RW ONLINE:FTAA: Sweatshopping the Hemisphere\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nFTAA: Sweatshopping the Hemisphere\r\n<\/p>
Revolutionary Worker #1097, April 8, 2001<\/i>, posted at rwor.org \r\n<\/p>
From April 20-22 the heads of government of every country in the Western \r\nHemisphere except Cuba will come together at the Summit of the Americas in \r\nQuebec City, Canada. Representatives of 34 countries in North, South, and \r\nCentral America, and the Caribbean will be protected by metal fences and the \r\nlargest police deployment in Canadian history. The goal of their meeting will be \r\nto put together the Free Trade Area of the Americas Agreement (FTAA). The goal \r\nof this agreement will be to increase privatization and deregulation and make it \r\neven easier for imperialist exploitation throughout the hemisphere. <\/p>\r\n
The FTAA will cause profound changes for millions. But U.S. officials have \r\navoided much public discussion of the FTAA. Negotiations have gone on in secret. \r\nGovernment officials and representatives of corporations and financial \r\ninstitutions have been deeply involved in developing the agreement. With rising \r\nanti-globalization protests around the world, the U.S. fears that the more \r\npeople know about the FTAA, the more it too will become the target of broad \r\nopposition and protest. <\/p>\r\n
Despite the attempts to keep it quiet, activists have dug up a lot of \r\ninformation on what the FTAA will mean, and determined resistance to it is \r\nrising. Thousands of students, environmentalists, trade unionists, \r\nanti-imperialists, anarchists, AIDS activists, revolutionary communists, and \r\nothers from both Canada and the U.S.--including many veterans of \r\nanti-globalization battles in Seattle, Windsor, Washington, DC and Prague--are \r\nplanning to go to Quebec to protest the summit. Other actions are planned on \r\nboth the Canadian and Mexican borders, as well as many cities in the U.S. and in \r\nSouth America. <\/p>\r\n<\/b>
The Plunder of the Americas <\/p>\r\n
In 1994, the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was passed, making \r\nthe U.S., Mexico and Canada a unified trade area. Soon after this, President \r\nClinton announced that the U.S. wanted to extend the agreement to include the \r\nwhole hemisphere, establishing a \"free trade area of the Americas.\" This same \r\nyear, the FTAA effort was launched by the Summit of the Americas in Miami. \r\nFormal negotiations started with the 1998 summit in Santiago. Now, a draft of \r\nthe agreement is reportedly set to be submitted to the Quebec summit, where \r\nnegotiations will begin for the final agreement. FTAA is set to be imposed by \r\n2005, with the U.S. pushing for it to be ready by 2003.<\/p>\r\n
The FTAA is one part of U.S. efforts to integrate the entire hemisphere into \r\nan integrated global market under the domination of the U.S. and serving U.S. \r\ninterests. <\/p>\r\n
Adoption of the FTAA would increase the impoverishment, exploitation and \r\nenvironmental destruction of the peoples and lands in the oppressed nations \r\nthroughout the Western Hemisphere. It would further increase bloodsucking \r\nprofit-making by big capitalist corporations. U.S. imperialist control and \r\npenetration of the economies of the poor countries of South and Central America \r\nwould be strengthened.<\/p>\r\n
The people of Latin America have already been devastated by austerity \r\nmeasures, privatization, and currency devaluation over the last decade. Already, \r\n45% of the population live in deep poverty. Structural adjustment policies \r\nenforced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank--two \r\ninternational financial institutions dominated by the U.S.--have led to more \r\ndestruction of the rainforests and lands of indigenous peoples. U.S.-backed \r\ncounter-insurgency wars in Colombia and against the people's war in Peru have \r\nbrought death, displacement and torture. The FTAA will make this nightmare \r\nsituation for the people even worse. <\/p>\r\n<\/b>
FTAA--The Myth vs. the Reality <\/p>\r\n
President Clinton said the FTAA would \"create a partnership for prosperity \r\nwhere freedom and trade and economic opportunity become the common property of \r\nthe people of the Americas.\" But this is an agreement between the U.S. as the \r\nworld's dominant imperialist power, its junior capitalist partner Canada, and 32 \r\npoor, oppressed nations. The U.S. controls 75% of the total goods and services \r\nproduced in the Western Hemisphere. So the remaining 25% is divided up between \r\nthe rest, with Canada gobbling up a good part. Given this reality, some \r\n\"partners\" are far more \"equal\" than others.<\/p>\r\n
