The document “The FTAA Exposed,” published in 2003, contains 120 pages of chapter-by-chapter analysis on agriculture, services, government procurement, and competition, among others. Karen Hansen-Kuhn, the U.S. Alliance for Responsible Trade spokesperson then, and today a program director at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, wrote in the introduction that the analysis “points to an agreement that could, if implemented, have profoundly negative impacts on peoples and environments throughout the hemisphere. The members of the HSA do not oppose trade or economic relations among our respective countries. We do believe, however, that the rules that govern those relations must be designed to ensure that both trade and investment serve, first and foremost, to promote equitable and sustainable development.”
I participated in the analysis of the FTAA’s Investment Chapter when I worked at the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC), in collaboration with Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies, Scott Sinclair of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and the late John Dillon from Kairos, among others.
We concluded that the draft text was essentially a copy and paste of NAFTA’s rules granting excessive powers to corporations. These included supranational dispute settlement mechanisms to allow corporations to sue governments over a long list of so-called “investor rights,” such as the right to protection against public interest regulations and other government actions that reduced the value of their investments.
The draft also aimed to give corporations the right to sue over restrictions on capital flows (even volatile speculative capital) and conditions on investment designed to boost economic development, such as requirements to use local suppliers.
The idea was to extend the neoliberal recipe to the entire hemisphere.
Each chapter of the FTAA draft was also contrasted with another important Hemispheric Social Alliance document called “Alternatives for the Americas.” This joint document set out guiding principles of democracy and participation, sovereignty and social welfare, equity, and sustainability.
Social movements today should develop an updated version of this alternative vision. AMLO has spoken of some kind of European Union (EU) for the hemisphere. This would be in the right direction, particularly if it goes beyond the creation of a common market and incorporates the fundamental EU principle of free mobility, allowing citizens the freedom to work and settle in any member country (incidentally, this led a very slim majority of the British population to vote xenophobically in favor of Brexit).
During a pre-summit phone call between the governments of Mexico and the United States, Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard declared that among other topics they will have to strike a “hemispheric position … on labor mobility, as a way to counteract irregular migration.” If it happens, this would be the first time that labor mobility is discussed during this kind of high-level summit.
I’m doubtful that much progress will be achieved on that front. In fact, AMLO may not even attend the summit, in protest over his counterparts from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela leaders not being invited. But it is encouraging that the Mexican leader is attempting to steer the discussion away from neoliberalism and towards a position vision for the entire hemisphere.
Adapted from the original published in the Spanish in La Jornada.