, 2003, declare our intention and
commitment to derail the Fifth Ministerial of the World Trade
Organization that will take place in Cancun in September of this year. 

The WTO Ministerial will take place in the context of escalating US
military aggression against the peoples and nations of the world.
Washington's invasion and occupation of Iraq is simply the latest and
most outrageous case of the Bush administration's unrestrained
unilateralist foreign policy. 

The WTO is war by other means. The WTO represents the most ambitious
effort to resubjugate the economies of the countries of the South to
serve the interests of transnational corporations. The neoliberal,
free-trade paradigm incarnated in the WTO subverts the interests of
people both in the South and the North. Its legacy is greater poverty,
inequity, gender inequality, and indebtedness throughout the world. It
has also accelerated the destruction of the global environment. 

Today, the WTO, along with the other mechanisms of corporate control,
notably the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, are
suffering an historic crisis of credibility and legitimacy. Against the
massive misery they offer, global civil society is coming together to
forge creative alternatives to bring about a truly just global order.
Against a future of war, injustice, and permanent crisis offered by the
US, European Union, and the institutions of corporate rule, global civil
society offers a future of justice, peace, and solidarity. 

But even as the WTO institutionalizes stagnation, injustice, and
poverty, Washington is busy attempting to forge more corporate chains to
subjugate the South by intimidating the governments of Latin America to
sign on to the Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA). Enough. We say eight
years of the WTO is enough. We say the last thing Latin America needs is
the FTAA. 

We declare, instead, that another world is possible; and inspired by
this vision, we call on as many people as possible from throughout the
world to come and join us in Cancun in the week-long People's Forum for
Alternatives to the WTO on Sept. 9-14, 2003. We also call on people and
movements in all countries to launch massive united and coordinated
demonstrations on Sept. 9, the Day of Global Action against the WTO, and
on Sept. 13, the Day of Massive Demonstrations against Globalization and
War. 

United, the vast majority of the peoples of this planet say: 

NO TO WAR - END THE TYRANNY OF FREE TRADE AND THE WTO. NO TO THE FTAA.
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE <><><><><><><><><><><> 

TALKING POINTS ON US-SINGAPORE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT: The Bush
Administration Sticking It to Democrats by Flaunting "Jordan Test" and
Fast Track Requirements 

LABOR AND ENVIRONMENT It fails "Jordan Test" on labor and environment by
rolling back on several key elements. 

No parity of enforcement between labor and environmental and other
measures. Labor and environment get set limits on fines while
"commercial" terms get sanctions. 

Does not require signatories to adopt and enforce core International
Labor Organization (ILO) labor standards. (This is no small matter as
Singapore's dictatorship does not allow independent labor unions.) 

Only one enforceable labor or environmental standard: to enforce
existing standards. Jordan language on not lowering standards removed
and nothing requiring establishment of standards. 

It fails Fast Track negotiating objective on labor and environment
requiring equivalent enforcement of all provisions including labor and
environment. 

INVESTMENT It fails to repair the significant problems of NAFTA's
"Chapter 11" while adding dangerous new limits on the use of capital
controls during economic crisis. 

It includes investor-to-state private corporate enforcement of
regulatory takings protections using the term "measures equivalent to"
instead of "measures tantamount to" indirect expropriation. 

It goes beyond NAFTA into the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)
mode to include an ABSOLUTE BAN on all performance requirements in
signatory countries, including vis a vis investors from non-signatory
countries! 

It fails the "no greater rights" language in Fast Track stating that
foreign investors should not be provided rights in international
commercial pacts that go beyond those provided by the U.S. constitution
to U.S. companies and citizens. This Free Trade Agreement (FTA) fails
that test because it contains vague, circular language guaranteeing a
Minimum Standard of Treatment for foreign investors as well as
outrageous language creating regulatory takings compensation for foreign
investors. 

It contains language submitting any limitations on transfers of currency
and investments to investor-to-state claims for cash compensation. This
goes beyond NAFTA's extensive language on transfers. Under NAFTA a
country was allowed to use short term currency controls in a burden of
payments crisis. The Singapore agreement removes this exception, a move
which has generated attacks from the pro-free-trade The Economist, the
Financial Times and Columbia Professor Jagdish Bhagwati. 

This FTA's definition of investment is even broader than NAFTA's - -
like the failed MAI, the definition includes "every asset owned or
controlled, directly or indirectly" and lists stocks, derivatives, real
estate, intellectual property rights, permits and contracts and more. 

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 

This agreement threatens consumers' access to affordable medicine with
patent rules that go beyond NAFTA's tough terms and which contradict
even the mild Fast Track negotiating objective established in the
"Kennedy Amendment" calling for all future pacts to conform with the 
2001 Doha World Trade Organization (WTO) Declaration on Public Health
and Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). 

The grounds for allowing use of compulsory licensing is much narrower
than in the WTO TRIPS agreement or in NAFTA (only anti-competitive
practices or national emergency). 

Outrageously, the agreement requires that compulsory licensees pay the
full market price of the drug to obtain production rights, meaning
consumer price cuts are eliminated. 

