http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/special_packages/focus/7264446.htmhttp://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/special_packages/focus/7264446.htm
Posted on Sun, Nov. 16, 2003
FTAA DEBATE | AGAINST
Agreement will just send more U.S. jobs overseas
BY JOHN J. SWEENEY
Ten years ago this week, Congress voted to approve the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This Thursday, trade ministers from 34
countries will meet here in Miami to mark another milestone in
negotiations toward a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which
would essentially extend NAFTA to the rest of the hemisphere (except
for Cuba).
The FTAA is mired in controversy. Tens of thousands of peaceful
protesters are expected to greet the trade ministers in Miami,
expressing their strong opposition to the model of corporate-centered
global trade rules embodied in NAFTA, and now being replicated on a
larger scale in the FTAA.
Working people, environmentalists, people of faith, family farmers,
and human rights and anti-poverty activists from all over the
hemisphere will come together this week to resoundingly reject the
FTAA, demanding more fairness and transparency in the trade rules that
affect all of our lives.
The massive loss of decent jobs here since early 2001 makes the FTAA
debate a matter of critical importance to millions of American workers
and their families. Our nation has lost 3 million net private-sector
jobs since the Bush administration took office. Last month marked the
38th straight month in which we lost manufacturing jobs. Even the
uptick in overall jobs in the last quarter consisted mainly of
low-paying service jobs, 40 percent in temp and retail.
Economists identify outsourcing and exploding trade deficits as one
key cause of the so-called ''jobless recovery.'' Yet in the face of
this disastrous job record, President Bush is negotiating yet another
flawed trade agreement that will send more American jobs overseas.
The key issues now, as when NAFTA was adopted, are good jobs,
development, and democracy. NAFTA failed to deliver on all three
counts, and the FTAA is set to follow the same path.
NAFTA was supposed to open Mexico's consumer market to more U.S.
exports, creating hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs in this
country. But instead of exporting more U.S. products to Mexican
consumers, multinational companies took advantage of NAFTA's new
investment rules and lower tariffs and shifted jobs out of the United
States, increasing our imports from both Canada and Mexico much faster
than our exports. The result is that the U.S. trade deficit with our
NAFTA partners has grown almost tenfold, from $9 billion in 1993 to
$87 billion in 2002.
LOSS OF JOBS
The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that this explosion of our
NAFTA trade deficit has cost almost three-quarters of a million U.S.
jobs -- 27,000 here in Florida. So Floridians should look skeptically
on the rosy predictions that the FTAA and its secretariat will bring
89,000 jobs to Florida. With sensitive sectors like citrus and sugar
on the negotiating table, and the dismal job-destruction record of
NAFTA's first decade behind us, these predictions ring hollow.
Nor did NAFTA improve U.S. competitiveness with the rest of the world.
Our global trade deficit has more than tripled since 1993, from $133
billion to $484 billion.
RURAL POVERTY
One of the main selling points of NAFTA was that it would alleviate
poverty in Mexico. However, the opposite has occurred. Mexican real
wages are actually lower today than before NAFTA, while the rural
economy is experiencing traumatic upheavals. Meanwhile, the number of
people in poverty in Mexico has grown from 62 million to 69 million.
Mexico's economic growth has been mediocre, and the number of migrants
leaving in search of a better life has grown, despite then-President
Salinas's boast that with NAFTA, Mexico would export tomatoes, not
tomato-pickers. While NAFTA certainly spurred greater flows of trade
and investment, average Mexican workers and farmers have not seen many
benefits.
Proposed FTAA rules are aimed at constraining the ability of national
and local governments to implement their own laws, to protect the
environment or public health, for example. This back-door deregulation
is never highlighted by the trade agreement supporters, but comes back
to bite us years later when regulations come under attack because they
are ''incompatible with our obligations'' under NAFTA or other trade
agreements.
FIX EXISTING SYSTEM
We need to fix the problems we already have with NAFTA, not extend
them through an FTAA. The FTAA, as currently conceived, would mean
more lost jobs, closed plants, devastated communities, and ruined
lives here in the United States and throughout the hemisphere.
The AFL-CIO, along with our union brothers and sisters and fair-trade
allies in the Western Hemisphere, has called for a different kind of
social and economic integration for the Americas. It must incorporate
enforceable workers' rights and environmental standards and ensure
that governments retain the right and ability to provide essential
public services and to regulate in the public interest.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration has prioritized corporate
investment rules at the expense of workers' rights, and the FTAA
negotiations are seriously off track.
With the worst job-
creation record since Herbert Hoover, the last thing the Bush
administration needs is a new and expanded job-destroying free-trade
agreement for the entire hemisphere. It is time for our policymakers
to wake up and take an honest look at NAFTA's dismal record before
continuing down this path.
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