Three hundred Minnesotans will join thousands of citizens from throughout the hemisphere in Miami today to oppose the planned expansion of a souped-up version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to 31 additional countries. NAFTA has been a lose-lose proposition for workers, the environment, and the democratic process in the United States, Canada and Mexico. It is time to abandon the NAFTA model and focus instead on a global economy based on sustainable development policies -- raising living standards, protecting the environment and preserving our democratic process.

The NAFTA-expansion plan is called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Trade ministers from 34 of the hemisphere's nations are meeting today in Miami to launch the final negotiations for the FTAA. The plan is to complete negotiations by the end of 2004 and bring the deal to Congress in 2005.

A decade of NAFTA has cost the United States nearly a million manufacturing jobs. Many of them paid enough to allow families to buy homes, live middle-class lives and help anchor their communities. Most of those who lost these jobs never found another job that paid as well.

NAFTA accounted for nearly a third of the manufacturing jobs lost in the past three years of economic downturn. As the economy rebounds, these jobs will not return, making NAFTA a significant factor in the joblessness of the recovery.

Mexico -- where most of the lost jobs were sent -- also suffered under NAFTA. In NAFTA's 10 years, real wages in Mexico fell more than 20 percent and the number of Mexicans living in poverty jumped by more than 7 million. The manufacturing jobs Mexico gained under NAFTA pay only 25 to 40 percent of what the Mexican central bank says is required to provide basic necessities for a family. And now, in the race-to-the-bottom logic of today's global economy, many of these sweatshop jobs are leaving Mexico for even cheaper labor in China.

NAFTA has also been used as a battering ram against environmental protection. Under the deal, Canada and Mexico have each been forced to pay hefty settlements for trying to protect their citizens' health. A $970 million claim by a Canadian company that California's ban of a gasoline additive is a violation of NAFTA rules is pending. The additive, MTBE, is toxic to the nervous system and suspected of causing liver and kidney cancer. It has fouled drinking water in many parts of the state.

By adding 31 countries to NAFTA, such effects would be multiplied. That is reason enough to reject the FTAA.

But there is more. FTAA is not merely NAFTA with more countries. It is NAFTA on steroids, with broad new powers. The deal is expected to require public services to be opened up for bidding by foreign private companies, without citizens having any voice in the decision.

Do we want our municipal water systems, for instance, controlled by foreign for-profit companies? Maybe yes, maybe no; but such a move should only be taken after the citizens who would be affected have had the right to debate the matter. Under the FTAA -- just one of a new generation of trade deals now being negotiated that focus on "trade in services" -- citizens would have no such right. And water is only one of many public services threatened.

The FTAA and other new-generation trade deals will also accelerate the flight of high-tech service jobs that has received much attention lately. The U.S. Labor Department recently estimated that more than 3 million of these high-paying jobs -- largely software engineering positions -- will go offshore in the next 15 years.

The thousands of us marching today in Miami have a clear message: Yes to a global economy that raises living standards and protects our environment and democracy. No to the NAFTA model that forces standards down. We go to Miami to petition our government for the redress of grievances in a peaceful and legal manner.

We hope that the media will convey our message. If, however, someone out of control -- or a paid provocateur of some sort -- decides to break a window and the media focuses all of its attention on the sideshow, we do want Minnesotans to understand why we are really there.

Larry Weiss, Minneapolis, is coordinator of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition.

© Copyright 2003 Star Tribune

###