This pact allows consecutive (not overlapping as in US law) five year
data exclusivity grants which effectively operate as a patent extension
because it means that data necessary for generic production is not
available to gear up for when the patent sunsets. 
.
Unlike the WTO, this agreement does not allow countries to refuse to
patent life forms, human cells and plant and animal varieties - -
countries must provide such patents in their domestic laws. 

TEMPORARY ENTRY 

The pact establishes a dangerous precedent of rewriting U.S. immigration
law via trade agreement by creating a new category of temporary entry
visas which do not include some existing U.S. labor market safeguards
and which are indefinitely renewable. 

While U.S. unemployment skyrockets, the pact creates a indefinitely
renewable one year visa available to 5400 service sector workers per
year with a B.A. (Current H-1B visas are for a set term and are only
renewable once.) 

The labor market safeguards (a strike is not being busted, no U.S.
workers are available, etc.) are not a condition of this visa. 

SERVICES 

The pact includes a NAFTA-style top-down services agreement - meaning
all sectors are covered unless an exception is negotiated. 

For more information, contact: Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch 
215 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20003 
web: http://www.tradewatch.org email: gtwinfo at citizen.org. 
tel: (202) 546-4996 fax: (202) 547-7392 

Washington Trade Daily Volume 12, Number 109 

Monday, June 2, 2003 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/
Trade Reports International Group tel: (301) 946-0817; trade hot line: 
(301) 946-0129 


The Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Council of Canadians served
the federal government with evidence to support their legal challenge to
the North American Free Trade Agreement's Chapter 11 (WTD, 10/28/02).
The groups have applied to the Superior Court of Ontario that NAFTA's
rules allowing foreign corporations to sue governments over public
policies, laws and programs are unconstitutional. These rules have
already been invoked to challenge everything from environmental laws,
land-use planning controls, the delivery of services by Canada Post to
the decisions of domestic courts. 

The Council and CUPW are also fighting for standing in a NAFTA based
suit brought by US-based United Parcel Services against Canada. UPS is
seeking $160 million in damages because Canada's publicly funded post
office competes with it in the package delivery and courier markets.
"The UPS case shows how foreign corporations are using NAFTA to attack
public services," said Deborah Bourque, CUPW President. 

2003 The Washington Post Company 

American Casualties of Free Trade Policies to Brief Congress 

Declining Wages and Loss of Jobs and Labor Protections Draws Attention
of Lawmakers As the United States Negotiates More Trade Agreements 

(Oakland, CA) In an open challenge to the United States Trade
Representative and the Bush administration's economic policies, a
delegation of America's working poor from all walks of life will expose
the harsh reality behind free trade at a congressional briefing,
sponsored by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on June 12,
9:00-11:30 a.m. at 2168 Rayburn House Building, Washington, DC. This
briefing will be webcast live at: http://www.foodfirst.org. 

U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick, argues that free trade helps
American workers, saying, "It is our shared hemispheric vision that free
trade and openness benefits everyone and provides opportunity,
prosperity and hope to all our peoples." 

Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 
1994, the United States has lost an estimated three million jobs. Today,
those Americans who have found employment in the post-NAFTA economy work
longer hours, with less job security and fewer benefits. Overall, real
wages have remained stagnant and the low-skill jobs created by free
trade agreements on average pay 13 percent less than before. 

"One of the great myths perpetuated by the United States government is
that free trade helps poor people and communities in America," said
Anuradha Mittal, co-director of Food First/Institute for Food and
Development Policy, the organizers of the briefing. "No one has asked
working Americans what their experience has been. We've had NAFTA for
nearly a decade and its effects have been tragic. Now Congress will hear
the truth from representatives of the hundreds of thousands of people
who lose from free trade." 

Several members of Congress, including Representatives Barbara Lee,
Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, Marcy Kaptur, and Sheila Jackson-Lee,
will preside over the briefing. 

"With our economy on the skids and unemployment on the rise, now more
than ever, it is time for us to review how NAFTA and our trade policies
have had a damaging effect on this economy," said Congressman Dennis J.
Kucinich (D-OH). "I look forward to participating in this important
forum and taking a critical review of these policies." 

"The spectrum of testimony at the briefing is broad, from workers in
U.S. sweatshops, to farmworkers, family farmers and unionized workers,"
said Christine Ahn, Coordinator of the briefing. "As the U.S. prepares
to seal the WTO Doha round, CAFTA and the FTAA, this briefing could not
be more timely. The voices of these Americans deserve to be heard." more 

Testifying organizations include AFL-CIO, American Corn Growers
Association, Association of Border Workers, Black Farmers &
Agriculturalist Association, California Senate Select Committee,
Charleston 5 International Longshoreman's Association, Chinese
Progressive Association, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Farm Labor
Organizing Committee, Fuerza Unida, National Family Farm Coalition,
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association, Public Citizen,
Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network, and United Farm Workers of
America. 

For more information, please contact Nick Parker at (510) 654-4400 ext. 
229 or visit www.foodfirst.org. 
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