FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT GLOBALIZATION
AND ALTERNATIVES

What is NAFTA and the FTAA?

The North American Free Trade Agreement covers Canada, the USA, and Mexico. The Free Trade Agreement of the Americans covers the entire American continent. Both NAFTA and the FTAA contain chapter 11, but the FTAA does not have the token labor and enviromental agreements of NAFTA.

What is Chapter 11?

Chapter 11 bans democratically-elected governments from actions that hurt the profits of investors. Corporations sue governments (and in the end, taxpayers)

The claims are arbitrated corporate-style, before secretive World Bank or United Nations tribunals.

Examples:

The first NAFTA Chapter 11 case saw the U.S.-based Ethyl Corporation sue Canada over a ban on Ethyl's product, a gasoline additive known as MMT. Canada surrendered in 1998, agreeing to remove the law and pay $13 million taxpayers dollars to Ethyl.

The very next day, another NAFTA Chapter 11 case was filed by another U.S. company--the hazardous-waste-disposal corporation S.D. Myers--against a different Canadian environmental law.

In 1999, after a study by the university of California at Davis warned that the chemical MTBE may cause cancer in humans, the democratically elected government of California decided to phase out MTBE.

The Canadian corporation Methanex, which produces the MBTE ingredient methanol, is using chapter 11 of NAFTA to sue the taxpayers of the United States for $970 million.

"We find it disconcerting that our democratic decision-making ... is being second-guessed in a distant forum by unelected officials" wrote California legislators.

Chapter 11 negotiator Daniel Price sings the praises of "strong, stable legal regimes to protect property rights." and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Council for International Business support chapter 11 in the name of "stable business environments". By "stability", they mean no progress, no response to the will of the people, by "strong" they mean dictatorial.

States fight back

Oregon's legislature passed a joint measure calling on the U.S. Congress to monitor proposed trade agreements for conflicts with state sovereignty; Washington State has shown similar interest. Interestingly, both are very liberal areas. To conservative politicians, "states rights" is just rhetoric.

"States rights" had been a massive issue during the debate over the 14th Amendment, (ensure equality for all citizens regardless of race).

Meanwhile during the 1993 NAFTA congressional debate Chapter 11 was not even mentioned. When conservatives talk about "states rights", they mean a right to racism, not democracy.

NAFTA's implementation act calls upon the United States, Canada, and Mexico--all nations with federal forms of government --"to overrule inconsistent state law through legislation or civil suit." Naturally, neos intend to make standards consistent - at their lowest level.

What are some results of NAFTA?

Example: Farms

Neos promised that NAFTA would give farmers new markets to export to, increasing income for farmers while lowering prices for consumers. The opposite happened.

U.S. Consumer Price Index shows that U.S. consumer food prices increased by almost 20%, even as the price paid to Mexican corn farmers dropped 48%! All of the missing money has gone to the agribusiness corporations that bribed politicians during the writing and passing of NAFTA.

Dispite promises of new markets to US farmers, the volume of US cotton exports fell by 28% and prices plunged 38%.

In the US, 33,000 farms with under $100,000 annual income have disappeared during the seven years of NAFTA. This is a rate 600% steeper than the pre-NAFTA period.

While Canada's NAFTA agricultural exports grew by C$6 billion between 1993 and 1999, net farm income declined by C$600 million over the same period instead of rising by $1.4 billion as Agri-Food Canada had predicted. Since NAFTA, the rate of Canadian farm bankruptcies and delinquent loans is five times that before NAFTA, even as Canadian agricultural exports doubled.

What is intellectual property? What are World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs)

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has governed "intellectual property" issues since its founding in 1970 (though it oversees treaties and conventions dating from as early as 1883).

In the old days, "intellectual property" only covered property rights over inventions, industrial designs, trademarks, and artistic and literary works. Now it covers computer programs, electronic images and recordings, and even biological processes and genetic codes, most of which are owned by rich multinational corporations. These patents etc. stop small business in the third world from competeing with them. In short, neos support monopoly.

A 1996 WIPO treaty, if ratified, would prevent "reengineering" - using someone elses old design as the base of your own, better design.

Reengineering has been a large part of development. In the US, Lowell, Massachusetts textile manaufacturers built their looms based on English designs. Taiwan is another example of development through reengineering. They built a better moustrap, but the WTO does not want them to build moustraps at all.

Because WIPO is not able to crush opposition, The WTO with its "Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights" (TRIPS) intends to take over.

TRIPs would put the muscle of trade sanctions behind intellectual property rights. It would also stake out new intellectual property rights over plant, animal, and even human genetic codes.

The governments of some poor countries are against this, because rich corporations in rich countries will declare ownership over the genetic codes of plants long used for healing or crops within their countries, meaning the poor would suddenly have to start paying the rich. For example, the natural pesticide from the Neem tree, which has been used for hundreds of years by farmers but has now been patented by a US corporation.

When poor nations have tried to produce cheap drugs to fight AIDS and other diseases, they have been stopped because the rich drug companies (one of the most profitable businesses in the world) want to use their copywrite-granted monopoly (even though much of their research and development was paid for by taxpayers).

PAUL DAVIS, of http://www.healthgap.org : "At a recent WTO meeting, almost all rich nations joined with the countries of the South in asking the WTO to reform its drug monopoly rules...to address the devastation caused by the AIDS epidemic...Only the U.S. opposed this."

A one way street

When American fast food chains serve Tacos or white bands play reggae, none of the money goes to Mexico or Jamaica. Yet if those same Jamaicans tried to save lives with cheap AIDS drugs, they would be punished.

Conclusion

Intellectual property is a form of trickle-down economics that says that when the poor give to the rich, it is better for them. In other words, if Mother Teresa really cared about the poor she would have robbed them. The neo view is that if the owners of drug patents end up with one less mansion than usual, they will give up on making pills and start begging on the streets. This has not happened: the economy of China has quadrupaled despite copywrite violations on a massive scale.