The "Free-Trade" Rip-Off

Free-Trade is a scam. The whole "Free-Market" pitch is a scam, designed to rip-off working people. GATTS, NAFTA and other "Free-Trade" agreements are taking the assets of the whole of society, accumulated over generations, and putting it into the pockets of a wealthy elite. And what's worse, ordinary working people have been sold the fairy-tale that their declining economic situation is their own fault.

Revisiting NAFTA
Still not working for North America's workers

By Robert E. Scott, Carlos Salas, and Bruce Campbell; Introduction by Jeff Faux

INTRODUCTION

by Jeff Faux

Despite its name, the primary purpose of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was not to facilitate trade among separate sovereign societies. Rather, it was to promote an integrated continental economy and establish the rules to govern it.

As a former foreign minister of Mexico once remarked, NAFTA was “an agreement for the rich and powerful in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, an agreement effectively excluding ordinary people in all three societies.” It should, therefore, be no surprise that NAFTA rules protect the interests of large corporate investors while undercutting workers’ rights, environmental protections, and democratic accountability. Hence, NAFTA should be seen not as a stand-alone treaty, but as part of a long-term campaign by the conservative business interests in all three countries to rip up their respective domestic social contract. ...

... Americans were promised that NAFTA would generate large numbers of net new good jobs. Instead, over a million jobs that would otherwise have been created were lost, and wages were pressured downward for a large number of workers with less than a college education.

Mexican employment did increase, but much of it in low-wage “maquiladora” industries, which the promoters of NAFTA promised would disappear. The agricultural sector was devastated and the share of jobs with no security, no benefits, and no future expanded. The continued willingness every year of hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens to risk their lives crossing the border to the United States because they cannot make a living at home is in itself testimony to the failure of NAFTA to deliver on the promises of its promoters. ...

... The reality is that the denial of social protections in the rules of an internationally integrated market inevitably undermines the protections established in the previously separate domestic economies after decades of political struggle. In that sense, the “vision” of NAFTA is profoundly reactionary: it pushes nations back toward a 19th century ideology in which government’s economic function is to protect the interests of investors, while working people—the overwhelming majority in each nation—are left to fend for themselves. ... (full article)

But, there's hope! At least We hope there is.

Here Come the Economic Populists

By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Published: NYT - November 26, 2006

FOR years, the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, exercising a lock on the party’s economic policies, argued that the economy could achieve sustained growth only if markets were allowed to operate unfettered and globally. ...

... With the Democrats now a majority in Congress, and disquiet over globalization growing, a party faction that has been powerless — the economic populists — is emerging and strongly promoting an alternative to Rubinomics.

The populists argue that the national income has flowed disproportionately into corporate coffers and the nation’s wealthiest households, and that the imbalance has grown worse in recent years. They want to rethink America’s role in the global economy. They would intervene in markets and regulate them much more than the Rubinites would. For a start, they would declare a moratorium on new trade agreements until clauses were included that would, for example, restrict layoffs and protect incomes. ... (full article)