Public Citizen: Add your name to NAFTA renegotiation letter
by: Public Citizen
Add your name: Demand a NAFTA renegotiations benefit working people, not corporations:
The Trump administration officially notified Congress it will be renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
NAFTA made it easier for corporations to offshore jobs and to attack environmental, health, and other safeguards.
It killed jobs and depressed wages for millions. Hundreds of corporate advisors helped negotiate it behind closed doors.
Tell the U.S. Trade Representative now: Replace NAFTA with a deal that actually benefits working people in all three countries, not just multinational corporations.
If enough of us speak out, we can stop corporate elites from calling the shots and put an end to their rigged, devastating trade deals.
TEMPLATE LETTER TO U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE ROBERT LIGHTHIZER
To: U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer
From: [Your Name}
Dear USTR Robert Lighthizer:
Your renegotiation of NAFTA is an opportunity to stop its ongoing damage and create a deal that benefits working people, not just big corporations.
That is why we call on you to meet these criteria in any new agreement with Canada and Mexico:
1. Institute a democratic, accountable, and transparent negotiating process without privileged backroom access for corporate interests.
2. Eliminate the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, which promotes job offshoring and gives multinational corporations power to sue the U.S. government before a tribunal of three corporate lawyers. These lawyers can order U.S. taxpayers to pay corporations unlimited sums of money, including for the loss of expected future profits.
3. Include strong and enforceable labor and environmental standards, not the ineffective rules found in deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
4. Require all imported food, goods and services in the agreement to meet strong domestic safety and environmental rules.
5. Eliminate rules that waive important Buy American and Buy Local policies.
6. Eliminate rules that drive up the cost of life-saving medicines by giving pharmaceutical companies extended monopolies on drug patents.
[End]
What is NAFTA?
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect on January 1, 1994 between the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Negotiated behind closed doors with hundreds of official corporate advisors, NAFTA was radically different than past trade deals that focused on traditional trade natters, like cutting border taxes. Instead, most of NAFTA’s provisions grant new powers and privileges to multinational corporations.
These new powers make it easier for corporations to offshore jobs and attack the environmental and health laws on which we all rely. NAFTA’s “investor protections” create incentives for corporations to relocate production and jobs offshore.
Plus, NAFTA guts the Buy American policies that require the government to buy American-made goods when spending our tax dollar. This offshores our tax dollars rather than investing them to create jobs here.
A Vast Expansion of Corporate Power
At the heart of deals like NAFTA are the offshoring protections and new rights for multinational corporations to sue the U.S. government in front of a tribunal of three corporate lawyers.
These lawyers can order U.S. taxpayers to pay the corporations unlimited sums of money, including for the loss of expected future profits.
The corporations only need to convince the lawyers that a law protecting public health or the environment violates their special NAFTA rights. The corporate lawyers’ decisions are not subject to appeal.
This corporate power grab is formally called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS).
Taxpayers have paid more than $475 million to multinational corporations over toxic bans, environmental and public health policies, and more, with more than $54 BILLION pending in ongoing cases.
Rollbacks of Food Safety, Health and Environmental Protections
The dirty little secret of NAFTA is that most of its chapters do not have to with trade at all. One chapter limits food and product safety standards along with border inspections. It lets agribusiness firms sell food here that does not meet U.S. safety rules.
Another gives big pharmaceutical firms new protections against competition so they can raise medicine prices. Another limits consumer protections in the service sector.
This limits what governments can do to keep big banks from causing another financial crisis and requires access to all U.S. roads for trucks from Mexico that do not meet U.S. safety or environmental standards.
The Consequences of NAFTA
Instead of the economic gains for people in all three countries promised by NAFTA’s supporters, the deal has resulted massive job loss and lower wages.
There are more than 910,000 specific American jobs certified as lost to NAFTA offshoring and imports under just one narrow government program that undercounts the damage.
The Labor Department reports that almost half of the manufacturing workers who lost jobs and were rehired in 2016 experienced a wage reduction, with one out of four taking a cut of greater than 20 percent – an annual loss of at least $7,700. Entire communities have been devastated.
More than 2 million Mexicans engaged in farming and related work lost their livelihoods as NAFTA flooded Mexico with subsidized corn and other agricultural products. Tens of thousands of small retail and manufacturing firms were bankrupted as NAFTA opened the door to Walmark and other megaretailers.
Real average annual wages in Mexico have fallen 9 percent below pre-NAFTA levels and are now lower than those in coastal China. Canadian taxpayers have forked over tens of millions to corporations in ISDS attacks.
Scores of environmental, health and other public interest policies have been challenged in all three countries. Consumer safeguards, including key food safety protections, have been rolled back.
And NAFTA supporters’ warnings about the chaos that would engulf Mexico, and a new wave of migration from Mexico, if NAFTA was not implemented have indeed come to pass, but ironically because of the devastation of many Mexicans’ livelihoods occurring, in part, because NAFTA was implemented.
