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Home :
Government and Politics :
local issues and opinions : ftaa
Free Trade Area of the Americas
There are 356 Government and Politics links for you to choose from!
A Free Trade Anecdote From the Green Mountain National Forest
In early January, just after the new year, loggers from Claire Lathrop Co., a local logging outfit and lumber mill based in Bristol, VT, cut roughly 180,000 board feet of northern hardwood -- mostly maple -- from the Lincoln Brook II timber sale in the National Forest in Warren, VT. Previous to the cut, Lathrop had negotiated an amendment in their contract with the Forest Service to allow for the first time use of helicopter yarding in our National Forest.
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Burlington City Council Blasts FTAA
Burlington City council passed a resolution against the FTAA at last night's meeting. I believe this makes Burlington the second city in the U.S. to pass such a resolution. The council vote was 12 to 0 in favor. Democrat Bill Keogh abstained and one member was absent from the meeting. The resolution was sponsored by Progressive council member Philip Fiermonte. Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle has also been vocally opposed to the FTAA. He's part of a panel discussion scheduled for next Monday 4/16 at 7:00 p.m. at Edmunds Middle School cafeteria to discuss the trade agreement.
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Corporate media outlets outdid themselves in April
during coverage of the Quebec City summit, designed to win support for a so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). After largely ignoring the story in the days immediately preceding the meeting, TV networks went wall-to-wall as soon as the first protesters began dismantling the security perimeter separating them from the gathered heads of state. Yet, less than 24 hours later, despite an escalation of police violence in Quebec, large protests throughout the Americas, and serious disagreements among leaders attending the summit, coverage shifted again. Footage of the protest was cut off, and a new story emerged. Late on Saturday night, the Associated Press (AP) led the charge, announcing in a headline that the proposed trade deal had been "ratified." Despite reality -- notably the fact that actual ratification is in serious doubt and years away -- the clear intent was to leave the impression that a deal had already been struck.
Eye Witness Account of The Violent Front Lines at Summit of Americas
Chemical Agents and Plastic Bullets
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Fast Track Passes in the House
WASHINGTON – Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) cast a strong “No” vote against the Fast Track trade bill today which passed by a slim one-vote margin (215-214) on the floor of the House. The Fast Track trade bill transfers constitutionally-mandated powers of Congress to the Executive Branch by giving the President the authority to submit trade agreements to Congress for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote without amendment.
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From the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) -- which, in turn, helped to launch the World Trade Organization (WTO) -- and on to the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the emergence of an elaborate management system for global trade and investment suggests an expected long-term outcome rarely acknowledged by its backers. That is, the gradual surrender of national sovereignty to what looks very much like a world government. Depending on what one thinks of the current world order, that's either a dream come true or a horrifying nightmare. For some idealists, world government still offers the hope of an end to the destructive impacts of nationalism and the emergence of a higher social contract that begins to resolve the world's economic, political, and "environmental" inequities.
Information about the details of the FTAA is sketchy.
However, it's clear that the US is hot on privatizing everything from health care and education to "environmental" and water services. The April draft will also have investment provisions similar to those in the defeated MAI and Chapter 11 of NAFTA, which allows corporations to sue governments for lost profits resulting from the passage of laws protecting health and safety, working conditions, or environmental standards.
The FTAA's so-called "Miami Group" -- the US, Canada, Argentina, and Chile -- wants all countries in the hemisphere to accept biotechnology and genetically modified foods (GMOs), a gift for biotech companies like Cargill, Monsanto, and Archer Daniels Midland. The US also hopes to extend NAFTA's protectionist rules on patents. NAFTA already gives a company with a patent in one country monopoly marketing rights throughout the region, a clever ruse that inserts businesses between local people and their own traditional medicines.
Labor Is Mobilizing Across Borders to Stop the FTAA
APRIL 6, 2001 -- Opposition to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is deepening within the labor movement, both within the US and throughout the Western Hemisphere.
As FTAA negotiators met in Buenos Aires this week to iron out the details of their plan, Argentine police patrolled a barricaded perimeter to keep out labor union groups concerned about the impacts the proposed agreement. More than 100 organizations from Argentina and other Latin American countries participated in large nonviolent protests during the planning session.
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Northeast U.S. Gears Up To Protest FTAA Summit
April 15, 2001 --- As trade ministers from 34 countries from the western hemisphere prepare to negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Quebec City next weekend, anti-corporate globalization activists from the Northeast U.S. are making contingency plans if thousands of protesters are not allowed entry into Canada
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The people of Central and South America and the Caribbean
have been promised that "liberalized" trade and investment in the world's biggest trade powerhouse will spread prosperity to millions currently without work or hope. But they've also been living under the FTAA model for over a decade, in the form of World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs. Deregulation and privatization, the twin pillars of structural adjustment, have forced most countries to dismantle their public infrastructures. To be eligible for debt relief, dozens of countries have had to abandon public social programs, allowing foreign corporations to sell health and education "products" to "consumers" who can afford them.
The same countries are permitted to maintain basic public services, but only for the poor. Mostly, they're so inadequate and unprofitable, corporations aren't interested in them, and meanwhile millions go without the most basic education and health care.
ThinkTwice about Trade Promotion Authority
Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation (also known as "fast track") would give the President (through his appointed negotiators) authority to negotiate the terms of international trade agreements without significant input from outside of the administration. Under the currect TPA proposal, Congress would have no ability to alter the terms of a trade agreement; only a "yes" or "no" vote would be possible. There are no real provisions for consultation and democratic debate about trade policy, even though these issues affect every U.S. citizen and resident. The TPA bill outlines specific business protection provisions which are required to be part of any negotiated trade agreement. However, there are no required provisions for worker or "environmental" protection. ... It is clear that TPA legislation is aimed at the interests of large corporations, not the American people at large. (permanent link)
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Vermont Prepares As Anti-Globalization Activists Head For Major Trade Prote
March 13, 2001 - The Vermont Mobilization for Global Justice (VT MGJ), a newly formed coalition which includes more than 15 statewide groups, will hold a press conference this Thursday, March 15 at 11 AM in Burlington's City Hall Contois Auditorium. This press conference will announce the VT MGJ's plans to open a Convergence Center and Independent Media Center in Burlington in preparation for thousands of anti-economic globalization activists traveling through Vermont on their way to Quebec City, PQ, Canada for mass actions against the upcoming Summit of the Americas.
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VT Senator Jeffords Opposes Fast Track
On Saturday, January 12, in front of a crowd of 30 Vermonters rallying against Fast Track (now called Trade Promotion Authority), Senator James Jeffords (Vermont, Independent) declared that he would not support Fast Track. When asked later for confirmation that this was, in fact, the Senator's stance on the issue, he reiterated, "I will not vote for Fast Track." This pronouncement came as a welcome surprise to anti-Fast Track activists whose request for the Senator's position on Fast Track had previously been eluded by his staff members.
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