Lately, Wall Street and their Congressional mouthpieces are fond of saying that free trade has been good for the country—raising the standard of living for all Americans over the course of just a few decades.  Yet, you and I know that does not comport with reality, as workers, worldwide have ended up in a dramatic race to the bottom. Using as leverage, trade deals like NAFTA, corporations have increased profits by keeping wages low and stifling labor rights, especially in poorer countries like Mexico and Honduras, as the victims flood to our borders.

This year, the renegotiated NAFTA will go to Congress. The new NAFTA is a confusing incoherent mixture of steps forward and back. The heightened bitterness in our political climate will further distract us from what we need – a rethinking of our approach to globalization.  

The fading promises of establishment voices have been answered with political facts - growing resentment among those who have been left behind by the way we’ve managed globalization, loss of confidence in establishment figures and institutions, loss of social cohesion, and decline of the problem-solving capacity of democratic government.

We should understand these political facts in terms of how policies affect workers, communities and the environment.

The renegotiated NAFTA is the wrong answer to the right question. We should be ready to reframe the debate as Congress considers the new NAFTA, and point to a different way forward in the 2020 election campaigns that will heat up later in the year.

In our continuing efforts to educate about the realities of corporate-designed trade deals, we are pleased to welcome Sharon Anglin Treat, Senior Trade Attorney with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and Stan Sorscher, Labor Representative at the Society for Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace.

TRADE JUSTICE ALLIANCE SUNDAY NIGHT WEBINAR

NAFTA 2: DEMOCRACY OR CORPORATE RULE?

JANUARY 27 / 4:30 PACIFIC / 7:30 EASTERN TIME

An 11-term Maine State legislator, Sharon Treat has been a member of the Intergovernmental Policy Advisory Committee (IGPAC) to the U.S. Trade Representative and of the Maine Citizen Trade Policy Commission.  Sharon Treat has presented many times to trade negotiators concerning access to health care, tobacco policy, and environmental protections. She has practiced law with environmental organizations, in state government and in private practice, and taught environmental law at Maine Law School and several colleges.

Sharon Treat will educate us on the Regulatory Cooperation Chapter (28) and other egregious provisions that are included in NAFTA 2 / USMCA that, if passed intact, will give unelected corporate interests enforceable rights to alter all of our regulatory bodies long after Donald Trump leaves the White House, even if they don’t relate to trade!  Many of us can’t help but believe these provisions open up the country to dangerous attacks on our air, water and food safety by those who will profit from deregulations.  And Congress will be helpless to change this part of NAFTA 2 once it goes into effect. We can’t let that happen!

We also look forward to hearing from Stan Sorscher, Labor Representative at the Society for Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), a union representing scientists, engineers, pilots, technical and professional employees in the Aerospace industry.  Stan Sorscher is a delegate to the Labor Advisory Committee for the US Trade Representative, and serves on the board of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition. Stan will discuss the questionable logic behind the neoliberal model and free trade that has decimated his hometown of Flint, Michigan and numerous other communities, as he and the Washington Fair Trade Coalition call for trade policy that works towards the well-being of people and planet.

The big question in this era of unbridled corporate rule is whether we continue to blindly follow the neoliberal, free trade model into climate chaos, growing inequality and political instability, or do we demand democracy over corporate rule.    

Please join the discussion.