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TWN Info Service on Free
Trade Agreements
04 June 2007
NAFTA – Going Beyond Economics
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the world’s most
advanced example of the U.S.-led free trade model. But plans are afoot
to expand its mandate to go beyond trade and economics.
As the article below points out, the three countries – US, Canada and
Mexico – aim for deeper integration in the form of expansion of NAFTA
into the Security and Prosperity Partnership which the author believes
is more a US-led initiative aim at securing greater opportunities for
US corporations, ensuring US access to the natural resources, especially
oil, in the other two countries as well as advancing US security post-September
11.
For other countries which have already signed or in the process of sigining
an FTA with the US, this development in NAFTA acts as a precursor to
what lies ahead and also confirms observations that US FTAs are not
only about economics.
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Spero News | Thursday, May 24, 2007
(http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idarticle=9616)
NAFTA: Kicked up a notch
The North American Free Trade Agreement is the world’s most advanced
example of the U.S.-led free trade model. It’s not just about economics
any more.
By Laura Carlsen
The North American Free Trade Agreement is the world’s most advanced
example of the U.S.-led free trade model. It’s not just about economics
any more. The expansion of NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership
reveals the road ahead for other nations entering into free trade agreements.
It is not a road most nations — or the U.S.
public — would take if they knew where it led.
The first problem is that very few people know about this next step
of “deep integration.” In March 2005, Presidents George Bush, Vicente
Fox and Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco,
Texas launched the Security
and Prosperity Partnership with a splash. Although it had few visible
results, the Waco meeting of the “Three Amigos” set into motion an underground
process that spawned its own working groups, rules, recommendations,
and agreements - all below the radar of the legislatures and the public
in the three nations. These rules and trinational programs have profound
effect on the environment, the daily lives of citizens, and the future
of all three countries.
The SPP not only further greases the wheels of corporate cooperation
and potentially increases U.S.
access to Mexican oil. Its security component represents a new and ominous
form of integration, all in the name of counter-terrorism.
The SPP’s Real Objectives
From its origins in Waco, the SPP has
developed through several formal meetings, including a March 31, 2006
meeting of heads of state in Cancun and a ministerial meeting in Canada in February 2007. Canadian
civil society watchdogs also outed a secret meeting of high-level government,
military and business people in Banff in September of 2006.
The official U.S. web page describes the SPP as “a White House-led initiative
among the United States and the two nations it borders - Canada and
Mexico - to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three
countries through greater cooperation.”
“White House-led” is a key element. When the heads of state met in Waco and in subsequent meetings to follow up on NAFTA, both
Canada and Mexico had some
very serious concerns. Canada
was embroiled in trade conflicts with the United States (soft lumber, beef)
that it wanted to see resolved through NAFTA mechanisms. Mexico’s right-wing
government, meanwhile, has found increasingly untenable the stark contradiction
between open borders for merchandise and the criminalization of immigrants.
On the one hand, it had a commitment to greater integration under the
free trade model; on the other it was under tremendous political pressure
to defend Mexicans migrating to the United States. None of these issues
made it into the SPP. U.S. security concerns, and corporate demands
for fewer obstacles to border-hopping production and sales, hijacked
the trinational agenda.
Instead, the SPP has three fundamental objectives. The Bush administration
wants to create more advantageous conditions for transnational corporations
and remove remaining barriers to the flow of capital and crossborder
production within the framework of NAFTA. It wants to secure access
to natural resources in the other two countries, especially oil. And
it wants to create a regional security plan based on “pushing its borders
out” into a security perimeter that includes Mexico
and Canada.
On the liberalization side, the SPP has focused on simplifying procedures
for doing business and creating more unified norms and standards. The
SPP seeks to make it easier for U.S.
companies to ship production offshore, eliminate specific Canadian and
Mexican labor and environmental standards in the interest of “harmonization”,
and assure that harsher security measures don’t interfere with crossborder
business.
For Mexico,
the harmonization process — like NAFTA before it — does not take into
account its less-developed status or the pressing social needs of its
people that could mandate special protections or safeguards. Many of
the priorities of the SPP benefit only a small handful of powerful actors,
such as greater patent protection (Mexico
holds very few patents) and joint anti-piracy campaigns (piracy is a
major employer in Mexico
and benefits low-income consumers).
In negotiations between equal partners concerned with public well-being,
very different issues would be on the table. The discourse of “three
great nations united in a common cause” falls apart when compared to
the actual content of the agreements and shows instead two great nations
subordinated to the powerful interests of the United
States. Equal partners would operate
in the global market as a bloc with common interests. But the three
countries don’t act as a bloc in multilateral forums like the World
Trade Organization and the numerous trade disputes that have arisen
among them, as well as the way they compete for foreign markets, attest
to their separate national agendas.
