Fair Trade
Costa Rica on Sunday will become the first country where citizens have the opportunity to vote for or against a trade agreement. Despite being heavily outspent by the moneyed interests, despite opposition from the Costa Rican government and the U.S. ambassador, despite an extremely hostile media, the latest polls show momentum building for the opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Incredibly, just the other day, in a nation of only 4 million people, more than 100,000 marched in opposition to the treaty -- a sign of the deep grassroots opposition there to CAFTA.
Free trade is very good for the large multinational corporations who can throw American workers out on the street, move abroad to China and other low-wage countries, hire people there for pennies an hour, and bring their products back into this country. For those people, for the CEOs of large corporations, unfettered free trade has been a very good thing, but for the middle-class and working families of this country, for working families and poor people in Mexico and in other low-wage countries, unfettered free trade has been an unmitigated disaster.
Increasingly, trade policy is not a partisan issue. The vast majority of Republicans now have serious concerns about our current trade policies because they see those trade policies as being harmful to the middle class and working families of this country, according to a new poll. "By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president. The sign of broadening resistance to globalization came in a new Wall Street Journal-NBC News Poll that showed a fraying of Republican Party orthodoxy on the economy," The Wall Street Journal reported in a page-one news story on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, the pundits for the plutocrats, twice this week weighed in on what it thinks is good for the people of Costa Rica. They also had a thing or two to say about me.
My trip to Costa Rica last month was not about telling the people there how to vote. That's their business, not mine. The trip that Rep. Mike Michaud and I made was to help counter the lies being spread in Costa Rica that suggested that if the people there, exercising their democratic rights, voted "no" on Cafta, the U.S. government would punish them by excluding them from the Caribbean Basin Initiative as well as other punitive actions.
While I strongly disagree with the Journal editorial page's right-wing ideology, I'll give them points for persistence. Year after year, despite all of the evidence, the Journal has continued to be a cheerleader for the unfettered free-trade policies that, while benefiting multinational corporations, have caused so much economic pain for working families here in the U.S. and our trading partners abroad.
There may be disagreement on the merits of unfettered free trade, but there should be no disagreement that when the people in a free, democratic and independent country like Costa Rica vote their conscience they should not be punished by the world's superpower. That is not what democracy is about.
A Journal columnist, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, wrote last Monday about how wonderful passage of the trade agreement will be for the people of Costa Rica. The Journal said the exact same thing to the people of Mexico during the 1993 debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement.
What happened with the passage of Nafta? In Mexico, the agricultural sector has been decimated by cheap exports from American agribusiness. Poverty has increased, the middle class has declined and people are literally dying in the desert trying to flee Mexico for the U.S. Working families in Mexico suffer, the rich have gotten richer and we now have the obscenity of the wealthiest person in the world, Mexican Carlos Slim Helu, coming from a country in which millions of families struggle to feed their children. This may be the kind of economic development championed by you, but not by me. We can have trade policies that can do better, that must do better.
It's not only Mexico and other developing countries that have been hurt by these unfettered pro-corporate free-trade agreements. It's also the working families in the U.S. who are now engaged in a horrendous "race to the bottom."
Despite an explosion of technology and a huge increase in worker productivity, poverty in America is increasing, the middle class is shrinking, and the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider. In the past six years, millions of good-paying jobs in the U.S. have been lost as companies shut down here and move to China and other low-wage countries.
During that same period, median household income for working-age families has declined by about $2,500, 8.6 million Americans have lost their health insurance, three million have lost their pensions, and millions are working longer hours for lower wages. Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. is now the highest of any industrialized country and greater than at any time since the 1920s.
Nobody I know believes we should place a wall around this country. Trade is a good thing, but what we must begin doing is negotiating fair trade agreements that reflect the interests of working families in America, working families in other countries, and not just large multinational corporations and the CEOs who help write these trade agreements.
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This is a really great clip. Bernie Sanders telling off Alan Greenspan. http://dig
I would like to point out, that NAFTA and CAFTA, aren't really free trade. They are corporate trade agreements.
Ron Paul has been slammed for supporting free trade, but he wants to get rid of NAFTA, CAFTA, CODEX, and the UN. The reason is these are deals, as Mr. Sanders says, written by Corporations for Corporations. They are not really free trade deals.
I thought it was interesting in "The Money Masters" (you can see it on Google Video), they claimed the Founding Father's original intention was to tax import and trade, corporate activities, not the people. Today we have just the opposite. The corporations have paid Congress off to create a bunch of tax shelters for themselves. As a result the poor and middle class Americans wind up paying most of the taxes.
