From the ''battle in Seattle'' over the World Trade Organization in 1999 to confrontations last spring at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., and Switzerland's Davos Forum this winter, friends and foes of trade deregulation are trading blows on a regular basis.

The conference of Western Hemisphere political leaders, scheduled to begin Friday in Quebec City, will be no exception. Not since the Vietnam War has US government policymaking - albeit about economic issues rather than military intervention - aroused such continuing controversy, at home and abroad.

When President Bush arrives at this ''Summit of the Americas'' to push for creation of a free-trade zone extending from Canada to Chile, he and government ministers from 33 other nations will need more than the security of North America's only walled city to fend off protests by students, workers, environmentalists, and community groups.

Negotiations on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, will take place behind a protective cordon of 5,000 Canadian police and a prison-style metal fence running around the entire 2.3-mile perimeter of the city center. Already, jail space is being cleared to accommodate hundreds of demonstrators who could be arrested. Others may be stopped at the Canadian border.

On the eve of the latest cross-border showdown between big corporations, their government allies, and grass-roots supporters of an emerging global justice movement, it is worth examining what is at stake in this fight and where it is headed.

Bush has made the FTAA one of the highest priorities of his new administration. He and Republican leaders in Congress hope to accelerate the secretive process of reaching multinational consensus on this vast expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

Bush also wants approval of ''fast track'' negotiating authority so congressional critics will be unable to change the FTAA in ways that might better protect the interests of labor, consumers, and the environment. Defenders of all three see FTAA as ''NAFTA on steroids.''

Under the FTAA, and as with NAFTA, private corporations would have the ability to sue any signatory government over any domestic law or regulation that interfered with their business activity in that particular country. While NAFTA lifted tariff barriers among the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the FTAA aims to introduce ''market competition'' into the public sector of local economies throughout the Western Hemisphere.

It means, therefore, that all 34 nations involved would have to open up - to private investment - their health care and pension systems, schools, public utilities, and other governmental services (such as prisons, mail delivery, water supply, sewage treatment, etc.).

As The New York Times reported last month in a story headlined ''NAFTA's Powerful Little Secret,'' North American firms are already filing legal claims under NAFTA that have ''led to national laws being revoked, justice systems questioned, and environmental regulations challenged ... all in the name of protecting the rights of foreign investors.''

In one recent case, heard behind the closed doors of NAFTA's trade dispute tribunals, Mexico was ordered to pay $16.7 million to Metalclad, a California-based waste disposal company, whose toxic dump in the state of San Luis Potosi was closed by local authorities. In another proceeding, the Ethyl Corp. from Ohio used a similar $250 million ''expropriation'' claim to head off a Canadian ban on one of its products, a hazardous gasoline additive known as MMT.

Meanwhile, United Parcel Service has filed a complaint challenging the very existence of a publicly-financed postal service in Canada, one of a number of cases aimed not at ''trade barriers'' as traditionally defined, rather than any government activity that private business wishes to replace.

The privatizing thrust of NAFTA - and the broader threat to the public sector posed by the FTAA - has had one salutary effect, however. It is helping opponents of corporate-dominated trade deals mobilize a much broader spectrum of public opinion, here and abroad, against the Bush administration's plans.

Previously, even much of organized labor viewed free trade as a concern only of union members in manufacturing jobs (which have indeed been decimated, in both the United States and Canada, by NAFTA). Now the handwriting is on the wall for millions of other wage earners, in North and South America. Both those directly employed in the public sector and the far larger population dependent on social insurance systems for their medical care, pensions, or unemployment benefits face an uncertain future if FTAA is adopted.

''The FTAA will affect the overall social and political context in which public policy decisions are made,'' predicts free-trade critic Elaine Bernard, a Canadian who directs the Harvard Trade Union Program. ''It demands that policies set according to democratic and community values be eliminated and replaced with market principles. The result will be downward pressure on wages, working conditions, and labor and environmental standards.''

FTAA opponents are rallying around a slogan that is definitely out of step with the current trend toward liberalization of trade and investment. The world, they say, ''is not for sale!'' At a ''People's Summit'' that will be held in Quebec City just before the official one begins, hundreds of representatives of nongovernmental groups will present a grass-roots alternative to corporate globalization.

Their plan calls for sustainable economic development throughout the hemisphere, protection of social programs, workers' rights, and the environment, respect for local sovereignty and democratic decision-making, and greater ''transparency'' in the process of negotiating trade agreements and resolving subsequent disputes.

Boston-area and New England-wide coalitions involved in the People's Summit reflect the growing strength and diversity of anti-FTAA forces. While the split last fall between the AFL-CIO unions that went all out for Al Gore and those campus-based groups who backed Ralph Nader for president created some temporary rifts, the ''blue-green'' alliance that emerged from Seattle two years ago is back on track in the Northeast.

Years of watching Massachusetts manufacturing jobs - at General Electric, General Motors, and other companies - migrate to Mexico has made union members like Paul Babin, an electronic technician from Melrose, more open to working with activists from nonlabor backgrounds. Babin's employer of 22 years, Ametek Aerospace in Wilmington, has for two years been shifting production to Reynosa, Mexico, at the expense of local jobs.

''They tell us that labor costs in the Northeast are too high,'' Babin says. ''By moving to Reynosa, they can hire people to do the same work for $6 a day. That's why we need all the allies we can get in the fight to keep these multinational companies from running away.''

In addition to bringing 20 busloads of New Englanders to Quebec City on April 21, the labor, environmental, and consumer groups opposed to FTAA are also targeting members of Congress, who are being asked by Bush to support ''fast track'' negotiating authority.

Some local Democrats - in both the House and Senate - have, despite mounting public opposition, backed NAFTA, the WTO, and last year's normalization of trade relations with China, plus previous ''fast track'' bids by the Clinton administration. Having a Republican in the White House may make it easier for them to side with labor and other progressive interests this time around, and resist expansion of NAFTA.

© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company

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