The inequality of the NAFTA three is particularly apparent in the SPP’s
approach to natural resources. For U.S. oil companies and their geopolitical interests,
Mexico’s
nationalized petroleum sector and state-run company, PEMEX, has been
a major thorn in the side. Oil companies relish the opportunity to invest
in the reserves there but are limited by current Mexican law. With the
sector under government control, Mexico
can decide when and how much oil it wants to export to the United States
based on its own national needs.
The vast majority of Mexicans, however, celebrate nationalization of
the oil industry as a source of national pride and a strategic instrument
of development. Instead of coming out with recommendations to privatize
the sector immediately, SPP documents have cited the low productivity
of PEMEX as a major regional problem, mandated studies of its poor performance
— not of its role in national development — and begun to prepare the
ground for more private investment. The first step, according to a 2007
National Competitiveness Council report, would be for Mexico
to spin off non-associated gas production into a separate entity called
GASMEX.
The Security Dimension
NAFTA was signed before the current Bush administration took office
and before the terrorist attack of September 11. SPP on the other hand,
was born in the “global war on terror” era and reflects an inordinate
emphasis on U.S. security
as interpreted by the Department of Homeland Security. The head of Homeland
Security Michael Chertoff, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice and Mexico’s
Secretary of Finance Carlos Gutierrez, represent the three ministries
charged with attending SPP ministerial conferences.
National security is not simply part of the political sell. It is central
to the NAFTA-plus agenda. The SPP explicitly ties together the U.S. trade and
security agendas under the pretext of greater integration. Its accords
mandate border actions, military and police training, modernization
of equipment and adoption of new technologies, all under the logic of
the U.S. counter-terrorism
campaign.
For Mexico and Canada, these
new security priorities attached to regional integration are not only
misplaced, but expensive and politically threatening. Mexico has historically been reticent to allow
U.S. agents to operate in its territory because,
historically, the United
States has posed the greatest threat
to its national security. Mexico also has
a policy of neutrality in international affairs that prevents its government
from becoming embroiled in conflicts that do not directly affect the
nation.
The SPP measures to coordinate security have pressured Mexico to militarize its southern border and adopt
repressive measures toward Central and South Americans presumably in
transit to the United
States. The false conflation of undocumented
immigration with security in the United States has also led to measures that have
little to do with Mexico’s
own national security and cause friction with friendly nations, such
as the decision to require visas for citizens of Brazil
and Ecuador
to enter the country.
Aside from real questions about their effectiveness, these programs
raise serious questions about national sovereignty and national priorities.
There are few reasons to believe that U.S.
security is synonymous with a strategic security plan for Mexico or Canada. While some threats are indeed
international and intelligence-sharing as well as coordinated action
are necessary, these mechanisms should be developed in the context of
each nation’s own security agenda.
By taking on the U.S.
security agenda, Canada
and Mexico put themselves
at greater risk. When the Mexican congress dutifully presented a revised
counter-terrorism law this year, an opposition congressman argued, “We
don’t want to be immersed in a cycle where the enemies of other nations
are automatically put forth as our own enemies.” Moreover, in all three
countries, significant civil society movements have questioned whether
the high-tech solutions advanced by Homeland Security (and that profit
major military suppliers) are really the best and most resource-efficient
answer to security challenges. Again, for the most part, the decisions
are being made without public knowledge or consultation.
Deepening the Chaos
There are many problems with the SPP and the White House’s goal of “deep
integration.” Perhaps the most fundamental is that it takes place at
a time when North American integration faces a crisis. Economic integration
under NAFTA has led to job loss and the erosion of job security and
quality in the United States, while also increasing unemployment
in Mexico.
Over thirteen years, the model has confirmed, rather than reversed,
Mexico’s status
as the less-developed partner. The rise in immigration to the United States
attests to the failure of NAFTA as a development mechanism. Moreover,
it has not increased the U.S.
competitive edge although it has delivered record profits to a few major
global traders. Unfortunately for the majority, those “few” are now
driving the efforts to deepen integration under the NAFTA-plus-Homeland-Security
model.
But to deepen integration would mean deepening the contradictions and
the problems that have led most Americans to express their rejection
of the free-trade model in recent polls, and that has spurred widespread
public protest in Mexico
and Canada.
Currently four more free trade agreements are before the U.S. Congress.
The Security and Prosperity Partnership for North
America demonstrates that this model of economic integration
has taken on a momentum of its own, unaccountable to legislatures and
citizens, and driven by interests that do not represent the public good.
Citizens and their representatives need to mount a concerted effort
to re-examine these policies, to bring them to light, and to halt movement
forward until a strong and informed consensus exists on their value
to society.
FPIF columnist Laura Carlsen is director of the IRC Americas Program.
The Americas Program is online at http://americas.irc-online.org/.
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