This is pretty important as well
http://dig
This unique little place I call home is about to do something only the very brave can do in this day and age: say "no" to the 900-pound gorilla that lives not too far north of here. Usually 900-pound gorillas get to decide what games we all must play when we are locked together in the same room (continent). Ticos (Costa Ricans) understand what this vote may very well mean for them, and yet they are on the verge of saying, "No! Our sovereignty is not for sale." There may be rough times ahead for the average Tico, but they will remain out from under the gorilla's thumb.
Please come visit them. They do actually like people from the United States very much, though not so much our government or our multinational corporations. Thanks from an expat from the U.S., who is grateful for the generous Tico welcome he receives every day.
There are two other 900 pound gorillas in the room, China and Saudi Arabia. These lousy trade deals and the deficits they created, put the security of the United States at grave risk. China and Saudi Arabia have way too much leverage on the value of the dollar.
Didn't congress/senate just pass a FREE TRADE
AGREEMENT, which brings more disaster to us
in the US? How did it pass? Are the DEMS not
different from the GOP?
Why is Hillary for free trade policies?
And why are so many Americans who are against free trade FOR Hillary (instead of Edwards, the candidate national polls show would be the best to defeat any Republican)?
Why is Hillary for free trade policies.
Because Hillary is really just Lieberman in drag.
Hillary is a corporatist. The NAFTA girl.
Kucinich and Paul are the only ones truly against No American Factories Taking Applications.
Edwards talks the talk , but then says he just wants to "revise" the trade deals.
Hillary is a neo-CON - when are people going to open their eyes to this? Under a Hilary presidency we will continue to have the status quo of the Bush regime
Senator Sanders, I am so pleased you went to Costa Rica to debunk the blackmail tactics that it sounds like are being used to push the Costa Ricans to vote for CAFTA against their own best interests. The World has to be reminded that there are still some Americans who possess a soul.
And while we are on the topic of soul, or lack there of, it has to be remembered that the Wall Street Journal is a Business NewsPaper ... not an American NewsPaper. The paper caters to MultiNationalists who view silly things like Human Rights as an impediment to self-enrichment. I appreciate your optimism that the WSJ may have the capacity to see the World through the eyes of struggling Costa Ricans when they have never developed the same ability in terms of struggling Americans. It would be nice if writers in WSJ would have a less myopic approach to their journalism but they are prisoners to their Corporate Dogma.
I hope the people of Costa Rica defeat CAFTA and have the ability to retain their way of life unmolested, and if they do they will be doing far better than we Americans are in the same battle.
Thank you Senator for all you do.
Well, it seems my post was lost or, perhaps it was using the word "Revolution"
"Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. is now the highest...
For all you armchair economists this debate about how many angels can fit on Adam Smiths head is a waste of time and a distraction.
This is about the sovereignty of a Country that chooses not to bow to Multinational Corporatocracy. It is about nothing less than Freedom!
It should be a call to arms--figu
There is no "free market." Tariffs, taxes, duties, no bid contracts, hidden political manipulations of the so-called Federal Reserve, bailouts for the biggest crooks, and no health insurance for the rest.
This is about one thing: Class Warfare.
There is in the world today an Octopus so evil that even Frank Norris could not have foreseen it. Its goal is total subjugation of we common folk by Multi-National corporations that have no allegiance to any country, constitution or set of laws.
Call it NAFTA, CAFTA etc, it spells the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of the world.
Our high tech high pay jobs have been offshored, real wages decimated, unions dismantled, home ownership--last symbol of freedom and the American Dream--taken in the "mortgage meltdown."
At no time has the disparity in wealth been so great, but for prior to the Great Depression. And the Ultra wealthy then emerged from that hideous time, more wealthy, more powerful, more entrenched.
In pre-revolution France, the wealthy and royalty would drive their carriages through the peasants and cut them down like weeds. That same sense of entitlement and privilege lives still in Washington DC and Wall Street.
This post by Senator Sanders should be a clarion call to real patriots to stop debating the nuances of finance, and begin defending our freedoms.
I hope someone heeds that call before we are all ground beneath the wheels of the new Corporate Royalty.
The corporation seems to be the most powerful system ever devised.
It also appears to be a concept beyond our political and cultural systems' ability to comprehend and cope with.
Here we have most Dems and most Republicans --in other words, most of the "electorate" --agreeing on policy that has no prayer of being disputed in the "peoples'" government.
Rule, You are absolutely right and you've said it well.
