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NISGUA Articles and Interviews

Stop the FTAA. Join the A.R.T.
Interconnect
By Sarah Aird
March 2002

Thirty-four countries throughout the Americas are currently negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a comprehensive trade agreement which, if implemented, would covert the Americas into the largest trading block in the world. As currently drafted, the FTAA favors the interests of multinational corporations over those of the public. It outlaws certain government policies that give preference to locally produced goods and services and permits multinational corporations to directly sue governments for perceived loss of profit caused by environmental and labor regulations. It also locks in neoliberal structural adjustment policies, forcing curtailment of public spending on social programs, privatization of government services, and deregulation of electricity, transportation, energy, and national resource sectors.

In response, the Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART) – a multisectoral US coalition with a consciously internationalist position on trade – is launching a series of ten public hearings on the FTAA from March 20-30 throughout the northeastern United States. During these hearings, experts and local activists from Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and the United States will discuss the impact of “free trade”. Soon ART plans to expand this public hearings campaign to cover the entire country. These events will take place as part of a national popular consultation, which is being coordinated with similar campaigns and referendums throughout the Americas in a hemispheric consultation on the FTAA, the results of which will be announced at the next Summit of the Peoples of the Americas in April 2003 in Buenos Aires.

Civil society organizations also have developed a series of alternative proposals to the FTAA. The Hemispheric Social Alliance – a coalition of citizens’ groups from throughout the Americas (of which ART is a member) – has put together a document entitled “Alternatives for the Americas: Building a Peoples’ Hemispheric Agreement.” It outlines citizen proposals related to issues covered in the official FTAA negotiations as well as those, such as labor and environmental standards, that have been left out of the official talks. ART has prepared a summary paper comparing, point-by-point, proposed policies under the FTAA with those advocated by the alternative document. This is available at www.art-us.org.

Meanwhile, from February through April, the official FTAA Negotiating Groups and non-negotiating communities responsible for various aspects of the agreement will continue their negotiations in Panama City – without civil society participation.

Latin America-focused organizations in the US that are not already involved are encouraged to engage in the anti-FTAA struggle, as this trade agreement threatens the well-being of citizens and the environment throughout all countries of the Americas. For more information, to join the ART, and for a summary of how FTAA differs from Alternatives for the Americas, contact ART’s representatives Karen Hansen-Kuhn, International Coordinator at karen@art-us.org or Tom Hansen, US Grassroots Coordinator at msn@mexicosolidarity.org

(Sarah Aird is the new Director of NISGUA at 202-518-7638, sarah_aird@igc.org)