[CTC] Initial statements on NAFTA proposal

Mon Oct 1 07:42:30 PDT 2018

Initial statements form the AFL-CIO, Public Citizen and Sierra Club.  More to follow later today.  If you haven’t sent me your group’s statement yet, please do so!

Here is the new link to the text of the agreement:
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement/united-states-mexico <https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement/united-states-mexico>

And here is the Labor Advisory Committee report and other advisory committee reports:
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement/advisory-committee <https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement/advisory-committee>

https://aflcio.org/pressreleases/more-work-needed-determine-if-new-nafta-works-working-people
More Work Needed to Determine if ‘New NAFTA’ Works for Working People

September 30, 2018
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Statement from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on the latest developments surrounding the “new” North American Free Trade Agreement:

The text we have reviewed, even before the confirmation that Canada will remain part of NAFTA, affirms that too many details still need to be worked out before working people make a final judgment on a deal. Our history of witnessing unfair trade deals destroy the lives of working families demands the highest level of scrutiny before receiving our endorsement. 

Added protections for working people and some reductions in special privileges for global companies is a good start, but we still don’t know whether this new deal will reverse the outsourcing incentives present in the original NAFTA. It also is critical that we see what final labor enforcement, auto rules of origin and government purchasing provisions will look like. We recognize U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer’s work to address these concerns, and we look forward to continue collaborating with him and his team to ensure that working people in the United States, Canada and Mexico get the renegotiated trade agreement we all deserve.  

America’s working families want the three countries to go back to the table and finish the work, and we will be right there with them, fighting for rules that will create good, high-wage jobs, protect our environment and safeguard our democracy.

Contact: Gonzalo Salvador (202) 637-5018

Contact: Ufuoma Otu, (202) 454-5108, uotu at citizen.org <mailto:uotu at citizen.org>     
Matthew Groch, (202) 454-5111, mgroch at citizen.org <mailto:uotu at citizen.org>

Renegotiated NAFTA Deal: Improvements on Some Key Demands and More Work Needed

Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch

Note: A renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was just announced. Here <https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/nafta-isds-analysis-sept-2018.pdf> is our initial analysis of the Investment Chapter, which eliminates NAFTA’s Chapter 11-B, Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). An initial analysis of how the full text measures up to our demands will be available here <https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/nafta-text-analysis.pdf> tomorrow:

“The new deal includes some important improvements for which we have long advocated, some new terms we oppose and more work required to stop NAFTA’s ongoing job outsourcing, downward pressure on our wages and environmental damage.
Important progress has been made with the removal of investment terms that help outsource jobs and a dramatic reining-in of NAFTA’s outrageous corporate Investor State Dispute Settlement tribunals under which corporations have grabbed hundreds of millions from taxpayers after attacks on environmental and health policies. This is a major change: The inclusion of expansive investor privileges and powers in the 1993 NAFTA hatched a new corporate-coup-de-etat-by-trade-agreement model that’s been followed ever since. That even this corporate-compliant administration whacked ISDS means a future Democratic president cannot backslide and sends a powerful signal to the many nations worldwide also seeking to escape the odious ISDS regime. 

More work remains to be done. Unless there are strong labor and environmental standards that are subject to swift and certain enforcement, U.S. firms will continue to outsource jobs to pay Mexican workers poverty wages, dump toxins and bring their products back here for sale. 

Areas of progress include a first-time-ever innovation of conditioning trade benefits for a percentage of autos and auto parts on the workers producing them being paid $16 per hour or more. Terms that forced countries to continue to export natural resources that they seek to conserve are eliminated. Longstanding safety and environmental problems relating to Mexican-domiciled trucks’ access to U.S. roads are addressed. Rules of origin that allowed goods with significant Chinese and others non-North American value were tightened.   

But, despite Donald Trump’s “Buy American/Hire American” rhetoric, the new deal maintains NAFTA’s waiver of Buy American rules that require the U.S. government to procure U.S.-made goods, which would mean more outsourced U.S. tax dollars and jobs. New monopoly privileges for pharmaceutical firms added to the deal could undermine reforms needed to make medicine more affordable here and increase prices in Mexico and Canada, limiting access to lifesaving medicines.

Failed U.S. trade policies that have dramatically boosted corporate power and harmed workers, consumers and the environment require a complete transformation. A final renegotiation package that stops NAFTA’s ongoing damage and begins the process of replacing the failed U.S. trade agreement model could obtain broad support.

Americans have suffered under NAFTA’s corporate-rigged rules for decades. Nearly one million U.S. jobs have been government-certified as lost to NAFTA, with NAFTA helping corporations outsource more jobs to Mexico every week. The downward pressure on U.S. workers’ wages caused by NAFTA outsourcing has only intensified as Mexican wages declined in real terms since NAFTA, with Mexican manufacturing wages now 40 percent below those in coastal China. 

###

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Monday, October 1, 2018

Contact: Cindy Carr, cindy.carr at sierraclub.org <mailto:your.name at sierraclub.org>

Trump’s Climate-Denying NAFTA Proposal Would Perpetuate Outsourcing of Pollution and Jobs

Sierra Club Opposes Deal Given Failure to Meet Basic Environmental Criteria

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, the Trump administration released the text <https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement/united-states-mexico> of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. The administration has notified Congress of Trump’s intent to sign the proposed deal later this year, setting the stage for a potential fight over the deal in the next Congress. The U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal includes <https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/uploads-wysiwig/Sierra%20Club%20NAFTA%202.0%20Synopsis.pdf> weak environmental terms that have historically enabled outsourcing of pollution and jobs, fails to make any mention of climate change, and includes special handouts to oil and gas corporations.