Bernie Sanders, along with very few others, have been warning us against this corporate takeover for years but unfortunately the MSM is part and parcel of the exact same corporations that are taking over our and many other countries which is why we rarely hear the downside of these terrible trade deals.
Several years ago I downloaded a PowerPoint presentation from Bernie's website that had all the facts and figures regarding free trade and what it costs the American worker. It was a real eye opener for anyone who believed any of the propaganda being spewed from the politicians and corporations about "free trade" but doesn't seem to be on Bernie's site any longer. Can someone from Bernies staff put that back up?
RuleofLaw, so well said! We are truly in crisis.
"Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor... the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many." (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk 5, ch 1)
DO NOT ALLOW G.W. BUSH TO HAVE FAST TRACK AUTHORITY ON FREE TRADE!
RIGHT ON! DW5B.
Your post is trenchant and lucid. You speak of the power of money and its ability to reduce human decency. This country is rotting from the inside----(see Rome, Byzantium, Ottoman, USSR). The corruption that exists here is a bit different than that in a 3rd world country.
Instead of a malignant dictator in the form of a single man (see Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Idi Amin, Sadam Hussein), we have a dictatorship of Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex. Same result. The humanity of the individual human being in the society is not respected as another human being. The only Golden Rule is the rule that more gold is better when it's in your bank vault. More than sad, this corruption. Jefferson and Franklin would be sick. Inalienable rights?
And the funniest part of all this is that the MIC lost a $100 million contract to outfit the Iraqi Army with weapons TO CHINA!!!
Now, that just cracks me up.
They can't even do murderous greed right...
Maybe we'll eventually just become 'citizens' of various corporatio
We could become Citzen Slaves that are traded like used equipment between Corporations or a natural resource one Corporations might go to war over.
Like the boss I had once who loudly announced he "could go down to the nearest MARTA busstop and replace us all in half an hour!"?
So we all said, OK, MoFo, walked out and didn't come back the rest of the workweek.
That dumbass' one act of disrespect and arrogance cost his company about $40,000.
I think America's working folks nedd to do the same thing.
STRIKE.
Free trade was also the rallying cry for the Dole company when they wanted access to Hawaii.
Because of Free Trade, the Queen was overthrown, and Dole was able to establish the Dole Pineapple Planation.
Free Trade only works with countries with similiar economies. That's why it worked with the U.S. and Canada, but not with Mexico.
Big Ag-sponsored "Free Trade" (code-named NAFTA) has used artificially low, U.S. government subsidized corn prices to drive the Mexican small farmer off his land and across the border to America in search of some way to feed his family.
Maybe it's time for us to think about what will happen to the American small farmer when, and if, the Big Ag lobby is allowed to do the same to them?
For a succinct explanation of how NAFTA is responsible for The Lou Dobbs "Effect", go to fair.org and read "Fencing Off the Immigration Debate" in the September/October issue of EXTRA! magazine. It will open your eyes.
"free trade" has nothing to do with economics, but plenty to do with easy profits for the big boys. A major advantage to the corporates is the externalization of environmental and health care costs ... a state of affairs that they are quickly putting into place here.
As usual the conservatives are good at winning the argument before it even begins. In this case they call their trade policies "free trade" when, in fact, it is not "free" at all.
A business in the USA must comply with OSHA regulations, right of workers to organize for higher wages, environmental restrictions. All of the aforegoing costs money. It is not free.
If a competitor in China goes into business producing the same product he can do so "free" from OSHA regulatons, environmental restrictions, right of workers to organize for higher wages, etc.
In short, the conservatives have made trade "free" for China but far from free for good ol' American businesses.
That's the whole point.
Chinese workers can't vote regulations on American companies.
This was predicted by none other than Ross Perot during his presidential bid years ago yet no one wanted to hear it. Now that the damage is done to america people are waking up to a tarnished american dream.
Americans willingly voted away their middle class and it's to late to do a thing about it. And congress sold america to the multinational corporations and continues to do so everyday.
Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. is now the highest of any industrialized country and greater than at any time since the 1920s.
Who here really doesn't understand what's going on???
This situation existed in the 1920s. Look what was orchestrated then...
Look at who the wealthy were before the Crash, then look at who was wealthy-er after.
Were being gamed, people--Again!
You do us Vermonters proud, Bernie. Keep up the good work. I totally agree with your goal for trade, which is not to eliminate it but to replace the notion of "free trade"— which means freeing corporations to steal as much as they can from as many populations as they can — with the notion of "fair trade."
Forcefully expressed, Ms. GreenMountainLady. Thank you.
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