Visit
us at the Great Minnesota Get-Together!
We'll be at the state fair three days this year! Stop
by and say hi these days:
8/30 Fair Trade Day in the Eco Experience Building
8/31 with Peace Coffee in the Eco Experience Building
9/6 at the MN AFL-CIO Labor Pavilion
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Event:
The High Cost of Free Trade in the Americas
Saturday,
September 18
10:00am-11:30am
Resource
Center of the Americas
3019
Minnehaha Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55406-3198
www.americas.org
There are few policy areas that affect the everyday lives of
people throughout the Americas more than trade.
The fallout across borders from NAFTA & CAFTA have been
severe. High rates of unemployment,
depressed wages, loss of family farms, labor and human rights abuses, limited
access to essential medicines, compromised environmental regulations, and many
other ills have shown us that there is nothing free about free trade agreements.
Join us for a coffee hour discussion as we connect the trade
dots, from Minnesota to Mexico and beyond, and discuss how we can push for a
more just trade model as outlined in the TRADE Act, so that past mistakes are
not replicated and the benefits of trade are shared with those who do the work.
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President Obama Begins First Major First Trade Negotiations as Trans-Pacific Partnership Countries Meet In U.S. This Week
Diverse MN Coalition Backs Obama Promise of Trade Reform
State Leaders Call for a ‘New Deal or No Deal’ in TPP Talks
June
17, 2010
MINNEAPOLIS – Trade negotiators from the U.S. and seven Asian and Latin American countries are meeting in San Francisco this week to begin the first major trade talks since President Obama first took office. These proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) discussions are being closely watched as the forum where the administration will first define a trade policy.
A central question surrounding negotiations is whether the TPP will encompass substantial reform commitments made by the President during his campaign, or instead become a continuation of the unpopular North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which passed in 1993 and served as the default template for modeling American trade agreements under the Bush Administration.
“Trade is good, and we want more of it,” said Russell Hess, Secretary-Treasurer of Southeast Area Labor Council. “But if we want to pass a deal the public can support, and a majority of congress can get behind, it needs to look more like Obama trade promises, and less like NAFTA.”
The Southeast Area Labor Council is one of 38 state groups in the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, a diverse coalition of labor, environmental, religious, family farm and civil society organizations united in the pursuit of economic, social and environmental justice in trade policy.
“NAFTA and CAFTA were failed experiments,” said Jessica Lettween, Director of Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition. “They overpromised, underperformed, and it is time to craft a more balanced way to expand trade.” Other state leaders also encouraged reform, noting these TPP talks provide a long overdue opportunity to fix the failures of the past, and lay out a new framework for the future.
Minnesota lost over 50,300 total manufacturing jobs (or 14.3 percent) during the NAFTA-WTO period (1993-2009), according the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Economic Policy Institute found that 19,278 additional manufacturing jobs could have been supported in Minnesota between 1993-2004 with balanced trade among NAFTA countries alone, and an additional 58,700 manufacturing jobs could have been supported during the same period with balanced trade with China alone.
Under past NAFTA-style agriculture trade rules, multinational grain trading and food processing companies have made enormous profits while farmers in America and abroad have been hurt. “Using NAFTA as a template for the TPP will increase hunger, encourage immigration and continue the race to the bottom for commodity prices,” said Doug Peterson, President of Minnesota Farmer’s Union. “The TPP can’t simply be another deal that pits farmer against farmer and country against country to see who can produce food the cheapest, regardless of standards on labor, the environment or food safety.”
State leaders are encouraging our negotiators to follow the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act as a roadmap for TPP negotiations. “The TRADE Act can serve as a blueprint for building the TPP,” added Steve Hunter, Secretary-Treasurer of MN AFL-CIO. “It lays out what a good trade agreement should look like, and has the backing of a majority of the majority of congress.” Over 143 members of the U.S. House, from both parties, have cosponsored the legislation, including Minnesota Representatives Ellison, McCollum, Oberstar, Peterson, and Walz.
“We want a trade agreement that can pass through Congress,” concluded Lettween. “President Obama should craft a new trade agreement that can last, rather than one that looks like the past.”
The TPP involves eight nations: Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the U.S. Negotiations are being held at Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco. While no text has been released, these countries are discussing bringing in additional countries.
Download
this press release here.
Multi-National Mining Company v. Impoverished Central American Country: Who do you think’s going to win this one?
June 16, 2010
In Washington, D.C., in a closed World Bank hearing, a multinational mining corporation is arguing the first CAFTA environmental attack case. Using the controversial CAFTA investor rights rules that allow private firms to directly sue governments for policies they claim undermine their expected future profit, Pacific Rim Mining Corp is demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from El Salvador.
