The Issue

The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is the formal name given to an expansion of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) that would include nearly all of the countries in the western hemisphere. This massive NAFTA expansion is currently being negotiated in secret by trade ministers from a total of 34 nations in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The goal of the FTAA is to impose the failed NAFTA model of increased privatization and deregulation hemisphere-wide. Imposition of these rules would empower corporations to constrain governments from setting standards for public health and safety, to safeguard their workers, and to ensure corporations do not pollute the communities in which they operate.

FTAA will include "investor-to-state" suits. These allow corporations to sue governments directly for the removal of standards or laws designed to protect public health and safety, which may cost the corporations a little more in operating costs. In other words, the FTAA would provide a hemispheric "regulatory takings" clause that explicitly values corporate profits over human costs.

Effectively, these rules would handcuff governments' public interest policymaking and enhance corporate control at the expense of citizens throughout the Americas. FTAA would deepen the negative effects of NAFTA seen in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. over the past seven years and expand NAFTA's damage to the other 31 countries involved. The FTAA would intensify NAFTA's "race to the bottom"; under FTAA, exploited workers in Mexico could be leveraged against even more desperate workers in Haiti, Guatemala or Brazil by companies seeking tariff-free access back into U.S. markets.

Here's how FTAA got started: High on their NAFTA victory, U.S. officials organized a Summit of the Americas in Miami in December 1994. Trade ministers from every country in the western hemisphere (except for Cuba) agreed to launch negotiations to establish a hemispheric free trade deal. After the "Miami Summit," however, little more was done on FTAA until the "Santiago Summit" in Chile in April 1998. However, at this second summit the 34 nations set up a Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), consisting of vice ministers of trade from every country and headed by Dr. Adalberto Rodriguez Giavarini of Argentina. Negotiators also agreed on a structure of nine working groups to deal with the major areas they agreed to cover under FTAA: agriculture, services, investment, dispute settlement, intellectual property rights, subsides and anti-dumping, competition policy, government procurement and market access. Since late 1999, the working groups have been meeting every few months to lay out their countries' positions on these issues and try to develop treaty language.

As with the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), many Members of Congress have no idea this is even going on. Congress has set no goals for the U.S.'s participation in these talks and has not delegated to the Executive branch its Constitutional role of setting the terms of international commerce. However, a variety of corporate committees do advise the U.S. negotiators; under the trade advisory committee system, over 500 corporate representatives have security clearance and access to FTAA NAFTA expansion documents. Organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), collectively known as the "Tripartite Committee," also provide direction.

The U.S. is represented by the U.S. Trade Representative's office (USTR), headed by Charlene Barshefsky as of November 2000. The lead USTR negotiator on FTAA is Peter Allgeier.

Early on, non-governmental civil society organizations (NGOs) demanded working groups on democratic governance, labor and human rights, consumer safety and the environment. These were rejected, and instead a Committee of Government Representatives on Civil Society was established to represent the views of civil society to the TNC. Yet this committee is little more than a mail in-box. It has no mechanism to incorporate civil society concerns and suggestions into the actual negotiations, so these are mainly ignored.

For more information and to keep up with efforts to de-rail this new grab by the haves for everything they can get their hands on, visit the website maintained by Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, www.stopftaa.com.

Campaigns

Many national labor, environmental, and human rights organizations have organized to educate the general public on FTAA and to pressure Congress to reject the President's request to grant him "Fast Track Authority" to sign this agreement. There is a post card campaign going. You can get multiple copies from Jere Locke at jerel@worldnet.att.net. Jere works in Austin on globalization and labor issues. He sends out excellent information on many facets of globalization. Ask him to put you on his e-mail list serve.

Global Exchange is offering excellent action packets, facts sheets, videos, and other organizing materials for Stop FTAA work. Go to the website at http://www.globalexchange.org/ftaa/resources.html.