GREEN PAPER 3: Freedoms
That Are Abolished
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The idea of the FTAA coalesced at the first Summit of the Americas in 1994 in Miami, which was sponsored and organized by the Organization of American States (OAS). According to the OAS website, "One of the most important initiatives to emerge from the Miami Summit was the agreement to work towards creating a Free Trade Area of the Americas. The FTAA is designed to provide free market access for goods and services to the entire continent. It was decided that negotiations for an FTAA should conclude no later than the year 2005."6 The Tripartite Committee was also created at the Miami Summit and consists of the OAS, the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. The Tripartite Committee is responsible for providing technical assistance to the FTAA and member countries, helping to fund the FTAA, and developing a data base on trade policy issues and trade agreements that already exist in the hemisphere.
The OAS created the Trade Unit and the Special Committee on Trade, specifically to assist free trade negotiations. The Special Committee on Trade was established at the Summit of Americas in 1994, "to begin to construct a Free Trade Area of the Americas in which barriers to trade and investment will be progressively eliminated."7 In April 1995, the OAS Trade Unit started with a mission to "strengthen trade information systems (and) analyze various aspects of trade relations in the Hemisphere."8
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which is helping to fund the FTAA negotiating process, recently approved a project loan of U.S. $4,300,000 to be directed to the FTAA. This loan will help transfer the FTAA Administrative Secretariat from Miami to Panama City and will help fund the actual operation of the Secretariat from March 2001 to February 2003. The purpose of the IDB is "to encourage private investment contributing to economic development and to supplement private investment whenever necessary... and to use its own capital to mobilize funds for high priority economic and social projects.9
It is obvious that the IDB and OAS, despite their claims to be working to enhance the lives of people from the Western Hemisphere, are really working to ensure that corporations and the private sector can move capital across borders without restriction. The OAS and IDB have stated that they have human rights and sustainable development on their agenda in addition to free trade. However, time and again we have seen that free trade is contradictory to human rights and sustainable development. Free trade does not provide protection for human rights and the environment; it kills them.
The OAS will host the next Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April 2001. While the agenda of the Summit of the Americas includes issues like capital markets, tourism and sustainable development, the FTAA is at the forefront of debate and discussion.
Americas Business Forum: Making the FTAA What the Corporations Ordered
While FTAA negotiations are ostensibly between governments, a look at the relationship between the FTAA and the Americas Business Forum (ABF) reveals the huge influence of the corporate private sector. The ABF was formed in 1996 by over 1,000 of the hemisphere's business leaders to provide a mechanism for multinational corporations throughout the Americas to exert influence on the FTAA process. It would be wonderful if the voice that shouted the loudest had the most influence in the FTAA negotiations, because the ABF would be a pin drop next to the roar of millions of people protesting. But in fact, as in all high-level negotiations, the voice of big business has muted the roar of the people.
The ABF has a monopoly on the ears of FTAA Trade Ministers, negotiators and governmental representatives to ensure that their demands are heard. At a 1995 Trade Ministerial in Denver, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown told a meeting of over 500 trade and business leaders that they were the leaders of the FTAA process and that role of governments was to take whatever policy steps were necessary to best suit business interests in the hemisphere.10
It is no coincidence that the jargon the ABF uses to hide its power-and-profit agenda is the same language infecting the FTAA: national treatment, restrictions on performance requirements, free flow of capital, and investor-state disputes. As explained in this booklet all these policies really mean more money and power for the multinational corporations at the expense of poor and working people.
The ABF has had exclusive access to the negotiations at all levels, and this is no secret. Since its formation in 1996, the ABF has been invited to present proposals at every meeting of the FTAA Trade Ministers.11 According to the ABF, "Input from the ABF's private sector has become part of the FTAA process... this formal integration of private sector concerns is unique in international trade policy negotiations."12 In contrast, in 1997 when the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT) proposed the establishment of an Americas Labor Forum to have a similar voice in the FTAA process, it was vetoed.
Fast Track Authority: The Fast Lane to Corporate Rule
Fast Track authority transfers trade and investment agreement negotiating power from the legislative to the executive branch. By implementing Fast Track, Congress agrees to vote on a pact (and any U.S. laws that will need to be changed as a result) before having an opportunity to fully review the text of an agreement. Absolutely no amendments may be added to the agreement once it is presented to Congress. If Fast Track is implemented before the FTAA is presented to Congress, they will have to vote it up or down, with no space for additions or removals of any provisions. Many U.S. environmental, labor and food safety laws may need to be tailored to comply with the FTAA. Under Fast Track, Congress will have to vote yes or no to the complete package of the FTAA, including all the modifications to U.S. laws to ensure that the U.S. is in compliance with the FTAA.
In its previous life, Fast Track limited the debate on the floor of both the House and the Senate to 20 hours each. This does not permit sufficient time for public interest groups to argue about the negative effects that trade agreements will have on the environment, labor, agriculture, education, etc. After viewing the document, Congress was given only 60 days to vote yes or no to the entire proposed agreement. Fast Track, which was in place for five years the last time if was passed, applies to any trade and investment agreements brought up during its tenure. This means it would apply to the FTAA and, potentially, another attempt at the MAI.
Many countries in the South have stated that they do not want to negotiate the FTAA seriously (meaning the very last details) until Fast Track is passed in the U.S..13 These countries do not want to invest time and energy into negotiations for the FTAA unless U.S. passage is guaranteed.
Free Trade Says: Rewrite the Constitution
Before Mexico could enter NAFTA, they had to re-write part of the Mexican Constitution. Article 27, which granted indigenous people and other landless peasants communal land ownership (ejidos). This was the most important gain for the indigenous people from the Mexican Revolution in 1917. In 1992, before Mexico could join NAFTA, Article 27 was re-written to enable the privatization of the ejido lands in order to standardize Mexico's property laws and have them more closely resemble U.S. and Canadian property laws. Ejido lands could now be bought, sold, and rented on the open market by domestic and multinational corporations. Also in 1992, Mexico passed a Forestry Law, which sanctioned commercial tree plantations, basically legitimizing and encouraging their existence. Together, these laws have completely undermined indigenous sovereignty throughout Mexico.
Currently, the FTAA is compiling databases of laws from throughout the Americas to determine which laws will need modification to be in accordance to the FTAA. It is likely that many countries will have to rewrite environmental, agrarian, and labor laws in order to comply with FTAA regulations. The FTAA claims that it is a democratic entity, but rewriting national laws not only undermines national sovereignty, but it is also completely undemocratic to have international bodies composed of trade bureaucrats and corporate representatives deciding if environmental and labor laws are legal or not. These modifications to national laws invariably effect the indigenous and low-income people most drastically, as they are displaced from their land and their markets are flooded with imported products.