[CTC] Trade Pact with E.U. may not be best

[Josh Wise]

 http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/204582681.html
Trade pact with E.U. may not be best

   - Article by: JOSH WISE
   - Updated: April 24, 2013 - 8:53 PM

Agreements like that being negotiated between the U.S. and E.U. are really
the work of lobbyists.

*Counterpoint*

The *April 19 editorial*<http://www.startribune.com/opinion/editorials/203691031.html>(“U.S.-E.U.
trade pact would bring benefits”) deserves a rebuttal. Until
the flawed process of trade negotiations is addressed, so-called
“free-trade agreements” are going to continue to be a tool for
multinational corporations to further deregulate themselves and hamstring
local governments and communities in protecting their quality of life.

Trade treaties are negotiated by the Office of the United States Trade
Representative, which is headed by a diplomat and is part of the executive
office of the president. This agency has the power to keep negotiations
classified. That means that the public, the media and even Congress cannot
see what is being negotiated in the name of the American people until the
treaty text has been finalized.

However, those who lobby the executive branch may be named “cleared
advisers” and have access to parts of the negotiating texts. In current
negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, there are more than 600
listed advisers, more than 90 percent of whom represent corporate interests.

Additionally, every major trade agreement since the time of the Nixon
administration has been accompanied by what is know as trade promotion or
fast-track authority, under which Congress abdicates its constitutional
responsibility to regulate international trade by guaranteeing that it will
not amend a treaty once the president has signed it and that it will vote
on the treaty within 90 days of receiving it. It is important to remember
that once these agreements are signed, they become the law of the land.

What we have is an alternative system in which laws literally are written
by lobbyists in secret, with our elected representatives having little to
no chance for input.

It should be no surprise that these treaties have served to benefit the
people who wrote them. The terms “market access” and “barriers to trade”
are often thrown about without really being unpacked. They should be
understood.

Lowering barriers to trade means deregulation, be it environmental
regulation, food-safety regulation or, of course, labor standards. The
classic example is “country of origin” labeling for food.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has decided, via a trade tribunal, that
you and I as consumers do not have the right to know if our meat comes from
Mexico or China or wherever, because just the fact that we know
discriminates against foreign producers. Ominously, both the United States
and the United Kingdom want to eliminate barriers to trade in the financial
sector, which likely means further deregulating the banks that caused the
Great Recession.

When you hear “market access,” what should come to your mind is
privatization. Ever since the Central America Free Trade Agreement,
government procurement — how our tax money is spent — has had its own
chapter in bilateral agreements, as well as under the WTO.

What these chapters have done is to force governments to open their public
services to private bidders, in addition to setting restrictions on what
local governments can require as standards for bids on public contracts.

Indeed, the E.U. was the primary driver for requiring state and local
governments in the United States to be bound by the failed expansion of the
General Agreement on Trade and Services. This would have effectively banned
prevailing wage and “buy local”policies.

Of course, there’s the claim that more trade equals more jobs. According to
the Economic Policy Institute, the United States lost nearly 700,000 jobs
to NAFTA and more than 2 million to permanent normal trade relations with
China. That’s net jobs, meaning it takes account of any jobs that may have
been created from exports.

So, if trade talks with the E.U. can be done through a transparent process
that allows the public to have real input and sets high standards for
global quality of life — then great! But I’m not optimistic.

Until we can break the corporate stranglehold on trade treaty negotiations,
then regardless of who is in the White House or Congress, these deals are
only going to continue the global race to the bottom for wages, the
environment and consumers.

---------------------

Josh Wise is director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition.



-- 
Josh Wise
MN Fair Trade Coalition
952-818-5474
josh at citizenstrade.org
www.mnfairtradecoalition.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20130425/f88a8255/attachment-0001.htm>