Charles Rangel, Don't Make Bad Deals on "Free Trade"

    Wily and experienced negotiator that he is, I have to think that Charlie Rangel believes that sometimes no deal is better than a bad deal. I hope he keeps that mind as he plunges into talks over a compromise over so-called "free trade" agreements. Charlie, there is no deal to be made here, within the framework being discussed. And this issue is one of the most crucial issues for the future of the Democratic Party.

   I have argued here numerous times that there is no such thing as "free trade." It is simply a marketing phrase, and, admittedly, one that has stuck within the minds of the mainstream media--reporters and editorial page editors, who learned in Economics 101 in college about the virtues of "free trade." The truth is that what the public is sold as "free trade" is nothing more than a set of rules that is primarily, if not entirely, about protecting capital and investment. There is nothing free about these deals. I've actually read them--they are a bore but try it sometime: all you will read are essentially page after page of standards and exceptions and protections for corporate trading.

    Which brings us to the current debate. As The New York Times reports today:

When the Democrats swept to victory last fall, after a campaign fueled partly by attacks on President Bush’s trade policies, trade deals promoted by the administration seemed doomed in the new Congress. But that was then.

In the last week, the administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill have signaled a new willingness to work with Democrats to try to secure their support for three pending trade deals — with Panama, Peru and Colombia. The focus of their talks has been guarantees for the rights of workers in countries with which the United States has negotiated trade accords, including a ban on child labor and forced labor.

   Now, on the face of it, this should be good news. Who wouldn't want to have the rights of workers protected?

   But, the problem is that this is only a small fix to the bigger problem of the structure of these so-called "free trade" deals. You can see a little bit of the problem revealed in the story over the debate about where labor rights should appear in a so-called "free trade" agreement:

Another issue is whether any guarantees on labor rights would be incorporated in the body of the three pending trade agreements, requiring them to be renegotiated, or adopted as a side letter as Republicans want. Democrats say only embodying them in the negotiated accords would make them enforceable.

    If the labor rights protections end up as side letters, they will be meaningless--unenforceable and quickly forgotten. That's how the Clinton Administration dealt with labor and environmental rights in NAFTA--a complete disaster for our workers and Mexican workers (the latter have seen their standard of living plummet--at least the vast sea of migrant and factory workers). And it should speak volumes that REPUBLICANS are open to the idea of side letters with labor rights--that should tell us how weak these side letters truly are.

    But the framing of the choices tells us a lot about the ultimate outcome: even if the labor rights end up as part of the body of the deals, it would only improve conditions at the margin.

    The central problem to so-called "free trade" agreements is that they start out from the wrong premise: that trade agreements should be primarily about protecting investment and capital and, then, only as an afterthought, do the agreements wrestle with how workers and the environment should be treated.

    In the instance of the Columbian so-called "free trade" agreement, for example, foreign investor rights—-a typical pro-corporate, so-called "free trade," measure—-would tighten the grip that large corporations have on the country’s natural resources and launch a large-scale plundering of those resources such as timber and minerals. The so-called "free trade" deal would likely displace hundreds of thousands of poor rural Colombians from their lands, sending them into far deeper economic despair—and forcing many of them to work for paramilitary forces aligned with drug growers--the very groups that violently displaced them from their lands. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs conducted a study of the effects of the 1990s economic "liberalization" and concluded that the grand "opening" of the economy led to a 35 per cent drop in employment. You can be sure that the proposed so-called "free trade" deal will wreak similar havoc.

    The American people get the problem: in the past election, Public Citizen clearly showed that the new Democratic majority was won in large part because dozens of candidates ran on a platform of fair trade and opposed to so-called "free trade." Yes, Iraq was the main issue but the economic anxiety facing millions of people across our nation bubbled up as well.

    Making deals on so-called "free trade" puts Democrats at great peril--perhaps not in 2008 but in a longer time frame. If we don't oppose the very economic policies that are threatening workers here and abroad, voters will become disenchanted. I'm not arguing that they will, then, rush into the Republicans' arms. But, many will stay home and become demobilized. The Party can't afford that--no, our democracy can't afford that.

    So back to my congressman, Charles Rangel. Rather than make a bad deal that simply perpetuates so-called "free trade, I would hope that he and the other leaders of our party decide, once and for all, to end a destructive mindset that chooses corporate investment and capital rights over the rights of people to have a fair wage and decent working conditions. We need a new template for trade based on two principles:

  1. The ultimate goal for trade is to improve the lives of communities around the world.

  2. If you believe in #1, then, any trade agreement should have at its core, not as after thoughts and "side letters," the principals of democracy, safe and fair-waged work and the preservation of the environment—for the people of all the countries involved in the deal. Once those principles are laid down as the underpinning of a trade deal, then, we ask how do corporations fulfill those goals. Right now, it’s the exact opposite.

Comments

[Peter]

sounds like Rangel won't be supporting the FTA with Colombia, nor will Meeks.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/03/07/colombia.labor.ap/index.html

It seems like NOT signing an agreement with a country where 58 union leaders were killed last year should be a pretty solid litmus test for any politician that wants labor's support.

A vote for free trade with Colombia is a vote for murdering unionists.

[David]

you said it. free trade is the devil. only satan worshipers would support such outrageous atrocities...like Dick Cheney. I hear he kills baby penguins with his teeth for fun in his spare time with help from the CEOs from evil companies like Wal-Mart, News Corp, and Dell.

I am sick and tired of this so called "free trade" lowering the unemployment rates in other less fortunate countries. It is voodoo and I don't understand it. Therefore, it is bad.