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What Is The Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART)?

The Alliance for Responsible Trade is a national network of labor, family-farm, religious, women's, environmental, development and research organizations that promotes equitable and sustainable trade and development. ART is the representative coalition to the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA), a hemispheric wide organization of coalitions which are challenging the dominant models of power. What follows is an overview of our current work.

OPPOSING CURRENT TRADE MODELS

Our work has focused primarily on trade issues, opposing the current model being mandated in agreements such as NAFTA, CAFTA the FTAA and the bilateral agreements the United States is promoting in the region while at the same time articulating a different model for trade. Currently we are working with a number of groups to document impacts of CAFTA. Click here for a monitoring report by the Stop CAFTA Coalition.

We are also supporting efforts of groups in those countries where CAFTA has not yet been ratified. Read our letter to the Costa Rican embassy.

RESISTING EXPANSION OF CORPORATE REACH AND CONTROL

We are alarmed by the new approach being taken to NAFTA expansion by the governments in the three NAFTA countries. The Security and Prosperity Partnership is a secret, under the radar project which has removed trade issues from the purview of the respective legislatures and has handed them to corporations who are now making policy based on their corporate interests. An analysis of this process is available at: (http://americas.irc-online.org/am/386)

ART, together with our partners from Mexico and Canada have been working with concerned legislators from the three countries to raise constitutional issues in our respective countries. Our most recent meeting in Ottawa, Canada, a legislator from the US articulated our desire: "We must reshape trade agreements in North America to ensure rising standards of living for our peoples" Here is the press statement released after those meetings.

In the coming months, we will be working with our partners to oppose a renual of Fast Track, and developing alternatives to the Farm Bill as it is currently written.

ARTICULATING ALTERNATIVES TO THE CURRENT MODEL

The ‘Alternatives for the Americas' document is a collective effort to articulate values which should be elevated in trade agreements. The current Bolivian government has used the values elaborated in this document to design their trade policy. The first document, called the People's Trade Agreement was released in April 2006, and provided the broad outline for trade relations Bolivia would promote.

SUPPORTING PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ALTERNATIVES

Subsequently there have been several specific documents which more clearly articulate the substance of future agreements. In September 2006 the Bolivian government released their vision of what a trade agreement with the United States might look like. More recently President Morales has released a letter to the Presidents of the South American countries who will be attending a president's summit in Cochabamba in December. This letter presents a dramatically different vision of integration, one which respects the environment, and is focused on addressing the serious problems of poverty and exclusion which are so prevalent in those countries.

Several members of ART will be participating in the alternative summit which will be held concurrently with the official summit. We expect there will be more interaction with the official summit, facilitated by the Bolivian government than has happened in past events of this nature. We will keep you posted of outcomes to this historical event.

Members of ART

Organizations

Individuals