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1

"Alternative" News Flash: Stranger now supports WTO.

Film at 11:00.

Honestly, I'm counting down the days until we start seeing Stranger editorializing against that evil, evil Death Tax, as well.

Posted by NapoleonXIV | March 2, 2008 11:43 AM
2

Josh, I agree. I would like to see environmentalists and labor groups focus on pushing for global labor and environmental standards.

But even that does not solve the problem.

The fundamental problem is we face competition from China, India and other nations that can industrialize and computerize just like we can. They are smart and hungry and they will grow their economies.

Even if they raise their wages and environmental standards there is a huge amount of room for fair-trade competition that they can engage in, and "win."

Our priority needs to be taking care of our own economy and growing it and making it more productive -- and ensuring benefits are spread to all -- through better government investment in transporation and other infrastructure, getting everyone who wants to learn into college and engineering schools, providing health care for all so we are healthier, and in general playing to win in the inevitable global competition. That's got to be the focus.

Working for international organizations to raise labor and environmental standards is good and should be pursued in a wholehearted way, but let's not kid ourselves. China and India and Brazil might agree to higher wages and enviro standards but not to the point where they hobble their own growth economically. We can't persuade them to adopt standards that make them lose economically.

We need to take care of our own economy to make sure we win and everyone can benefit. Yes, we should ensure fair trade. But they can fairly outcompete us if we continue to fail to invest in and grwo our own economy.

Posted by Cleve | March 2, 2008 12:03 PM
3

Josh have Obama and Clinton scored all trade agreements in principle? Or have they said they like trade agreements, in principle, but they want to renegotiate our current agreements to get better terms? Can you point to any quotes that support the nonsense you are accusing them of?

Typical Josh Feit straw man. Again.

And your headline should say "corporations have," not "corporations are."

Posted by elenchos | March 2, 2008 12:08 PM
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Josh .... sounds good on paper, but the net effect has been horrible.

The winner has been giant corporations which have destroyed local economies.

The corn that used to flow from small farms in Mexico to the local tortilla makers and food chain was displaced by American corn imported freely from the midwest.

Now the rural component of Mexico has been totally messed with. For the benefit of whom? Why?

So Con Agra and their ink can make another 100 million exporting cheap corn to Mexico, driving the corn farmer out of business and off the land and into cities as economic refugees.

JOSH, THAT IS WTO IN ACTION. WHO WINS? NOT THE EVERYDAY MEXICAN SMALL FARMER.

NOT YOU. NOT ME.

Posted by Aaron | March 2, 2008 12:11 PM
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Elenchos @3,

Thanks. Changed the headline.

Posted by Josh Feit | March 2, 2008 12:30 PM
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Christ! Stop thinking so practically and realistically. Have some audacity. Have some hope.

Posted by umvue | March 2, 2008 12:37 PM
7

@4
the poor in Mexico shouldn't have cheaper prices for food. Got it.

Posted by unPC | March 2, 2008 12:47 PM
8

Look, the fact that the WTO et al. have no mechanisms in place to respond to public will (it used to be called democracy) is not a small, cosmetic problem. It represents a systemic antagonism towards the idea of democracy. It has mechanisms in place to override democratically-enacted laws, but no mechanism in place for creating them. It has mechanisms for anulling environmental and labor laws that signatory states pass through their own political process, but no mechanism for creating or enforcing them.

Here's an easy mnemonic device next time you want to make this analogy to remind you why it isn't an apt one: What does the "T" in WTO and NAFTA and CAFTA stand for? That's right, it stands for trade. Do you see an "L" or an "E" in any of those acronyms? Now look again at the name of the EPA. Do you see the difference?

It isn't just an oversight. It isn't just that they haven't gotten around to including any consideration of the public good (other than endless pie-in-the-sky promises of greater freedom and prosperity that somehow never seem to pencil out in real life), it's that cutting the public out of the process is crucial to accomplishing the stated goal of making every other consideration secondary to almighty Trade. I'm sorry, "removing barriers to trade."

China as it stands today is the poster child for this vision of free trade. It has the worst environmental pollution in the world, producing more greenhouse gases every day, it has an abysmal human rights record with much of the country working in conditions that amount to industrial serfdom and the government is notoriously so corrupt that what regulatory agencies they do have can be bribed to look the other way when somebody wants to unload their lead-filled toys or poison dog food on the U.S. market. In short, it's exactly what opponents of laissez-faire "free trade" regimes like the WTO predicted, and also just like they predicted, it hasn't encouraged China to move an iota towards adopting a more democratic system, in spite of all the promises we heard to the contrary.

