On a Fast Track to Disaster

On December 6, by a one vote margin of 215-214, the House gave President Bush "fast track" authority to negotiate new trade agreements without any meaningful congressional oversight.  The bill has been sent to the Senate, where it has yet to be voted on. Labor leaders, human rights activists and environmentalists are all actively following the upcoming Senate vote and its potential for speeding up the ratification of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

In lobbying for "fast-track" authority, House Speaker Dennis Hastert passionately urged lawmakers to "support our president who is fighting a courageous war on terrorism and redefining American world leadership or undercut the president at the worst possible time," underlining that the vote was "being watched closely by our allies and by our adversaries."

But the dubious premise that a congressman's patriotic vote will aid the president in fighting  terrorism only masks the true intent of this legislation. A bill called Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA), will be introduced in the Congress in the near future, and the only way it can pass will be if the House and Senate abdicate their constitutional right to debate and amend trade legislation and rush it through by "fast track" presidential authority.

The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) will be a disaster for the poor of the 34 countries of this hemisphere. It is crucial to understand the roots and the context of this bill in as it arrives under the urgent pressure of Fast Track.

In 1994, at the Summit of the Americas in Miami, the 34 nations of Canada, United States, Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean (except Cuba) agreed to sign a trade and investment pact called Free Trade Area of the Americas. With a population of 800 million from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego, and a combined GDP of $11 trillion, it would be the largest free trade zone in world. It is intended for completion by 2005, but there is some pressure, especially from the United States and Chile, for ratification by 2003.

FTAA is based on models from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994 and the World Trade Organization, but it goes far beyond each of these in both scope and power. One observer has remarked that "FTAA is NAFTA on steroids." It incorporates from the WTO the General Agreement on Trade in Services , and contains all the powers of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which was roundly rejected due to a concerted public outcry in 1998. It also expands on the Structural Adjustment Programs which have been imposed in recent years on most countries of the region by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, and which are in part responsible for so much of the crushing debt weighing down less developed nations. 

The principles of the FTAA represent the apex of the economic and political globalization process.  There has been a massive restructuring of the global economy in favor of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) over the past three decades. Between 1970 and 1998, the number of TNCs increased by 800 percent. Of the top 100 economies in the world, 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries. Seventy percent of global trade is controlled by just 500 corporations. As with the WTO and NAFTA, the FTAA agreement will contain very few safeguards to protect workers and human rights, or health and environmental standards.

For the first time in any international trade agreement, transnational corporations will gain competitive rights to a full range of government service provisions. They will also have the right to sue for financial compensation from any government that resists, since publicly-funded services are considered "monopolies" in the new world of international trade.