[CTC] USW | 2.4 Million Jobs Lost Due to China Trade Deficit

[Citizens Trade Campaign]

Bill
<http://www.swopblogger.org/2010/03/bill-clinton-admits-his-neoliberal-free.
html>  Clinton admits his Neoliberal Free Trade policies are wrong: 'It was
a mistake' 

http://www.swopblogger.org/2010/03/bill-clinton-admits-his-neoliberal-free.h
tml

Monday, March 22, 2010

 

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made a remarkable admission a couple of
weeks ago.  His neoliberal "free trade" policies of the 1990's have led to
the destruction of Haiti's agricultural sector and the inability of the
country to feed itself.

 

"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not
worked. It was a mistake," said Clinton to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee on March 10. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the
loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people
because of what I did; nobody else." 

 

In a remarkable
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/20/AR201003200
1329.html?sub=AR>  article, Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz
describes what has happened in Haiti, which is similar to poor countries all
over the world. 

 

When Haiti lowered its tariffs on rice in the 90s on the direction of the
international neoliberal trade regime-led by the U.S. with Clinton as its
champion, and foisted onto poor countries by the World Bank, the World Trade
Organization and the International Monetary Fund-subsidized American farm
products flooded its market with cheap food. Haitian farmers were unable to
compete.

 

>From the AP article: 

 

Cheap foreign products drove farmers off their land and into overcrowded
cities. Rice, a grain with limited nutrition once reserved for special
occasions in the Haitian diet, is now a staple. 

 

Imports also put the country at the mercy of international prices: When they
spiked in 2008, rioters unable to afford rice smashed and burned buildings.
Parliament ousted the prime minister. 

 

Now it could be happening again. Imported rice prices are up 25 percent
since the quake - and would likely be even higher if it weren't for the
flood of food aid, said WFP market analyst Ceren Gurkan. 

 

Three decades ago things were different. Haiti imported only 19 percent of
its food and produced enough rice to export, thanks in part to protective
tariffs of 50 percent set by the father-son dictators, Francois and
Jean-Claude Duvalier. 

 

When their reign ended in 1986, free-market advocates in Washington and
Europe pushed Haiti to tear those market barriers down. President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, freshly reinstalled to power by Clinton in 1994, cut
the rice tariff to 3 percent. 

 

Impoverished farmers unable to compete with the billions of dollars in
subsidies paid by the U.S. to its growers abandoned their farms. 

 

 
<http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_HSPzRDwdeVo/S6enp2AqO4I/AAAAAAAAA0M/a6NKNRea4ws/s
1600-h/SWOP99.JPG> 

 

What Katz describes in this article, and Clinton cops to, is a neoliberal
trade regime that led to the destruction of third-world agricultural sectors
and a huge migration from rural areas to urban cities. 

 

Here in the states, we can credit the large wave of immigration we
experienced over the past decade to those trade policies, as people from
south of the border struggled to feed their families and ultimately headed
north. Many of those immigrants work on those same American farms  that
profit through exporting to developing countries. 

 

U.S. workers have also suffered from "free trade," with the dismantling of
our manufacturing base as companies head overseas in search of cheaper
labor. What sectors have been created to replace those manufacturing jobs
that pay living wages? During this incredibly painful recession we are
currently living through, this is quite the burning question. 

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