Again, it is not an accident. It is a natural outgrowth of making the public good secondary to trade considerations.

Posted by flamingbanjo | March 2, 2008 12:50 PM
9

Thanks for arguing for logic, Josh. So many people want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Sure, the WTO should operate in complete transparency, but imagine if they didn't exist, and corporations were allowed to operate however they saw fit in the international market. Globalization is happening whether people want it to or not.

Posted by dreamboatcaptain | March 2, 2008 1:16 PM
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I agree with flamingbanjo @ 8. Trade agreements are set up to undermine democracy, not to enable or enhance it.

Josh is once again defending the indefensible. I give him props for consistency, at least.

Posted by ivan | March 2, 2008 2:05 PM
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I agree with Josh. Who else is going to regulate global trade?

Posted by Hey Wait | March 2, 2008 2:07 PM
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I just don't have any faith that the WTO can ever "do the job they were supposedly set up to do" as you say. The fact that corporate interests have taken de facto control of the organization shows that the WTO is just another expression of corporate power, NOT an alternative to corporate power.

Posted by Hernandez | March 2, 2008 2:51 PM
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@7 unPC Actually Aaron @4 is correct.

Millions of subsistance farmers in Mexico have been driven off their land by US taxpayer subsidized corn dumped in Mexico. The large increase in illegal immigration to the US is in large part driven by the impossibility of making a living anymore for these peasants. The corn we are selling in Mexico is largely genetically modified and of the softer dent type than the traditional flint types of corn (Indian Corn) grown in Latin America. The dent corn also makes an inferior tortilla.

I have been travelling to Mexico off and on since I was a child in the early 1940's and I'm completely dismayed by the havoc that has been wrought on rural Mexico by Nafta. Driving across the countryside one sees the same little farmhouses but the fields are fallow and there are no men around. It is all very sad. The Volkswagen and Ford plants have not begun to provide enough jobs to compensate for the destruction of what was a stable rural life.

Posted by ratcityreprobate | March 2, 2008 2:56 PM
14

rat - a little while back a story about was that bio-fuels were driving up the price of corn and tortillas. big question about using crop land for energy - do you have any links that back your claims?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-corn2mar02,0,2246506.story

Posted by ouch | March 2, 2008 3:46 PM
15

1. WTO is one nation, one vote which is democracy on the international organizations world. As opposed to the UN say, which has that 5 member security council which gives each member a veto on major actions?If you want more democracy in the WTO that would mean what? one person one vote world wide puts China in charge....allocating voting weight as per population also puts China in charge.... it's democratic but, um, is that what is being suggested? If not that, what????

2. WTO has "mechanisms in place to override democratically-enacted laws"
okay, what provision are you talking about??

Please cite and link. We wouild need to examine closely.

@13 thank you but if cheap USA corn floods Mexico it's because consumeres there want to buy it.

If your objection is also based on alleged provisions taking away a nation's right to have higher enviro laws -- please cite and link the objectionable provisions. see
http://www.sice.oas.org/Trade/NAFTA/naftatce.asp

which provision is the one "preventing" general enviro laws or raising enviro standards?

It it's there we need to examine and take action. Too important to not cite and link.


3. If the argument is trade generally is bad because there are nations poorer than us and with lower enviro standards, whatcha gonna do, really?

Leaving NAFTA and the WTO doesn't do anything to stop or reduce trade, there has to be more action by the USA such as banning imports or having big taxes on imports from "bad" nations with inadequate labor or enviro standards.

But any real changes that actually do something significant will mean

(a) American consumers will pay more, it's like a large wage cut for everyone

(b) other nations would retaliate -- causing us to lose jobs and exports.
Expect depression in Puget Sound as wordwide, nations ban or put huge taxes on Boeing and MS products.

(c) as to China, they could stop buying our debt causing massive depression or bankruptcy of the USA. Scary!

4. The right course would include stopping the general anti trade rhetoric and focusing on any objectionable provisions and being specific about changing or removing them after examing such provisions. Leave NAFTA or WTO? Renegotiate? Work thru multilateral treaty mechanisms to raise enviro and labor standards?

