By Michaele Turnage
Daily Bruin Contributor
Concern for workers’ rights, the environment and
publicly-owned services was the rallying cry of speakers at a
teach-in Thursday night to inform students about the Free Trade
Area of the Americas.
The FTAA, which may go into effect by 2005, would eliminate
tariffs and other barriers to trade among all the Western
Hemisphere nations ““ with the exception of Cuba ““
creating the largest free trade block in the world.
Leaders of these countries hope to privatize publicly owned
services, which range from universities to telephone services.
“Behind the discussion about free trade and fairness, what
these agreements represent in reality is the naked pursuit of
profits at any expense,” said speaker Bill Neal, a graduate
student pursuing his teaching credential at the California State
University, Los Angeles.
But according to Professor Sebastian Edwards of The Anderson
School at UCLA, such opinions are are misguided.
“If the FTAA is signed and transformed into reality it
would allow the poor countries in Latin America to have access to a
huge and dynamic market and this would in turn help the poor
citizens of Latin America,” said Edwards, who served as the
World Bank’s chief economist for Latin America from
1993-96.
Meanwhile, citing negative impacts resulting from the North
American Free Trade Agreement, which was implemented in 1994,
organizers said history would repeat itself if the FTAA passed.
Following NAFTA, which eliminated tariffs between Canada, the
United States and Mexico, U.S. corn flooded the Mexican market.
According to speakers at the teach-in, this put thousands of
Mexican small corn farmers out of production because they could not
compete with the cheap prices of U.S. corn.
Under the FTAA, transnational corporations who move their
production facilities to participating foreign countries
won’t have to pay that country’s tariffs or respect its
labor, minimum wage or environmental protections laws, said Gillian
Russom, a first-year graduate student in education.
Host countries impose tariffs to protect domestic markets and
elicit compensation for production performed within their borders
intended for export.
The thrust to remove tariffs and other restrictions to trade
began with the establishment of the General Agreement on Trade and
Tariffs in 1948, which eliminated tariffs. At that time, the
average tariff developing countries placed on manufactured goods
was 40 percent.
According to GATT’s successor, the World Trade
Organization, by 2000 those tariffs had fallen to less than 4
percent. The WTO expanded GATT’s purpose by eliminating
non-tariff barriers to trade as well ““ including
environmental, health and labor regulations. FTAA participants will
have to adhere to WTO policies.
The unrestricted movement of transnational corporations through
the Western Hemisphere would result in a “race to the
bottom,” in which corporations go from country to country
seeking the cheapest labor, said speaker Joe Price. By paying
workers less and not having to worry about environmental standards,
corporations can lower production costs and increase their
profits.
“The FTAA enables corporations to challenge any law that
is a barrier to profits,” said Russom, a member of the
International Socialist Organization.
Under NAFTA, the Ethyl corporation won $13 million in lost
profits after it sued Canada for having a law outlawing
methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl, better known as MMT,
a toxic gasoline additive exclusively produced by Ethyl which can
poison drinking water.
According to organizers, free trade agreements don’t have
any sympathetic apparatus for countries to appeal to if a
corporation is unethically exploiting their resources.
“Corporations have far more power than the people in the
countries where they’re from,” Neal said, adding that
transnational corporations often have more economic leverage than
individual countries.
“(The corporations) are unelected, unaccountable, and the
people in government primarily serve their interests,” he
said.
The FTAA would also begin the process to privatize social
services, according to its own Web site.
“We’ve already seen the outcome of that with
electricity in California,” Neal said.
Under the FTAA, he said, postal services, telephone services,
government-owned oil companies and educational institutions like
UCLA would be next on the list of services to privatize.
Because the FTAA is not sensitive to the needs of workers and
the environment, organizers of the teach-in said it must be
stopped.
“The FTAA will increase immigration, lower wages, increase
horrible working conditions, open up the countries involved to
privatization, and increase spending on the border,” said
Tonantzin Esparza, a third-year theater student.
Organizers of the event encouraged the approximately 100
students and community members in the Ackerman Union Second Floor
Lounge on Thursday to join the anti-FTAA protest at the U.S.-Mexico
border on April 21.
The non-violent protest will coincide with the latest Summit of
the Americas, where leaders of the 34 participating countries will
reconvene to design the plan for the FTAA. A bus, two vans and
several cars will be available to take more than 50 protesters to
the event.
Participants agreed more students should have taken advantage of
the teach-in. Many expressed concern that UCLA students need to be
more informed about world issues.
“We are the future,” said Kareen Espino, a
third-year history student. “But we need to be a future that
is educated, a future that is aware, a future that has the ability
and the tools to make a difference.”
HIGHEST GROSSING AGENCIES Transnational
corporations have more economic leverage than many countries
SOURCE: World Investment Report 2000, CIA World Factbook Original
graphic by VICTOR CHEN/Daily Bruin Web adaptation by MIKE
OUYANG/Daily Bruin