As a recent article from A<\/i> World To Win <\/i>magazine points out: \" \r\n'Free trade' is itself a hollow watchword today--this is the era of imperialism, \r\nwhere big monopolies bestride the globe and dominate every major sphere of \r\neconomic life. The 500 top multinational corporations, most of them based in the \r\nU.S., control 70 percent of all cross-border trade, and 60 percent of trade in \r\nagricultural products is controlled by U.S. agribusiness firms. In practice, \r\nexpanding trade strengthens the ability of those able to take advantage of \r\nworldwide production and marketing networks by stripping away the mechanisms \r\ndifferent countries have set up to protect the smaller home-grown industries and \r\nagriculture. Bringing small enterprises in particular in the Third World into \r\nmore direct unfettered rivalry with the Western-based giants is a guarantee that \r\nthe larger firms will gobble up the smaller ones and extend their penetration \r\nand domination of the oppressed countries.\" (See AWTW <\/i>#26, \"Free \r\nTrade-Engine of Growth or Plunder?\" reprinted in the RW<\/i> #1095-96.)<\/p>\r\n
Trade expansion under imperialism has actually increased the polarization \r\nbetween rich and poor countries and within countries. The standard of living in \r\nthe richest countries in the world was three times that of the poorest countries \r\nin 1800, six times higher in 1900, and 20 times higher in 2000. And in the \r\nperiod of the largest expansion of trade, from 1980 to 1996, 59 countries \r\nexperienced an actual decline in Gross Domestic Product per year. <\/p>\r\n
The official Summit of the Americas FTAA \"Plan of Action\" is full of public \r\nrelations lies--aimed at covering up what this agreement will really mean for \r\nthe people. The major points of the plan call for \"preserving and strengthening \r\nthe community of democracies of the Americas,\" \"promoting prosperity through \r\neconomic integration and free trade,\" \"eradicating poverty and discrimination in \r\nour hemisphere,\" and \"guaranteeing sustainable development and conserving our \r\nnatural environment for future generations.\" But the reality of the FTAA has \r\nnothing to do with these lofty sounding slogans. <\/p>\r\n
The FTAA is based on NAFTA, as well as elements of WTO (World Trade \r\nOrganization) treaties. The major areas the agreement will cover are \r\nagriculture, services, investment, dispute settlement, intellectual property \r\nrights, subsidies and anti-dumping, competition policy, government procurement, \r\nand market access. <\/p>\r\n
Essentially the FTAA will increase the ability of capital and goods to move \r\nacross borders without any kind of hindrance or tariffs. Capital will flow \r\nrapidly in and out of countries to wherever the quickest and highest profit can \r\nbe found. Health, safety, labor and environmental protections will be undermined \r\nor eliminated. Corporations will be allowed to sue governments for money--on the \r\nbasis that certain laws (for example zoning laws against toxic waste dumps) \r\nprevent foreign corporations from making a profit. <\/p>\r\n
FTAA will mean capitalist businesses can freely relocate without penalty or \r\ncost. Relocation will be used as a threat against workers to try to smash \r\norganization and resistance. This will increase competition between workers in \r\ndifferent countries, driving wages down in all countries. Services like health \r\ncare, education and even access to drinking water will be opened to \r\nprivatization, putting them under the control of the \"free market\"--in other \r\nwords, to be bought up by corporations to make profit. And the FTAA will expand \r\nthe patenting of seeds, native agriculture, and even genes of indigenous \r\npeoples, turning them into commodities owned and sold by capitalist business for \r\nprofit.<\/p>\r\n
These are only some of the examples of what FTAA imperialist \"liberalization\" \r\nwill mean for the people:<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
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<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"www.rwor.org","address":"","phone":"310-289-5711","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"Impact of the FTAA on the people and environment of the Western Hemisphere","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2001\/04\/rw_onlineftaa_sweatshopping_the_hemisphere.htm","filesize":"19.5 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2001\/04\/5907.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}