Free Trade Is a Serious Threat

Despite the lack of public comment or disclosure, the U.S. and member governments of the European Union are secretly negotiating a free trade agreement. Newspapers and radio and television news are being left in the dark. Only the governments and multinationals know what is cooking.

The limited amount of information that has been leaked refers only to the “big advantages of the agreement” including a 1 percent increase in the European Union’s gross domestic product as well as new tax revenues of 110 billion euros for Europe and $95 billion for the U.S. Such macroeconomic calculations do not consider any negative impacts on labor, social issues or the environment.

In the 1990s, the U.S. wanted to set up a free trade zone with Central and South America. Repeating the free trade mantra that wealth would flow everywhere, the free trade agreement, which was never signed, would have imposed the neoliberal policies developed by the Washington Consensus — policies that would have benefited economic and financial elites.

But the U.S. proceeded to sign bilateral agreements with Colombia, Peru and Chile as well as one with Mexico and Canada. Newspaper archives show that the agreement with Mexico and Canada had a devastating impact on Mexican agriculture and industry. It spurred intense and abundant migration to the U.S. and it arrested Mexico’s development potential. Things were not much better in Peru, Colombia and Chile; they all have watched inequality grow without a decrease in entrenched poverty.

We also have the example of the free trade agreement that was negotiated by the U.S. with 11 countries of the Pacific Rim, stretching from Japan to New Zealand.

WikiLeaks obtained and published a draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, and it does not paint a pretty picture. To begin with, it proposes that Internet servers act as police and judges, eliminating web content that may have infringed on copyrights. It would have international courts oversee copyright matters, ignoring issues of sovereignty and the role of national courts.

In this agreement, the U.S. is trying to impose its most reactionary positions regarding intellectual property rights within the pharmaceutical industry. If successful, the Trans-Pacific Agreement would lead to increased prices for many medications, thus impeding universal access to them. The agreement proposes creating patents on various medical procedures. Surgical interventions and diagnostic procedures would become somebody’s personal property so they could no longer be universally used by public health facilities, except if the facilities pay the entity or company that owns the patent.

There is much more in the agreement, but the above examples provide sufficient evidence.

The European Commission recognizes that the free trade agreements would have a negative impact on commerce in many sectors including the meat industry, bioethanol, sugar, electric machinery, transportation equipment, metal working, wood products, paper and communications. In the prevailing neoliberal logic and practice, such sectors would be subjected to tough adjustments in order to compete with the U.S., adjustments that could translate into millions of workers walking out on strike.

The U.S. also wants to eliminate or drastically reduce social and environmental protections, which are even stricter in Europe — not to mention the grave threat the agreement poses to freedom of expression on the Internet, supposedly to better protect copyrights.

Even worse, the agreement would create special arbitration measures to address complaints filed by corporations and international investors against European governments on issues related to the latter’s laws on public health, the environment and social benefits. Let’s not forget the study conducted by Thirlwall and Penelope Pacheco-Lopez, which found that “there is no evidence that trade agreements have improved the lives of citizens in the signing countries.”* Now what?

No matter how you dress it up, a free trade agreement between the U.S. and the EU — just like the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the agreement with Mexico — seeks complete deregulation and unquestionable freedoms for multinational corporations in their insatiable search for self-benefit.

As Stigliz has said: A free trade zone between the U.S. and Europe will put unfair and predatory commerce at the service of economic elites. In Costa Rica, a huge social mobilization movement stopped the signing of a bilateral trade agreement. That seems to be the best way forward, though it won’t be easy.

*Editor’s note: This quote, accurately translated, came from a book and could not be verified.