CJ Buchmann's List: Free Trade Agreement

• It is not surprising that Democrats have been unable to come up with an alternative trade policy. As the most experienced critics of the current model freely admit, no one is prepared to offer such an overarching plan. However, elements have been identified that can make trade more fair and sustainable. Some of them have been incorporated into the Democrats’ proposal—sort of.
• On labor, the outline presented to the public calls to “enforce basic international labor standards.” It does not specifically refer to the International Labor Organization’s eight core human rights conventions, which cover child labor, forced labor, discrimination, and freedom of association. Of course, there’s a problem in requiring trade partners to adhere to ILO standards. The United States itself has one of the worst ratification records in the world. Of the eight, it has only ratified two.
• The Democrats’ proposal also refers to using the “same dispute settlement” mechanisms. These mechanisms are practically unenforceable. Under the labor side agreement of NAFTA, the number of labor violations sanctioned in thirteen years comes to a grand total of zero. Needless, to say, this is not because there have been no trade-related labor rights violations in the United States, Canada, or Mexico since 1994.
• The proposal also calls for free trade agreements that would “re-establish a fair balance between promoting access to medicines and protecting pharmaceutical innovation” and require adherence to multilateral environmental agreements, among other changes in the current model. All these intentions are laudable but fail to deal with the root cause of the problem—the FTA model itself.
• Even in Colombia, a staunch U.S. ally in Latin America, opposition to the FTA has run high. Over 2,000 labor activists have been assassinated in the country since 1990, and the agreement adds no effective protections while at the same time encouraging further gouging into workers’ rights. A Colombian health negotiator also resigned in protest, this time due to U.S. insistence on restrictive pharmaceutical patents that would affect access to medicines.
• Indeed, many of the most controversial provisions of the FTAs, including the imposition of supra-national investment guarantees and intellectual property exclusivity, have little to do with trade.
• Moreover, existing trade agreements, including the General System of Preferences (GSP), the Andean Pact Trade and Drug Enforcement Agreement (APTDEA), and the Caribbean Basin Initiative, carry less baggage than the FTAs and have already built strong trading relations between nations.

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