That’s right. Because of CAFTA’s extreme guarantees on foreign investor rights, this Canadian mining multinational can demand massive compensation from this small impoverished country that wanted to protect the health of its citizens and environment. President Obama can help end this nightmare by fulfilling his pledge to purge extreme investor rights from U.S. trade policy and future trade pacts like the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), Obama’s first prospective trade deal, which will are currently being negotiated in San Francisco.
Sign the petition to President Obama demanding he cut extreme investor rights out of U.S. trade policy once and for all!
President Obama can help end this nightmare by fulfilling his pledge to purge extreme investor rights from U.S. trade policy and future trade pacts like the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), Obama's first prospective trade deal, which will be negotiated in San Francisco later this month.
Pacific Rim Mining Corp sought to open a large gold mine in the basin of El Salvador's largest river. The mine would use enormous amounts of water and tons of cyanide to process the ore. Public concerns about serious health, water and environmental issues arose after the first environmental study came out. Business press reports note that Pacific Rim halted its application for a final operating permit and ceased exploratory drilling in 2008. Meanwhile, in a triumph of democracy after decades of civil war, Salvadoran public concern translated into bipartisan political action. Both the conservative and then left-leaning governments undertook a national review of mining policy.
But instead of continuing with the permitting process, Pacific Rim turned to CAFTA. It reincorporated a Cayman Islands subsidiary in Nevada, and used this new U.S. corporate entity to file a CAFTA case in December 2008. Pacific Rim is using CAFTA's controversial "investor -state" dispute resolution mechanism, which gives corporations the right to directly sue sovereign governments over environmental and other public interest policies they feel could undermine anticipated future profits. As a result, a World Bank tribunal is now empowered to decide whether Pacific Rim's expectation of profit trumps the right of the Salvadoran people to clean water, a sound environment and their democratic rights to determine what is in their national interest.
That's why we need to take action to purge the "Investor-State" clause and other excessive investor rights once and for all!
Sign the petition to President Obama demanding he cut extreme investor rights out of U.S. trade policy once and for all!
Broad Minnesota Coalition Urges Backing of Trade Reform Legislation
More than Seventy Organizations Ask Our Members of Congress to Cosponsor the ‘TRADE Act’
May 21, 2010
(Minneapolis, MN) – A diverse array of seventy-two faith, labor, environmental, social justice and family farm organizations throughout Minnesota sent a joint letter yesterday to their Congressional Delegation in support of passing meaningful fair trade legislation. The Trade, Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act (S.2821/H.R.3012) currently has 143 co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives, from both parties, including five members from Minnesota. Groups that often don’t agree on other issues joined together to encourage more members of the Minnesota delegation to cosponsor the bill.
The ‘TRADE Act’ lays out a more balanced framework for expanding trade, in a way that can serve a majority of people on issues such as jobs, wages, the environment, worker rights, and consumer safety. The legislation essentially serves as a blueprint for how to negotiate future trade deals.
“With the TRADE Act, we have an incredible opportunity to set our country on a new path where trade exists to benefit the people who do the work, not the other way around,” stated Jessica Lettween, Director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition. “We applaud Representatives McCollum, Ellison, Oberstar, Walz, and Peterson for taking the lead in support of this critical piece of legislation and call on Representatives Bachmann, Kline and Paulsen and Senators Franken and Klobuchar to follow suit.”
The TRADE Act requires a comprehensive review of past problematic trade pacts , and lists what aspects of the NAFTA-WTO model should not be included in future deals. It also works to resolve unfair practices from U.S. trading partners that keep American businesses and workers at a competitive disadvantage and out of emerging markets.
Steve Hunter, Secretary Treasurer of the MN AFL-CIO added his organization’s support for the TRADE Act, stating, “We need a new approach to international trade that fosters sustainable, environmentally sound economic development both in the United States and around the world. The TRADE Act is a first step in reforming the current system which has cost jobs here and done nothing to address environmental or human rights issues.”
In March, an Economic Policy Institute report found 58,700 Minnesota U.S. jobs had been lost to China alone in the years between 2001 and 2008. Three of the nation’s top fifty Congressional districts with the most job loss are located in Minnesota, ranking the state sixth in the nation by share of total employment lost. The report cites China’s currency manipulation as a major cause of the growing U.S. trade deficit with that nation. Other issues, such as the country’s suppression of labor and human rights, have exacerbated the imbalance, and driven down the wages and bargaining power of similar workers throughout the economy.
The TRADE Act addresses these problems, as well as environmental issues.
Margaret Levin, State Director of the Sierra Club North Star Chapter, elaborated, stating “Current trade agreements have weakened environmental protection and exacerbated climate change, impeding the development of a clean energy economy and weakening global labor standards. The TRADE Act maps out comprehensive reform for U.S. trade agreements, so that future agreements will be cleaner, greener and fairer -- benefiting communities and workers, while protecting the health of our environment.”