The solution is not obvious. The general anti trade argument which tends to lead to unilateral action by the USA isn't going to lead to higher wage or enviro standards in China or Mexico. It will make them retaliate and it will hurt us economically, though.

Posted by unPC | March 2, 2008 4:33 PM
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unPC: Here is a link to the text of CAFTA. There's a lot of it, and the specifics of its application are by no means obvious, so since you're obviously so thirsty for knowledge on this subject, if I were you I'd get reading right away.

Some of the most infamous provisions are to be found in Ch. 9, which governs procurement policies. It stipulates that local laws governing procurement must be consistent with the CAFTA procurement text, which forbids any restrictions on state purchasing based on consideration such as the environmental or human rights conditions a product was made under:

conditions for paricipation in bidding are limited to "those that are essential to ensure that the supplier has the legal, technical and financial abilities to fulfill the requirements and technical specifications of the procurement."

State government officials and representatives of other subfederal entities have no standing before the tribunals that mediate disputes between signatory nations, and must rely on the federal government to mediate all disputes. The federal government by signing the treaty has agreed to use all constitutionally-available powers to force compliance with tribunal rulings. This includes preemptive legislation, lawsuits and cutting off federal funds in order to force states to comply.

An example of of the effect of such language in practice can be found in a 1997 case brought by Japan and the EU against a Massachusetts law barring purchases from companies doing business in Burma, on the basis of documented human rights abuses in that country. (The law was analogous to similar laws forbidding procurement from companies doing business under South Africa's apartheid regime.)

This established precedent for challenge of similar state laws by WTO signatories, and later led the Clinton administration to succesfully pressure the state of Maryland to drop a similar law forbidding trade with Nigeria.

When you previously demanded citations and examples, I brought up the incident of the WTO action that successfully pressured the EU into dropping laws restricting the use of Genetically-modified crops. I could cite many more examples, but instead, I'd like to introduce you to a remarkable tool: It's called Google, and with it an interested person can hunt down all sorts of interesting facts and figures simply by typing select phrases into its "search engine." I know it sounds very fancy, but it's actually quite easy to use. I'd include a link, but I already used my one link per post to link to the text of CAFTA above.

Posted by flamingbanjo | March 2, 2008 5:47 PM
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Ouch @14

You are correct that the Bio-fuels "gold rush" has driven corn prices higher in the past year, but that is recent. See the following:

"The results of intrusive economic policies can be seen around the world. In Mexico, the liberation of trade through NAFTA led to a tripling of corn exports from the United States. [14] The growth in exports caused prices to tumble. Corn that was priced 2.00 pesos per kilogram in 1994 dropped to .50 pesos in 2001. [15] A typical farmer in the Puebla region earned $400 for his crop in 2002, but the cost of production was $500. When NAFTA began, it had been anticipated that corn producers in Mexico would switch to higher-priced export goods like fruit and vegetables to compete on the global markets. [16] But as explained by a Chiapas farmer, “corn is the only work that we know how to do.”

"It might be reasoned that plummeting corn prices would at least help the consumer. But this is not the case. Maseca (with links to Archer Daniels) and Minsa (with links to Cargill) control the tortilla flour industry in Mexico. From the mid-1990s to 2001 tortilla prices rose as corn prices dropped, from .50 pesos per kilogram to 2.00 pesos per kilogram. [17]

"Mexican corn production became concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy landowners. Over 1.3 million jobs have been lost in agriculture since 1994, while 500,000 manufacturing jobs were gained. The minimum wage dropped from $5/day to $4/day, although this may have been partly due to the 1994-5 peso crisis. [18]

"The surging population around maquila factories at the U.S. border has overburdened existing water and sewage systems, leading to a startling rise in hepatitis, tuberculosis, cancer, intestinal diseases, and birth defects. New water treatment facilities have failed to materialize, partly because the poverty-stricken communities cannot raise the necessary financing and user fees. [19]"

14. ‘Dumping without Borders: How US agricultural policies are destroying the livelihoods of Mexican corn farmers’, Oxfam, August 2003.
15. ‘Dumping without Borders’.
16. Colin Carter, Philip Martin and Alix Peterson Zwane, ‘Trade and North American Agriculture: Assessing NAFTA at 12’, Nov-Dec 2005.
17. ‘Dumping Without Borders’; See also ‘The Ten Year Track Record of the North American Free Trade Agreement: The Mexican Economy, Agriculture, and Environment’, Public Citizen, 2004.
18. ‘NAFTA’s Promise and Reality’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003.
19. ‘NAFTA at Ten: Journey to Mexico’, Report of the U.S. Congressional Delegation, November 14-18, 2003;
http://kaptur.house.gov/040204NAFTAReport.pdf
‘The Ten Year Track Record’.


