Economy & Trade, Headlines, Labour, Latin America & the Caribbean, North America

TRADE: Broad Coalition Vows to Fight U.S.-Central America Pact

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Dec 10 2003 (IPS) - Representatives from trade unions, human rights and civil society groups joined U.S. legislators Tuesday in denouncing a free trade deal the United States is negotiating with five Central American nations as an official failure to address labour, environmental and public health concerns.

The final round of talks for the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is currently under way between the U.S. Trade Representative and trade ministers from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. The aim is to take down tariffs and other trade barriers between the six countries by the end of next year.

The actual text of the agreement has been kept away from the public and the talks in Washington remain off-limits to the media. But U.S. trade officials say that a final draft will be presented to the countries involved.

The George W. Bush administration expects to bring CAFTA to Congress in the first six months of 2004.

The deal is being modeled after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among Mexico, Canada and the United States. Critics say NAFTA did not improve the lives of millions of poor Mexicans and cost the jobs of workers in Canada and the United States.

Several groups opposing CAFTA say it will not fare any better and call the deal “neither fair nor free”.

Oxfam America, the American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO), the Washington Office on Latin America, World Vision, Health GAP and more than two dozen U.S. church groups, including the National Council of Churches in Christ, pledged on Tuesday to oppose the trade deal.

Much of the opposition to CAFTA stems from the United States’ history of protecting U.S. farmers, imposing its own corporate-backed agenda and failure to protect the environment, public health and labour rights.

Farm groups in the U.S. also say deals like CAFTA only benefit corporate traders and create distorted market conditions.

“We are opposed to U.S. farm and trade policy that creates dependency on U.S. taxpayer-funded subsidies, that suppresses prices, and that benefit corporate grain traders,” said Kathy Ozer of the U.S.-based National Family Farm Coalition.

Some U.S. policy makers on Tuesday said they were specifically opposed to the deal because it lacks provisions on labour standards, and asked the administration to fix it or risk opposition in Congress.

Michigan Rep. Sander Levin told reporters that he will oppose the agreement when it comes to Congress next year.

“I am here to say to say to the administration, turn it (CAFTA) around or it will be turned down,” Levin said. “CAFTA will not pass the United States Congress in 2004 if core labour rights are not included in the trade agreement.”

“When you look at the schedule for this week for the CAFTA negotiations, labour is there for one afternoon and for a few hours while other issues are provided much more time,” he said. “The administration is stuck in the mud on this. There’s no indication that I can see that they are going to move off it – but I hope that the mud is not quicksand.”

Ana Sol Gutierrez, a Maryland State representative, says the deal turns human beings in her native country of El Salvador into machines working for corporate businesses in the United States.

“Human beings have become commodities and widgets and machines that can produce cheaper and faster and damn how they live and damn what happens to them,” she said. “El Salvador has come to the point where it should change its name to El Salvador, Inc.”

American groups are also worried that the deal lures developing countries by offering “limited” market access while at the same time jeopardising an already fragile employment situation in the United States.

CAFTA’s proposed chapter on labour requires that governments enforce their domestic labour laws, but does not require countries to revise their laws to meet international labour standards.

Thea Lee from the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. trade union, says that Bush administration, at the behest of the U.S. business community, is using the lure of wider market access to promise prosperity and development to Central America when in fact it wants to impose a corporate agenda on investment rules, intellectual property rights, services and government procurement.

At the same time, she said, the administration was “trading away American jobs”.

“The Bush trade policy is a corporate boondoggle, disguised as free trade,” Lee said.

Lee says that her group is worried that CAFTA asks countries to enforce their own labour laws, “whatever they might be”, rather than requiring them to implement strong labour rights.

“Countries do not actually have to have labour laws,” she said. “They could eliminate labour laws. They could ban trade unions and they could eliminate any protection for child labour and there’d be no dispute-settlement action that could be taken under the CAFTA in terms of the agreement we’ve seen..”

Human Rights Watch called on officials negotiating the free trade agreement to ensure that workers’ rights are guaranteed in the deal, especially in El Salvador, where it says labour rights were systematically violated.

On Tuesday, AIDS activists protesting provisions in CAFTA that reinforce patent rights over life-saving drugs blocked mid-day traffic in Washington. The protesters lay down across the street from the Mayflower Hotel, where talks between U.S. and Central American trade officials were taking place.

Wearing hospital gowns reading “Another AIDS Death from CAFTA”, the protestors, including people living with AIDS, also set up a make-shift hospital ward.

“Break the Patents, Treat the People,” they chanted.