Mexico. T hey’re the ones—along with the professional classes who
work for them—who are applauding the agreement.
W ill NAFTA and GAT T essentially formalize and institutionalize
relations between the North [prosperous, industrialized, mostly
northern nations] and the South [poorer, less industrialized, mostly
southern nations]?
T hat’s the idea. NAFTA will also almost certainly degrade
environmental standards. For example, corporations will be able to
argue that EPA [the Environmental Protection Agency] standards
are violations of free-trade agreements. T his is already happening in
the Canada-U S part of the agreement. Its general effect will be to
drive life down to the lowest level while keeping profits high.
It’s interesting to see how the issue has been handled. T he public
hasn’t the foggiest idea what’s going on. In fact, they can’t know.
One reason is that NAFTA is effectively a secret—it’s an executive
agreement that isn’t publicly available.
In 1974, the T rade Act was passed by Congress. One of its
provisions was that the Labor Advisory Committee—which is based
in the unions—had to have input and analysis on any trade-related
issue. Obviously that committee had to report on NAFTA, which
was an executive agreement signed by the president.
T he Labor Advisory Committee was notified in mid-August 1992
that their report was due on September 9, 1992. However, they
weren’t given a text of the agreement until about 24 hours before
the report was due. T hat meant they couldn’t even convene, and
they obviously couldn’t write a serious report in time.
Now these are conservative labor leaders, not the kind of guys
who criticize the government much. But they wrote a very acid
report. T hey said that, to the extent that we can look at this in the
few hours given to us, it looks like it’s going to be a disaster for
working people, for the environment, for Mexicans—and a great
boon for investors.
T he committee pointed out that although treaty advocates said it
won’t hurt many American workers, maybe just unskilled workers,
their definition of “unskilled worker” would include 70% of the
workforce. T he committee also pointed out that property rights
were being protected all over the place, but workers’ rights were
scarcely mentioned. T he committee then bitterly condemned the
utter contempt for democracy that was demonstrated by not giving
the committee the complete text ahead of time.
ann
(Ann)
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