I thought I'd provide some links for those who wish to find out more than what the media sells them:
http://www.citizen.org/documents/FTAA%20Factsheet%20Jan.%2003.pdfUnveiling “NAFTA for the Americas” NAFTA + WTO = FTAA
What is “FTAA” or “NAFTA for the Americas”?
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is the formal name given to an expansion of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) that would include all of the countries in the western hemisphere. This massive NAFTA expansion is currently being negotiated in secret by trade ministers from 34 nations in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The goal of the FTAA is to impose the failed NAFTA model of increased privatization and deregulation hemisphere-wide. Imposition of these rules would empower corporations to constrain governments from setting standards for public health and safety, to safeguard their workers and to ensure that corporations do not pollute the communities in which they operate. Effectively, these rules would handcuff governments’ public interest policymaking and enhance corporate control at the expense of citizens throughout the Americas.
What can we learn about FTAA from NAFTA?
FTAA would deepen the negative effects of NAFTA we’ve seen in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. over the past eight years and expand NAFTA’s damage to the other 31 countries involved. The FTAA would intensify NAFTA’s “race to the bottom”: under the FTAA exploited workers in Mexico could be leveraged against even more desperate workers in Haiti, Guatemala or Brazil by multinational corporations. A quick look at NAFTA’s legacy reveals disastrous consequences:
· It’s estimated that over a million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost since NAFTA as companies relocated to Mexico to take advantage of $5 per day wages for Mexican workers. Without enforceable labor rights, Mexican workers cannot organize to increase their wages. The laid-off U.S. workers usually find jobs with less security and wages that are about 77% of what they originally had.
· The trade surplus the U.S. enjoyed with Mexico before NAFTA has become an $24.2 billion per year deficit as of 2000.
http://stopcafta.org/About CAFTA
CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreements, is a proposed commercial pact between the United States and five countries in Central America: El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica.
CAFTA is modeled after the now-infamous North American Free Trade Agreement. The same negative effects caused by NAFTA--such as the devastating impact on working people in the United States, Canada, and Mexico--are expected to occur to many people living in countries participating in CAFTA if a CAFTA agreement is reached.
Civil society groups in Central America and the United States oppose the CAFTA in its current form and call for trade that respects democracy, food security, and public services.
From October 20th to October 24th, trade delegates will be meeting in Houston to continue negotiating their CAFTA agenda in secret without any form of public consultation.
http://www.cwa-union.org/international/ftaa/FTAAUPDATEVol.3No.15.aspUS Trade Deficit – Still Rising
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The US Trade Deficit was $40.3 billion in the MONTH OF FEBRUARY . That is the combination of surplus in exports of services of $3.9 billion less the $44.2 billion in imports of goods . This excess of exports is very important given the weak outlook of the global economy.
In the NAFTA areas – the FEBRUARY Trade Deficit with Canada was $4.3 Billion; the Trade Deficit with Mexico was $3 Billion in FEBRUARY.
You can see the up to the minute deficit, with an explanation of all of the problems caused in our economy by this imbalance. Click here:
http://www.tradealert.org/ticker_home.asp --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Report on Globalization, Trade and Workers Rights
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This week saw publication of a good, short report explaining the ties between Workers Rights, Trade and Globalization . The Economic Policy Institute issued the report “Rights Make Might” report in conjunction with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual spring meetings in Washington DC.
At 7 pages (and that is one page of footnotes), it concisely explains what many already knew: Workers rights encourage growth, help distribute the benefits of that growth more equally, and promote stability. The pdf of the report is available at:
http://www.epinet.org/Issuebriefs/ib192/ib192.pdf --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Materials to Order
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trade Secrets: The Hidden Costs of the FTAA
"Trade Secrets: The Hidden Costs of the FTAA" is a new 16 minute video tape from the perspective of labor on the FTAA. Narrated by Mike Farrell, it covers the NAFTA Chapter 11 cases on UPS, and Methanex' attack on California's environmental laws banning MTBE from gasoline, and how the FTAA will affect us. There is also a set of fact sheets and great interactive role play on the impacts on the public and private sectors of the FTAA.
The materials come from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. You can reach Producer Jeremy Blasi at (510) 642-1583, email: blasi@uclink.berkeley.edu, or visit
http://henningcenter.berkeley.edu. The packets, including the video and curriculum guide, cost $15 each (shipping costs included); or $10 each for orders of 10 or more and $7.50 each for orders of 50 or more (plus shipping - contact for cost). Make out a check to "UC Regents" and send it to: Att: Jeremy Blasi, UC Berkeley Labor Center, 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA 94720.
Trading Democracy - Moyers videos
The issues of transparency - and NAFTA Chapter 11 are well explained in Bill Moyers' Reports: Trading Democracy. The impact is carried further when you remember that the same "lack of transparency" (as in secret courts make the decisions) are included in the Chile and FTAA agreements.
Order a copy of the video - $7 each and watch it - share the stories of Metalclad - where $16 million was paid by Mexico after losing a case; and the pending MTBE case in California where the claim is for $970 million against the US. This may be ordered at:
http://www.cwa-union.org/international/ftaa/bill_moyers_order.asp. Talking Trade Order
Free copies of our publication: "CWA Talking Trade, Taking a Stand for Justice" may be ordered on our website by clicking on the following:
http://www.cwa-union.org/international/ftaa/forms/talkingtrade.asp.http://www.pcusa.org/trade/WHY JUST TRADE?
Revenge of the Acronyms: WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA and FTAA
Can Acronyms Cause Hunger and Poverty?
Yes, they can.
http://www.uevermont.org/politicalaction/global.htmlGlobal Justice
Bosses just love the global economy. It's the good old "divide and conquer" trick, but on a much bigger scale. Workers have always fared best when we are able to bridge the divisions that bosses try to place between us, and that is no different even when the divisions are on a global scale.
For the past several decades, workers everywhere in the world have been under attack - our wages, jobs, living standards, trade union rights, social programs, and rights to a healthy and safe environment. Called "neoliberalism" in most parts of the world, it is often known as "corporate globalization" in the U.S., and a key component of it is to make workers in different countries engage in a "race to the bottom" in the name of "competitiveness."
The corporate approach to globalization is enforced through trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and by international financial institutions (sometimes refered to as IFI's) like the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank. Also crucial to corporate globalization have been large-scale development projects like Plan Peubla-Panama and, when popular resistance to these schemes arises, military intervention to put it down.
In response to this corporate-led globalization, working people around the world have begun to promote globalization from below. This loose coalition made international news by shutting down the WTO's meeting in Seattle in 1999, and large-scale "global justice" protests have been common ever since. Working people have also built international campaigns against specific corporations which have been successful in winning concrete gains, strategized with workers from other countries about how to take on the world-wide corporate offensive of privatization and deregulation, and created international forums to begin defining an alternative vision of a global economy, one that puts people before profits and creates justice and prosperity for all.
These were all found with a google search for: NAFTA CAFTA FTAA WTO.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
