Lets get on the band wagon with ViRedd and free up Trade and make a free market society!
In recent years, representatives from 34 countries have been working to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is another example of the free-market fundamentalism that has created a global race-to-the-bottom that threatens the environment, families' livelihoods, human rights, and democracy. Once again, a sweeping "free trade" agreement is in the works that puts commercial interests above all other values.

1. The FTAA Expands a Proven Disaster
The FTAA is essentially an expansion of NAFTA. But NAFTA has proven to be a nightmare for working families and the environment. A look at NAFTA's legacy shows why these kinds of "free trade" agreements should be opposed. Working families suffer: In the US, more than 765,000 jobs have disappeared as a result of NAFTA. When these laid off workers find new jobs, they earn 23 percent less on average than at their previous employment. In Mexico, manufacturing wages fell 21 percent from 1995 to 1999, and have only started to recover. The percentage of Mexicans living in poverty has also grown since NAFTA went into effect. The environment suffers: In the maquiladora zones along the US-Mexico border, the increased pollution and the improper disposal of chemical wastes have dramatically raised rates of hepatitis and birth defects. NAFTA should be repealed, not expanded.
2. The Agreement Is Being Written Without Citizen Input
Despite repeated calls for the open and democratic development of trade policy, the FTAA negotiations have been conducted without citizen input. A process has been set up to solicit citizens' views, but there is no real mechanism to incorporate the public's concerns into the actual negotiations. The public has been given nothing more than a suggestion box. At the same time, however, hundreds of corporate representatives are advising the US negotiators and have advance access to the negotiating texts. While citizens are left in the dark, corporations are helping to write the rules for the FTAA.
3. The Agreement Will Undermine Labor Rights and Cause Further Job Loss
The NAFTA experience demonstrates how basic labor rights and the interests of working families are eroded by "free trade" agreements that lack enforceable labor protections. Corporations move high-paying jobs to countries with lower wages and bust unionization drives with threats to transfer production abroad. According to a Cornell University study, since NAFTA two-thirds of manufacturing and communications companies faced with union organizing campaigns threatened workers with moving their jobs abroad. This "race-to-the-bottom" will accelerate under the FTAA as corporations pit exploited workers in Mexico against even more desperate workers in countries such as Haiti and Guatemala. Already, Mexico is losing maquiladora jobs to countries with cheaper wages. In the last two years, some 280,000 jobs have vanished with the closure of more than 350 maquiladoras.
4. The Agreement Will Exacerbate Environmental Destruction
The export-driven growth model promoted by "free trade" agreements and the policies of the World Bank and the IMF have destroyed ecosystems around the world. Under this unsustainable model, many countries in the Global South cut down their forests, overfish their waters and exploit other natural resources to pay off foreign debts. Since NAFTA, 15 US wood product companies have set up operations in Mexico, and logging there has increased dramatically. In the Mexican state of Guerrero, 40 percent of the forests have been lost in the last eight years, and massive clear cutting has led to soil erosion and habitat destruction.
5. The Agreements Will Hurt Family Farmers
NAFTA has been a disaster for small farmers in the US and Mexico. By favoring the interests of agribusiness corporations over the needs of family farmers, NAFTA's model of export-oriented agriculture has slashed farmers' income. Between 1995 and 2000, the prices US farmers receive for corn declined 33 percent, 42 percent for wheat, and 34 percent for soybeans. No wonder that since NAFTA went into effect 33,000 small farmers in the US have gone out of businessÑmore than six times the pre-NAFTA rate. In Mexico, the price farmers receive for corn has plummeted 45 percent in three years as agribusiness giants dump their subsidized corn there. At least half a million farmers have left their land. The FTAA threatens to make this crisis worse by encouraging even more overproduction.
6. The Agreement Will Lead to Privatization of Essential Services
The FTAA is expected to force countries to privatize services such as education, health care, energy and water. Such privatization would especially harm working class communities and communities of color. In some countries, these privatizations are already occurring, and those least able to pay for vital services are the ones who suffer the most. When the Bolivian city of Cochabamba privatized its water utility, water rates increased 200 percent. In the ensuing protests, police shot and killed a 17-year-old student.
7. The Agreement Will Jeopardize Consumer and Environmental Protections
NAFTA includes unprecedented ways for corporations to attack our laws through so-called "investor-to-state" lawsuits. Such suits, established by NAFTA's Chapter 11, allow corporations to sue governments for compensation if they feel that any government action, including the enforcement of public health and safety laws, cuts into their profits. Already, Chapter 11 lawsuits have been used to repeal a Canadian law banning a chemical linked to nervous system damage, and to challenge California's phase-out of a gas additive, MTBE, that is poisoning the state's ground water. Negotiators want to include these anti-democratic lawsuits in the FTAA.
8. The Agreement Will Spread the Use of GMOs
US trade negotiators are trying use the FTAA to force other countries to accept the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). But environmental groups warn that these technologies haven't been adequately tested, and food security experts say GMOs could increase hunger in poor nations. Farmers have traditionally saved their seeds from year to year, but as multinational corporations patent GM seeds these farmers will be forced to pay for seeds, pushing them further into dependency.
9. The Agreement Will Increase Poverty and Inequality
"Free trade" is not working for the majority of the world. During the most recent period of rapid growth in global trade and investment-1960 to 1998-inequality worsened internationally and within countries. Without debt cancellation and rules to curtail rampant capital speculation, countries in the Global South will remain dominated by the Global North, inequality will increase, and the hope of achieving sustainable development will be farther off.
10. There Are Proven Alternatives
Policy makers and pundits often try to convince us that corporate globalization is inevitable. In fact, the current economic processes known as "globalization" have been defined and driven by a very small number of corporations. Now people around the world are creating an alternative grassroots globalization. Citizens' groups from across the Western Hemisphere have written an "Alternative Agreement for the Americas" that offers a picture of what socially responsible and environmentally sustainable trade would look like. You can find the document on the www.hsa-asc.org website. To learn more about the FTAA and what you can do to stop it, visit our background section, or contact us at 415-255-7296 or ftaa@globalexchange.org.</I> e mafrkets:

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Is NAFTA really free trade, Med? If NAFTA is truely free trade, then why does it take volumes of regulations to spell it out? Free trade is only two words ... FREE TRADE.

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Whoooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeee You're so intelligent, uuhhhhhhhhhh, maybe not!

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

^^^lol

NAFTA concerns free trade in name only. Med do you think NAFTA and FTAA represent the idea of free trade expressed by its proponents here on the forum?
This is more overregulated, bureaucratic, alphabet soup government nonsense.
“Free” and Government are antithetical.
I am pro free trade and opposed to NAFTA…and its ill conceived relatives.


Point # 9 is particularly amusing….where is truly free trade taking place in the world?….the author never specifies….hmmm, I wonder why?
The majority of the world?

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If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT.
~ Frank Zappa ~

Liberty means responsibility, that is why most men dread it.
~George Bernard Shaw~

And exactly how would your free trade utopia work?

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Utopia is unattainable!
It is more realistic to work towards free markets, but because of the ugly reality of power politics, difficult to achieve unfettered markets in reality.
I say the more we strive towards free markets the better!
Is it a coincidence that the most productive countries have the freest markets?

__________________
If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT.
~ Frank Zappa ~

Liberty means responsibility, that is why most men dread it.
~George Bernard Shaw~

I wouldn't know! What are those countries? And what are they trading, Bananas? Give me some examples of countries with unfettered free trade, please! I still think that this society you are alluding to, would end up law of the jungle, where the strong would suppress the weak, the old roman whips and chains thing!

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

That’s my point! There are none...just that some nations are freer than others!
One of the most free is US .....I think without looking it up that Hong Kong (before going back to China) and Singapore are more free than US.....the Wall Street journal runs features on the ranking of freedom and productivity, they have done so for years.
I've been interested in this stuff for a while now.

__________________
If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT.
~ Frank Zappa ~

Liberty means responsibility, that is why most men dread it.
~George Bernard Shaw~

And still there are Government rules and regulations on all countries to allow them to compete in the world markets. I'd bet my last dollar that if you took all the rules away and let the market roam, Working wages would drop to 3rd world status in very short order. The only people making bank would be the owners, even more so than now (a working plutocracy). My question has always been, who's gonna buy the goods when no-one has any bucks

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Yeah they are wrote with out our input just like all the bullshit the government does. In the USA people better learn that citizens have no voice and as long as we elect idiots then what else could anyone ask for!!! My opinions views and ways of thinking have convinced me that the government of the USA has betrayed every citizen of the USA and the government cares nothing more than about how the politicians can justify their next raise and pension increase. I personally am tired of the waste of my money. We can justify launching a 3 million dollar missile (hundreds if not thousands) but when it comes to maintaining our roads our health care system, and anything that they don't benefit from they run! The USA government is a business not a public government like they claim. The Government of the USA is the greatest terrorist in the world, as I am a natural born citizen of the USA and I see my own country as the terrorists more than I see Islamics as being the terrorists!
The government of the USA tortures people a known fact.
The goverment wastes our money there by stealing from it's citizens!
The list goes on and on and on.