FTAA, Eh?

By David Moberg, In These Times. Posted March 27, 2001.

During his first months in the White House, George W. Bush has already tilted politics against worker safety and for tax giveaways to the rich, but on one front -- trade and global economic agreements -- there has been remarkable continuity from the Clinton era, just as Clinton extended the agenda of the first Bush regime. However, the younger Bush inherits a public skepticism about corporate globalization that has deepened since his father was in office.

Despite major losses on NAFTA, creation of the World Trade Organization, and trade relations with China during the Clinton years, the opposition movement -- based on unions and environmental groups -- has grown enough in breadth and militancy to win some battles and regularly rattle the elite corporate chiefs and global trade and finance officials. Most notably, opponents disrupted the Seattle WTO meeting and contributed to derailing a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) among the rich countries. They also blocked renewal of the president's "fast track" trade authority, which would force Congress to vote yea or nay on trade agreements without amendments or extensive debate.

In broad terms, the battles in the near term will follow the same lines as over the past decade. Fast track -- repackaged as "presidential trade promotion authority" -- will again be the major fight in Congress this year, but the biggest street fight -- in Quebec City and dozens of U.S. cities in late April -- will be over the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a proposed extension of an even more pro-corporate NAFTA to the Western Hemisphere. In each case, the crux of the conflict will be whether new global economic agreements will provide meaningful protection for the environment and labor rights.

Yet just as popular pressure is forcing government leaders to take labor and environmental issues more seriously, those movements are looking beyond securing such safeguards. Most global economic agreements, like the nascent FTAA, are now less about trade and tariffs or other barriers and more about investment, property rights, privatization, deregulation and greater power for corporations at the expense of governments. The critics of globalization still have a long way to go to secure labor rights and environmental responsibility as part of all global economic arrangements. Yet at the same time, they are broadening their demands to include greater citizen control over corporations, new models of development (including elimination of debt from most poor countries) and new financial regulation to stabilize the global economy.

The more sophisticated corporate globalizers are hoping that they can make some minor concessions to defuse this growing popular movement. Recognizing that the demand for labor and environmental safeguards isn't going away, the Business Roundtable and the Emergency Committee for American Trade -- representing the biggest multinational corporations, like Caterpillar, Boeing and American International Group -- have asked the Bush administration to make labor and environmental standards part of future trade talks.

Their credibility as defenders of worker rights is weak. In 1978 the Business Roundtable was the key group that killed labor law reform, which would have made it easier for workers to exercise their internationally guaranteed right to organize, and it has been a major promoter of deregulation of the global economy. But their initiative is a tribute to the strength of the popular movements and a sign of how badly big business wants more global deals. It also creates another split within conservative, pro-business ranks, not unlike when some nationalist Republicans voted with the left-leaning Democrats on trade issues in recent years. Other business groups, like the Chamber of Commerce, and key conservatives in Congress, like House Majority Leader Dick Armey, oppose any reference to labor or the environment in trade deals. The first indications from Bush's trade representative, Robert Zoellick, suggest hostility to such provisions despite talk of flexibility.

But the Business Roundtable's shift also poses a challenge to the opponents of globalization. It's clear that the business groups want any labor and environmental provisions to be as weak as possible, providing political cover without real results. They want to avoid binding obligations or tough enforcement (some might accept monetary fines as penalties for labor and environmental violations, but not the kind of trade sanctions reserved for protecting corporate interests). Yet increasingly labor advocates and environmentalists want stronger measures that go beyond governments pressuring each other to enforce their own laws. They want agreements that would enable workers and citizen groups, not just governments, to initiate actions and that would apply sanctions and penalties against individual corporate violators as well as governments.

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