This is from Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch:
Substance: The "Deal" Doesn't Even Attempt to Fix Most of the Problems with NAFTA-style Trade Pacts
The crux of the deal is to renegotiate Bush's NAFTA expansions deals to add stronger labor and environmental standards and to limit some of the extreme monopoly rights these trade agreements give Big Pharma to jack up poor countries' drug prices. Unfortunately, the deal fails to even address the many other damaging elements of the NAFTA model that have contributed to wage stagnation for U.S. workers, promoted off-shoring of millions of U.S. jobs, and exposed core domestic policies to challenge as "illegal trade barriers."
Among the minimal essential "fixes" labor, consumer and other organizations listed months ago as necessary for not opposing the "deal", which are not addressed or fixed in the "deal", include:
* the outrageous ban on domestic anti-off-shoring policy and Buy America policies contained in the agreements' procurement chapters;
* the NAFTA Chapter 11-style foreign investor rights that expose our most basic environmental, health, zoning and other laws to attack in foreign trade tribunals;
* the serious threat the pacts' rules pose to our prevailing wage laws for government contracts and recycled content and renewable energy policies;
* the agriculture rules that will foreseeably result in the displacement of millions of peasant farmers — increasing hunger, social unrest, desperate migration and, according to Peruvian and Colombian government reports, an increase in drug cultivation, trade and violence;
* or the food safety limits that require us to import meat not meeting our safety standards — even as we face a new crisis of unsafe imported food.
Social Security Privatization Provision Not Fixed
Unbelievably, the "deal" also doesn't fix the Peru FTA provisions that would allow Citibank, or other U.S. investors providing "private retirement accounts," to sue Peruvian taxpayers if Peru tries to reverse its failed Social Security privatization. This problem in the FTA is deemed by Peru's labor federations to be a major impediment to reversing the failed partial privatization which is similar to what Democrats and most Americans opposed when it was proposed by President Bush for the United States.
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< Below,some additional notes from myself, Ira >
With regard to the enforceability of the labor standards, from 'Eyes on Trade', Public Citizen's trade blog:
'According to the National Association of Manufacturers, the "deal" doesn't obligate countries to abide by the ILO core labor rights conventions themselves, only a watered down 1998 "declaration" on the conventions. Second, only federal laws apply, so (breathe easy) things like U.S. prison labor and Southern states' "right to work" laws "will not be subject to challenge." (Gee, I really hope a Peruvian state or locality doesn't pass some kind of law legalizing child labor in the state!) And to put just a little rotten icing on the rotten cake, negotiators agreed to not eliminate an FTA provision "that gives countries leeway not to enforce labor laws at their own 'discretion.'"
With regard to investor rights, much of what passes for 'free trade' agreements are, in fact, investor rights agreements. This is particularly true when there is a great asymmetry in the political and economic power of the countries involved, such as is the case between the US and Peru (whose economy is more or less the size of that of the state of Arizona.)
The investor-state dispute mechanism -- alluded to above as 'NAFTA Chapter 11-style foreign investor rights' 'is designed to provide foreign investors with the means to seek compensation when a government takes action to decrease the value of the investment - either through direct physical seizure of property or an indirect regulatory action.'
What does this mean ? For example, if government -- local, regional, or national -- undertakes environmental regulation to protect the health of its citizens a foreign investor can sue that government for POTENTIAL LOSSES that would occur as a result of the regulation. This has already happened a number of times, most notably where
(1) The California-based Metalclad company successfully challenged the denial of a construction permit by a Mexican municipality for the building of a toxic waste facility. From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Metalclad is an American landfill management firm that started a NAFTA controversy in Mexico's poor city of Guadalcazar.
Metalclad bought a landfill site from a Mexican company Coterin in 1993. Coterin had wanted to develop a hazardous waste landfill on the site but were unable to secure the necessary permits from the local government. Metalclad were able to obtain permits from the Mexican federal government, but were not issued permits from local governments who opposed the landfill. The mayor of the city was opposed to the landfill because of the amount of toxic waste in it and the threat to the local water supply.
Metalclad proceeded without local permits. Over 200,000 tons of toxic material were dumped into the landfill by both American and Canadian companies. There was a huge string of opposition by locals. They complained that they were getting sick, developing aggressive diseases, and that their water was polluted. The main water well was about 60 yards from the stream flowing through the location where Metalclad was dumping its material. In 1997, Metalclad sued the Mexican Government for damages under Chapter 11 of NAFTA for $90 million. This award was later reduced to $15.6 million.
Metalclad claims that its promises to clean up the site were conditional on being allowed to continue to develop the landfill in that location.
(2) Environmental and health bans of suspected toxins have been challenged, with one case already resulting in reversal of a Canadian government ban on the gasoline additive MMT
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I don't know if people can appreciate what this means for a poor country like Peru (my wife is Peruvian, and I lived there for a number of years). The multi-million award in the Metalclad case is an astronomical sum of money for the great majority of Peruvian communities. Just the potential threat of such a lawsuit -- which, after all, is the intent of the investor rights provisions -- is sufficient to prevent a community from trying to protect its citizens through regulation.
Literally, we have the complete destruction of any type of democracy or sovereignty, and the enforced death and illness of God knows how many people. These are the real 'benefits' of 'free trade agreements.'