=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #304
—September 23, 1992—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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FREE TRADE–PART 2:
NEEDED: A NEW GRASS-ROOTS STRATEGY
Ongoing “free trade” talks between the U.S. and many other
countries will force a shift in strategy by grass-roots activists
fighting toxics. If Congress adopts President Bush’s free trade
proposals, much of today’s grass-roots strategy will become
illegal or irrelevant.
All areas of environmental activism will be affected by free
trade, including sustainable forestry; wilderness preservation;
endangered species preservation; marine fisheries; pesticides;
toxic substances; sustainable agriculture; food safety;
biotechnology; energy conservation; global warming; hazardous
waste; recycling and source reduction; and air and water
pollution.[1]
There are four major efforts underway now to promote
international free trade (see RHWN #303), all of them basically
similar:
** the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA), passed in 1989 and
in force now;
** the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which
Congress is discussing now;
** President Bush’s Enterprise for the Americas Initiative (EAI),
announced in 1990;
** GATT [the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade], which 103
countries, including the U.S., have been abiding by since 1948
but have been trying to change drastically since 1986;
Of these, only the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement is real–the
other three are proposals in various stages of discussion. The
Canada-U.S. FTA has been in effect since 1989, so it offers a
real example of what free trade means.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will link Canada,
Mexico and the U.S. into one free trade zone, if Congress
approves the agreement that President Bush has presented for
approval.
The Enterprise for the Americas Initiative (EAI) is President
Bush’s plan to create a free trade zone from Anchorage to Tierra
del Fuego, from the northernmost city of North America to the
southernmost tip of South America. The EAI is a standing offer
from the U.S. to sign a free trade compact with any nation in
Latin America. Many EAI negotiations are under way now.
The GATT is the biggest free trade agreement, with 133 countries
abiding by its rules. It was created in 1948 and has operated in
a low-key manner ever since, aiming to reduce tariffs and
non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs). Tariffs are taxes that
different countries charge on imported goods. Non-tariff barriers
are things like subsidies that give one country’s producers an
advantage over another country’s producers. (See RHWN #303.) But
the latest round of GATT talks has much broader goals than
reduction of tariffs and NTBs.
Today GATT covers only manufactured goods. But the current round
is discussing ALL trade, including agriculture, textiles and
services (such as construction, communications, and banking).
Furthermore the current GATT talks aim to reduce barriers to
investment. For example, many countries now require that
companies be owned 51% by a local partner. Free traders would
abolish such restrictions.
Lastly, current GATT talks aim to protect intellectual property
rights (trademarks, copyrights and patents) in all GATT-agreement
countries.
In addition, the present round of GATT talks seeks a great
expansion of GATT’s enforcement powers. If the present talks
succeed, GATT will be replaced by a new structure called the
Multilateral Trade Organization (MTO). The MTO will have the
status of a major international organization like the the United
Nations and the World Bank. The MTO will have expanded
enforcement powers, including possibly the right to challenge
U.S. environmental laws in U.S. courts, and certainly the
authority to change international trade agreements affecting U.S.
laws.
A key proposal in GATT and NAFTA is the concept of
“harmonization.” This means all free trade countries will be
required to adopt uniform health and safety standards for
pesticides, for food safety, and eventually for all chemical
exposures.
As currently proposed in GATT talks, harmonization means uniform
standards must be adopted as ceilings–no country (or state or
province or county or town) will be allowed to adopt standards
stricter than the “harmonized” world standards.
We have seen how this works in the Canada-U.S. FTA. Before
signing the FTA, Canada tolerated many fewer pesticides than the
U.S. Canada had registered 20 percent fewer active pesticide
ingredients and seven times fewer pesticide products than the
U.S. Furthermore, Canada regulated pesticides on the basis of
health alone, not taking into consideration any cost-benefit
analysis. Under free trade concepts, Canada has been required to
weaken its pesticide controls, to “harmonize” them with more lax
U.S. standards.
Both GATT and NAFTA will require further weakening of U.S. and
Canadian pesticide controls. Both GATT and NAFTA require adoption
of lax standards set by a United Nations organization, called
Codex Alimentarius, located in Rome, Italy. Codex standards
allow, for example, DDT residues on bananas and peaches 50 times
higher than current U.S. standards. DDT is one of the chemicals
now thought to mimic hormones and disrupt the human reproductive
system, and has recently been linked to the epidemic of breast
cancer in U.S. women. (See RHWN #263, #264, #279.) Relaxing
pesticide residue standards will increase risks to consumers, and
will encourage greater use of pesticides throughout the world,
thus threatening farm workers.
