Iowa Fair Trade Campaign: Stop Outsourcing Our Future!

Please spread the word about these meetings and let Iowa Fair Trade
Campaign organizer Dave Leshtz know if you'd like to have such a
meeting in your part of the state.  Co-sponsors and panelists are
being identified.  Suggestions are welcome.  Contact Dave at dleshtz@ia.net or 319-621-4205.


Current
co-sponsors include Iowa Farmers Union, National Catholic Rural Life
Conference, many labor councils, League of Rural Voters, Americans for
Democratic Action, and Iowa Conference United Methodist Church.



To read the Iowa Fair Trade Coalition’s Statement on Trade Agreements in its entirety, click on “more >>” below.

We live
in a global economy. International trade and economic integration will
continue and advance throughout the 21st Century. In all this, our
nation faces choices about the rules of the global economy that will
make a decided difference to workers, family farmers, immigrants, the
environment and human rights. These choices will determine whether
international trade and investments help only a few or whether the
benefits and costs are more equitably distributed.



We
assert that the NAFTA model has failed Iowa. Thousands of manufacturing
jobs have left the state. The tax base for supporting education and
other essential public services has eroded as companies have moved or
downsized. Concentration in agribusiness, resulting in part from NAFTA
and other global economic policies, has compromised the quality of our
food supply, polluted the state’s waterways and driven thousands of
family farmers off their land.



The
issue for workers isn't just jobs: it is also about wages, benefits and
working conditions. Under current rules, companies can threaten to go
offshore, thereby putting workers in a weak position at the bargaining
table. Iowa’s future cannot hold the promise of good jobs and a high
quality of life if our nation’s global economic policies are
encouraging capital to move rapidly to wherever wages are lower and
environmental safeguards are weaker.



Since
the signing of NAFTA ten years ago, family farmers in the U.S., Canada
and Mexico have felt the negative impacts of declining prices and loss
of traditional markets. Because of NAFTA and other “free trade”
agreements, subsidized U.S. commodity crops bring prices down
everywhere. NAFTA has devastated farming in Mexico and fostered massive
migration. Large agribusiness firms spread the blight of vertically
integrated “factory farms” throughout our state and around the world.



After 10
years, we have seen that the NAFTA model does not mean more jobs,
better wages, or a cleaner environment in Iowa, Mexico, or elsewhere.
Yet, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the proposed
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would extend NAFTA to all of the
Western Hemisphere except Cuba. The current administration has
negotiated CAFTA and is negotiating the FTAA and the expansion of the
WTO; it will likely be the President elected in 2004 who decides
whether we enter the FTAA or whether the WTO is expanded.



Therefore,
we urge Presidential candidates to support fair and equitable trade
policies, and clearly reject the proposed Free Trade Area of the
Americas, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the expansion of
the WTO, and other agreements that fail to meet the following criteria:



1. 
Trade agreements should promote protection of workers and the
environment by including binding, enforceable measures within the
agreements to ensure that:

•    No country thwarts enforcement of its environmental and labor laws and regulations.

•    No country lowers its environmental and labor standards to attract investment or gain trade advantages.

•  
 All countries protect in domestic law the rights established by
the International Labor Organization (ILO) in its 1998 Declaration on
Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

•  
 Obligations that nations have undertaken under conventions of the
ILO or under international environmental agreements are respected, and
no nation is penalized for adhering to such obligations.

•  
 Labor and environmental provisions are subject to the same
dispute resolution and enforcement mechanisms that apply to other
aspects of the agreement.

•  
 Nations that don’t have strong established environmental and
labor protection laws are assisted in developing, implementing and
enforcing strong standards.



2. Trade
agreements should NOT provide procedures through which a private
corporation can compel a government to pay the corporation for adverse
economic impacts (lost profits) that may have resulted from a
government's adoption or implementation of laws, regulations, or
policies to protect the public welfare, such as those relating to
environmental protection, food safety, or worker safety.



3. Trade
agreements should NOT include provisions that cover “services”
including education, health care, the public sector, construction,
transportation, water supply and energy. Trade agreements should not
increase pressure to deregulate or privatize these sectors of the
economy.



4. Trade
agreements should allow nations to follow standards adopted in reliance
on the precautionary principle, recognizing the legitimate rights of
governments to protect public health and safety.



5. Trade
agreements should allow citizens in the U.S. and elsewhere to regain
control of farm and food policy with the intent of creating a
sustainable family farm system and a safe and healthy food supply. No
trade agreement should impede the right of the U.S. or other nations to
devise farm and food policy that establishes fair farm prices, creates
a food security reserve, establishes conservation set-asides to avoid
wasteful over-production, makes loans to help farmers own their own
land and adopt sustainable farming practices, and meets other social
and environmental goals.



6. 
Trade laws should not undermine the ability of governments to safeguard
domestic industries against market surges and unfair foreign trade
practices, such as predatory pricing and export dumping, or to regulate
the flow of speculative capital.



7. 
Provisions in international agreements (including trade agreements)
concerning intellectual property rights should recognize and reaffirm
that profits from pharmaceutical and biotechnology products should be
shared equitably with nations providing the genetic resources upon
which such biotechnology products are derived. Trade agreements should
also recognize that nations may regulate genetically modified organisms
to address food supply and biodiversity conservation, and not impede a
nation’s ability to make pharmaceuticals available for public health
and safety needs.



June 2004