In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune released the following statement:

“Donald Trump’s incoherent trade policy has produced a pro-polluter proposal that would perpetuate NAFTA’s damage to our communities. Trump’s version of NAFTA would encourage further outsourcing of pollution and jobs, offer special handouts to corporate polluters like Chevron and ExxonMobil, and cement Trump’s polluting legacy for years after he has left office. The proposal not only fails to mention climate change – it would prolong NAFTA’s contribution to the climate crisis. The proposal as a whole falls far short of the minimum changes that are essential to halt NAFTA’s threats to our air, water, and climate. If this proposal -- hastily sealed to score political points -- remains as is, the Sierra Club will vigorously oppose it, while continuing to fight for a genuine replacement of NAFTA that puts people and the planet first.”

###

An Environmental Audit of Trump’s NAFTA Deal

During the NAFTA negotiations, leading U.S. environmental groups outlined minimum changes that must be made to NAFTA to halt the deal’s environmental damage. See here for these minimum environmental criteria <https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/uploads-wysiwig/NAFTA%20Environmental%20Letter%20May%202018.pdf>.  

A review of the text <https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/uploads-wysiwig/Sierra%20Club%20NAFTA%202.0%20Synopsis.pdf> of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal reveals that it falls far short of these baseline criteria and would pose significant threats to our air, water, and climate. In short, the deal: 

Supports further outsourcing of toxic pollution and jobs: The deal’s lack of binding environmental standards would allow more corporations to evade U.S. environmental policies by shifting jobs and toxic pollution to Mexico, where environmental policies are weaker. For example, the lack of any binding lead pollution standards means that corporations would still enjoy NAFTA’s incentives to dump their lead waste in Mexico, which has contributed to job loss in the U.S. and toxic lead poisoning in border communities <https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/02/26/a-dangerous-export-americas-car-battery-waste-is-making-mexican-communities-sick/?noredirect=on>. 

Denies climate change: The deal fails to even mention climate change. This denialism leaves intact NAFTA’s incentives for corporations to dodge the hard-fought clean energy policies of U.S. states by moving to Mexico, eliminating jobs and perpetuating climate pollution. This climate loophole only reinforces the U.S.’s status as the world’s largest outsourcer of climate pollution <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/climate/outsourcing-carbon-emissions.html>.

Rolls back the environmental standards of past trade deals: The deal takes a significant step backwards from the environmental protections included in the last four U.S. trade deals by failing to reinforce a standard set of seven Multilateral Environmental Agreements <https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/factsheets/2007/asset_upload_file127_11319.pdf> (MEAs) that protect everything from wetlands to sea turtles. The deal includes standard enforcement language for only one of the seven MEAs, while using weak language for two MEAs and failing to even mention four of these essential environmental agreements.

Includes weak environmental terms: The environment chapter is primarily filled with non-binding terms that mirror the weak words of the polluter-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership <https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/20857-assessing-the-tpp-environmental-chapter>. For example, the text “recognizes that air pollution is a serious threat to public health,” but then fails to include a single binding rule to reduce the air pollution that NAFTA has exacerbated. Much of the language appears designed to greenwash the deal, not to rectify NAFTA’s threats to wildlife, ecosystems, or clean air and water.

Copies a failed enforcement system: Even the strongest language will only be effective if enforced. The deal essentially replicates the same failed environmental enforcement mechanism from past U.S. trade agreements. Not once has the U.S. used this mechanism in past trade deals to bring a case against a U.S. trade partner for environmental abuses, despite widely documented violations <https://www.sierraclub.org/compass/2016/03/investigating-perus-illegal-timber-trade-and-failure-us-peru-trade-deal>.

Offers a dangerous handout to Chevron and ExxonMobil: The deal makes progress in curtailing the overreaching corporate rights in NAFTA’s “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) system...but then uniquely offers those egregious rights to notorious corporate polluters. This special handout is available to all U.S. oil and gas corporations that have, or may at some point have, government contracts for offshore drilling, fracking, oil and gas pipelines, refineries, or other polluting activities in Mexico. That means, for example, that Chevron and ExxonMobil – the two largest corporate climate polluters in history <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2013/nov/20/which-fossil-fuel-companies-responsible-climate-change-interactive> and repeat users of ISDS – would be allowed to challenge environmental protections in Mexico by relying on the same broad corporate rights that they have used to successfully challenge public interest policies from Ecuador to Canada <https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/egregious-investor-state-attacks-case-studies_4.pdf>.

Encourages fracking: The deal preserves a NAFTA rule that effectively bars the U.S. government from determining whether gas exports to Mexico are in the public interest. This automatic gas export guarantee facilitates increased fracking in the U.S. <https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/uploads-wysiwig/NAFTA%20and%20Climate%20Report%202018.pdf>, expansion of cross-border gas pipelines, and growing dependency on climate-polluting gas in Mexico.

Offers corporate polluters a new way to weaken environmental policies: The deal’s “good regulatory practices” rules could give corporate polluters a new way to delay, weaken, or halt new environmental regulations <https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/uploads-wysiwig/NAFTA%20and%20Climate%20Report%202018.pdf>. The rules offer corporations extra opportunities to challenge proposed regulations before they are finalized, and to ask that existing regulations be repealed. These deregulatory rules could make it harder to reverse the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks once Trump leaves office, which could extend his polluting legacy for years. 

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