Quoted from The State of Natyure Autum 2007: http://www.stateofnature.org/ourSecretWar.html

I would have no trouble finding many other statistics and articles to support my position.

Posted by ratcityreprobate | March 2, 2008 7:19 PM
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"@13 thank you but if cheap USA corn floods Mexico it's because consumeres there want to buy it."

Have you ever spoken with a Central American farmer who lost his or her land because corn prices collapsed, moved to the city and now aspires to work in a maquila?

Yeah, consumers there will pay a penny less per pound because it's in their short term interest. Unfortunately, that price difference pushes many farmers off their land and into the cities, where there aren't enough jobs to support them. Employers take advantage of the surplus urban labor supply to fire anyone who speaks up about working conditions and to find ready replacements. Meanwhile, transnational corporations (Starbucks, etc.) buy up newly freed land, use extremely poor migrant farmworkers to produce environmentally destructive monoculture cash crops and repatriate their profits to the US, Europe, Canada, and East Asia.

Theoretical gains from free trade are lovely, but reality can bite you in the ass. Subsidized US corn is damaging Central America's agricultural economies, and that's indisputable fact. Given that most of the CA production that results in a relatively fair distribution of income is agricultural, an injury to a CA farmer is an injury to all Central Americans.

Posted by tt | March 2, 2008 7:26 PM
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@18 tt

See my comment above @17. I'm not sure where we disagree.

Posted by ratcityreprobate | March 2, 2008 7:46 PM
20

Neither am I.

I just hate that line, and reacted while skimming the comments. oops?

Posted by tt | March 2, 2008 8:36 PM
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rat - thanks

Posted by ouch | March 2, 2008 8:57 PM
22

Reality however, says that the WTO and the FTAA and other such treaties are legally set up to enforce the removal of barriers based on any use of environmental and labor restrictions.

Thus, we are better of with Obama's insistence on renegotiating them from scratch, rather than "hoping to modify" them which requires a unanimity of agreement that rarely occurs.

But then, I live in a reality in which jobs are being exported by US multinationals, where the tax code is shifted to assist with this, and where the barriers are all against us and not against our trading partners.

I ask that you refer to a number of well-respected tomes on this, written in French, and published by various economic institutes in France, and some others from Germany and Canada.

Posted by Will in Seattle | March 2, 2008 10:06 PM
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p.s. Josh - why do you hate Democracy so?

Posted by Will in Seattle | March 2, 2008 10:10 PM
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"After two tours in Iraq with the Marine Corps Reserve, Steven Vickerman tried to resume a normal life at home with his wife, but he could not shake a feeling of despair.

"His parents, Richard and Carole Vickerman of Palisades, went to visit him at a veterans hospital after he suffered a mental breakdown; they were in disbelief. The funny and adventurous baby brother had become sullen, withdrawn and full of anxiety. Vickerman, who was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, killed himself Feb. 19."

Carole Vickerman told the reporter: "We're still in shock. Our son was a proud Marine. He served his country honorably, and we don't know what happened to him."

Posted by DW | March 2, 2008 10:12 PM
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dude, DW, stop posting this exact post on all the threads.

Posted by Will in Seattle | March 2, 2008 10:37 PM
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Sure, Slog. UNELECTED world government bodies really make a lot of sense. Especially when they have track records like the UN, which ignores the deaths of millions of people.

Guess what, you are people. And you are not an unelected member of a world government body. So you have no rights according to the people who seek the power. Your life is insignificant.

Please vote for that if that's what you want, Slog. But tell us how much they are paying you, and what kick-backs they offered you, too.

Posted by Brandon | March 3, 2008 4:59 AM
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I was interested by the part of the Post article claiming that there has been no shift of manufacturing jobs to Mexico or China because it's so obviously inaccurate. I mean, for one thing, there's the trade deficit: the definition of a trade deficit is that we're buying more from China than we're sending there.

Posted by Judah | March 3, 2008 6:58 AM

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