“Past agreements like NAFTA have shown there is nothing “free” about the high cost of trade. We can’t afford to follow the past model that encourages companies to move wherever human rights and environmental regulations are the weakest,” added Brian Payne, Organizer with the Workers Interfaith Network.
Download our press release here.
Tell Your Senators to support the TRADE Act!
Call your Senators today and tell them to
sign-on to support the TRADE Act!
Senator Amy
Klobuchar*
202 - 224 - 3244
Senator Al Franken
202 - 224 - 5641
Don't forget to let us know how it
went! Call 651-214-6064 or email jlettween@citizenstrade.org.
*Denotes Senator has supported fair trade and/or opposed failed trade in the
past.
Historic TRADE Reform Act Introduced!
  Minneapolis
– The Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition commend Representatives Tim Walz (D - 01)
Betty McCollum (D-04), Keith Ellison
(D-05), Collin Peterson (D-07) and James Oberstar (D-08) (right) for their co-sponsorship for a new
vision of trade policy. Over fifty original House and Senate cosponsors joined
twenty leading labor, environmental, family farm and faith groups in supporting
new consensus legislation offering a  positive vision for future U.S. trade
policy. Entitled the Trade
Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) the bill
was
introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) today
in
Washington
D.C.
The act triggers a review of all existing trade agreements, and provides a
process to renegotiate them. The bill also outlines principles of what should be
included in future trade agreements, and expresses the sense of the Congress
that their role in trade policymaking should be strengthened.
“The TRADE
Act’s clear articulation of what we’re for, and its very specific benchmarks
for current and future trade agreements provides a balanced way forward that
grounds our trade policy on the impact these policies have on American’s
everyday lives,” said Rep. Michaud. “Instead of rhetoric, the TRADE Act
calls for concrete results.”
“The TRADE Act represents a
positive step forward in international trade policy. I commend the authors
and coauthors of the bill, including Minnesota Reps. Peterson, Ellison and
McCollum and
ask all of our congressional delegation to support this legislation,” said
Steve Hunter, Minnesota AFL-CIO Secretary/Treasurer.
“The TRADE Act defines a plan for a fair trade
policy that will allow American agriculture to compete on a level playing field.
Under the current free trade agenda Americas trading partners are not required
to meet the same high labor, environmental, and health and safety standards as
American farmers and ranchers,” said Minnesota Farmers Union President, Doug
Peterson.
“Global trade has the potential to be a powerful force for democracy and
economic and social justice throughout the world, if done correctly. The TRADE
Act is the beginning of the discussion about how we can do trade fairly, without
destroying our environment or the livelihoods of American working families in
the process,” said Russell Hess, President of Southeast Central Labor Council
AFL-CIO.
Dennis Olson of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Action, also
praised the initiative, saying, “For too long, trade agreements have
deregulated agricultural markets to promote
exports at any cost...unfortunately, the
growing world food crisis, contrasted with windfall profits of transnational
agribusiness cartels, reflects the absolute bankruptcy of this failed NAFTA-WTO
model. This bill outlines a new approach that establishes the right of all
countries to increase food self-sufficiency based on independent family farm
agriculture and sound conservation practices."
The TRADE Act was introduced following a presidential
primary season that saw trade policy rise to the top of American’s concerns.
With several Democratic candidates promising to renegotiate existing
agreements ( www.citizenstrade.org/positions.php
to read those commitments), the TRADE Act provides a blueprint for how to best
remedy many of these past problems in trade agreements.
According to the Director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, Alicia Ranney,
“Labor, family farm, environmental and other progressive organizations want to
see a responsible expansion of trade. The TRADE Act is a balanced way to expand
trade, offering us all a fair way to move forward.
The current
U.S.
trade model has had devastating impacts. Since 1975, when Fast Track was first
enacted, the trade deficit has gone from a slight surplus to an unsustainable
$709 billion deficit in 2007. A net
4.7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost. American worker productivity
doubled but median wages are only 1 percent above 1970s levels. In Minnesota,
over 40,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost due to trade since 1993.
The bill articulates specific changes needed to the failed
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)/World Trade Organization (WTO) model
to ensure trade deals achieve good jobs, safe food and the promotion of basic
human rights, healthy communities and environmental protection.
Farmworkers Victorious, Improve Wages & Conditions:
 The
Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) receive another win in their fight for fair
food and working conditions for farmworkers. On May 23, 2008 Burger King relented to
intense pressure from the CIW, students, labor, religious and social justice
organizations and members in the US Senate to join Taco Bell (YUM Brands) and
McDonalds in their pay more per pound campaign to improve the lives of
farmworkers and end slavery in the fields. Check out the CIW website for the
latest news. www.ciw-online.org
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