‘Free Trade’ a Serious Threat

It isn’t reported or commented on publicly, but the European Union and United States governments are secretly negotiating a free trade treaty, far from openly, almost nonexistent for newspapers and radio and television news outlets. Only the governments and transnationals know what’s cooking.

When something has leaked out, only the “great advantages of the treaty” have been mentioned. Increasing the gross domestic product of the European Union by 1 percent, 110 billion euros in European taxes and $95 billion for the U.S. — these are macroeconomic calculations that never factor in negative working, social or environmental consequences.

In Latin America during the ‘90s, the U.S. wanted to establish a free trade zone with Central and South America. With the mantra that free trade enriches everything, that multilateral treaty (that was never adopted) consisted of imposing the neoliberal creed and measures of the Washington Consensus — policies for the benefit of the economic and financial elite.

So the U.S. negotiated and signed bilateral treaties with Colombia, Peru and Chile, and the treaty with Mexico and Canada. As the media testify, this last treaty had devastating consequences for the industrial and agricultural sectors in Mexico, provoked an intense and abundant migration to the U.S. and limited the possibilities for development in Mexico. It wasn’t much better for Peru, Colombia and Chile, who have not eliminated historic poverty and have seen their levels of inequality grow.

We have another record: The negotiation of the free trade treaty between the U.S. and 11 Pacific coastal countries, from Japan to New Zealand. WikiLeaks has obtained and published a rough copy of that Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty. It doesn’t look good. For starters, it expects Internet service providers to be police and judges that eliminate web content if they believe that it violates copyright laws — plus a type of international court in defense of said laws that will ignore sovereignty and national courts.

In this treaty, the U.S. expects to introduce very reactionary stances over intellectual property and its application in the pharmaceutical industry. Upon achieving this, the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty will bring about a price increase for many medications and will impede universal access to them. It also plans on patenting medical procedures — that is to say, surgical interventions or diagnostic methods would be someone’s property and could not be universally used by public health institutions except when they pay the entity or business that owns the patent. There are many more, but the aforementioned serves as an example.

The European Commission recognizes the damaging commercial impact that the free trade agreement would bring about in the meat packing, fertilizer, biofuel, sugar, electrical machinery, transportation equipment, metallurgy, wood product, paper and communications industries. According to neoliberal logic and practices, those sectors will employ tough adjustments to compete with the U.S., adjustments that will translate into millions of unemployed workers.

Additionally the U.S. wants to eliminate or severely reduce social and environmental protection laws, which are still stricter in Europe, in exchange for not mentioning the grave threat the treaty makes to freedom of expression on the Internet on account of the presumed protection of copyright laws.

And worse still, the treaty would create special arbitration to attend to the lawsuits of corporations and international investors against the European governments when they think they have fewer profits due to their public health, environmental or social protection laws. Don’t forget the Thirlwall & Penelope Pacheco-Lopez study that states, “There is no evidence that the trade treaties have improved the lives of the citizens of the signatory countries.” So …?

As much as you dress it up, the free trade treaty between the European Union and the U.S., like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Mexican treaties, seeks total deregulation and untouchable freedom for multinational corporations in its insatiable search for profit.

Stiglitz has said it: A free trade zone between the U.S. and Europe means unequal and predatory trade in service of the economic elite. In Costa Rica, a large social movement stopped the signing of a bilateral trade treaty. This appears to be the way, although it’s not easy.