Harmonization could be a good thing if the standards being
promoted were strong and the process to establish those standards
were democratic. Unfortunately, under GATT and NAFTA the
determination is being give over to Codex, an organization
heavily influenced by the largest chemical and food companies,
and not accessible to citizens. “Scientific evidence” will be the
sole criteria for determining standards. Risk assessment and
cost-benefit analysis will become the only bases for deciding
what controls are desirable. Controls based on social or ethical
considerations will be outlawed.
Furthermore, because harmonized regulations will become the
ceiling, not the floor, for all regulations, innovative
environmental initiatives that propose tougher standards for
chemical exposures or food safety (such as California’s Prop 65)
will be shot down as “non-tariff barriers to trade” (NTBs).
Thus harmonization, as proposed, promises to disrupt the way
regulations are improved in the U.S. today. Today innovative
regulations are usually initiated at the local level.
California’s auto exhaust standards, Rhode Island’s ban on solid
waste incinerators, New Jersey’s recycling goals, or Suffolk
County, New York’s packaging laws offer evidence that tougher
environmental controls are possible and practical. Once a local
government passes an innovative law, it spreads. Under harmonized
standards, such innovation will be stifled.
The big picture of free trade is that dirty industries will move
south for cheap labor and lax pollution laws. The MAQUILADORA
program on the U.S.-Mexico border is the prototype. During the
1980s, some 1800 U.S. firms, employing half a million people,
relocated to Mexico in a strip 20 miles below the border. They
pay wages of a few dollars a day, and they dump their wastes
wherever it’s convenient. According to law they are supposed to
ship their legally-hazardous wastes back to the U.S., but
according to Mexican authorities, fewer than 30% comply with the
law. Perhaps as few as 1% comply.
The goal of free trade is to spread MAQUILADORA-type programs
throughout Latin America and the world.
As a side effect, blackmail will increase in the U.S. Faced with
labor demands for better conditions or higher wages, or faced
with environmental demands by local activists, companies will
threaten to relocate where labor is cheap and environmental rules
are lax. It is already happening.
As free trade zones expand and major polluters move out of the
U.S., some of the steam may be taken out of the grass-roots
movement for environmental justice because the immediate threat
at home will seem to disappear.
The present grass-roots strategy of bans and phase-outs will be
challenged as illegal. The present grass-roots strategy of
initiating innovative controls at the local level will be ruled
illegal. As we saw last week, U.S. EPA’s attempt to ban asbestos
has been challenged by Canada under the FTA. Without a worldwide
scientific consensus–almost impossible to achieve–on the need
for banning a substance, such a ban will be challenged. BANs on
chlorine or lead will be disallowed by the logic of GATT’s recent
tuna-dolphin decision (see RHWN #303).
Thus free trade sets the stage for the widespread proliferation
of environmental problems while governments, traditional
environmental organizations, and grass-roots activists are
simultaneously weakened in their ability to address them. What
can we do?
First, inform ourselves. To maintain awareness of developments in
the free trade debate, we can:
1) Get an account on the worldwide computer system, Econet. There
are at least four “conferences,” or ongoing discussions, on
Econet where you will find useful materials on free trade; these
are: trade.news; trade.strategy; trade.library; and EAI.news. For
example, in trade.library you can find the entire text of the
NAFTA agreement–all 2000 pages of it. An account on Econet
costs: a one-time fee of $15 to sign up; plus $10 per month
thereafter, whether you use the system or not; plus $10 per hour
for use during prime time (7 a.m. to 6 p.m., your local time) or
$5.00 per hour during non-prime time. To set up an Econet
account, phone (415) 442-0220. Econet gives you one hour free use
each month.
2) An important source of analysis and thought on these issues is
Mark Ritchie at The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy,
Suite 303, 1313 Fifth Street, S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55414-1546;
phone (612) 379-5980; fax: (612) 379-5982. Ask for their three
publications lists: “International Trade and the Environment,”
“U.S.-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Negotiations,” and “Food and
Agricultural Policy.”
3) Subscribe to NAFTA THOUGHTS, the newsletter of the Development
GAP (D-GAP): 1400 I Street, N.W., Suite 520, Washington, DC
20005; (202) 898-1566; fax: (202) 898-1612. $5.00 per year.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: free trade; fta; nafta; gatt; eai;
harmonization; maquiladoras; econet;