Alliance for Responsible Trade

OUTLINE OF PRESENTATION for the: "Challenging the Empire and its SPP" Workshop

Manuel Pérez Rocha For the Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART)
Teach In "Integrate This", Ottawa. March, 2007

The Security for Trade and Prosperity for Elites Partnership (STPEP):"How governments close their eyes on the roots of migration and instead build walls".

1. NAFTA has already proven to be a disaster for working classes and the most evident proof of this is the sharp increase of migration from Mexico to the US.

When NAFTA was negotiated, the governments declared and tried to convince the public that increased trade activity would solve by itself the Mexican migration problem in the long term, creating an employment boom in the country. As a result of this, the issues on migration, and labor (only included in a side accord), were left aside from the treaty. The magic spillover (trickle down) of the growth of markets "freed" from State regulation would be felt soon.

This not only has not happened after 13 years, but NAFTA has aggravated the problem sharply, provoking the dislocation of millions of Mexicans from their lands, work places and livelihoods.

• In the agriculture sector alone Mexico has lost millions of jobs (some say than more than 2 million),
• Tens of thousands of small and medium businesses have closed their doors,

Some of the reasons for this are that:

• Most trade is intra firm trade
• governments can not demand performance requirements like guaranteeing a national content of inputs
• lack of rules of origin that would help local and national suppliers.
  

This is what the SPP "prosperity agenda" is about.

The result has been the ensuing exodus of millions of workers from the countryside to the cities of Mexico, and increasingly to the US.

• It is estimated that around half a million people will migrate this year from Mexico to the US in search of jobs.
  

Recent data from the Mexican government demonstrates that inequality in Mexico is worsening. 10% of the poorest population in the country receives a 1.1% of the total income; while the richest 10% concentrates 39.6% of the wealth. (La Jornada, 28 de marzo, 2007).

2. NAFTA has also led to a race to the bottom of labor standards in the US and Canada, helping corporations take advantage of very low wages in Mexico (the minimum wage at roughly 4 USD per day is among the lowest in Latin America), cutting employment benefits in the US and Canada, reducing employment in high wage traded goods industries and increasing the growing inequality of wages.

• In 2005 income inequality in the US grew significantly.
• The top 1 percent of Americans -those with incomes of more than 348,000 USD, and the top 10 percent -those earning more than 100,000 USD - received their largest share of US wealth since the depression in 1928.
• In contrast, incomes for the bottom 90% dipped 0.6% compared to the year before. The gains were largely to the top 1% which increased 14%.
• The top 300,000 Americans enjoyed as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans and three top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980 (Information from David Cay Johnston, C1, the New York Times, March 29, 2007).
  

3. While immigration is a global issue, and it will likely continue to grow in the 21^st century globally, nowhere is the problem as acute as within the boundaries of NAFTA (and CAFTA in extension). Despite this, the governments are unwilling to carry out a serious revision of NAFTA in order to move towards a democratically concerted integration of policies between the three signatory countries.

After 13 years, no serious official assessment of NAFTA has taken place, and "without major changes in NAFTA to address unequal levels of development and enforcement of labor rights and environmental standards; continued integration of North American markets will threaten the prosperity of a growing share of workers in the US and throughout the hemisphere" (Scott, 2007).

4. Instead, the SPP will promote the continuity of the subordination of Mexico and Canada to US corporate interests.

The governments, under the recommendations of the business elites grouped in the North American Competitive Council (NACC), consider that NAFTA has not rendered its fruits and therefore it has to be intensified, in order to attain higher productivity, or in other words bigger profits.

"NAFTA and NAFTA Plus (the SPP) serve to prevent our respective governments from doing anything that would interfere with corporations´ freedom - even when their activities are detrimental to peoples´ economic, social and environmental well-being" (Summary Report of the 2^nd North American Forum, 2006).

5. The SPP deals with immigration as so far as the interests of business are concerned, that is protecting and facilitating the movement of business travelers, along with the facilitation of movement of goods. With respect to the concerns of the United States, US policy is to attract more skilled immigrants and to supply a large, inexpensive, and strictly controlled work force for certain U.S. industries (agrobusiness growers, canning and packaging, services, landscaping etc.), but arguably that would be left to the bilateral relation with Mexico.

Within the SPP, the US is attempting to regionalize its anti immigration and counter terrorism policies. Already the US has incorporated new functions to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the INS) and the Border Patrol as part of the new Homeland Security, establishing the so called "Smart Borders" among the US, Canada and Mexico, intended not only to limit migrants mobility but also citizens' liberties, creating a "Fortress North America" that would "discriminate against workers on the basis of their racial and ethnic origin" (Healy, 2007).

6. The continuation and deepening of economic policies that cause the elimination of the capacity of governments to foster the viability of national and local economies will generate more unemployment and more immigrants that will continue to arrive in the US, despite the "smart borders", (the erection of metal fences, electronic sensors, more guards, and ultimately the planned giant wall along a good part of the Mexican border, as well as all the SPP plans to expand the security perimeter of the US),

Aspects of the "Prosperity Agenda" of the SPP such as the continuation of removal of tariffs, the further removal of rules of origin and the facilitation of trade, will continue affecting local and national markets and small and medium companies in detriment to employment creation. The SPP includes some 300 policy and program areas that are being revisited behind doors only by the elitist business council, the NACC.

The SPP promotes the competitivity of industry and its hidden agenda is to push for the deregulation of labor markets in the name of prosperity. Labor Reform in Mexico will affect the capacity of workers to organize, defend their collective rights (such as social security) and aspire to harmonize their standards of living upwardly with those of North American workers.

7. However, the response to immigration, (that will only worsen with these economic policies), is to strengthen border security through the "harmonization" of security policies.

The security agenda consists basically of the creation of a "common" North American perimeter to guard against "terrorism". The problem is that the concept of terrorism is being amplified by our present governments to include the most legitimate social movements (in Mexico see Guadalajara, Oaxaca, Atenco, Chihuahua cases), and also immigration flows, as those from Central America (and the increase of these flows resulting from the DR-CAFTA). The Mexican government has already accepted the pretense of the US to extend its policies to its southern borders in order to stop the migration of Central and South American nationals.

It is essential to understand that otherwise, the SPP does not address in a positive manner the issue of migration, nor other social aspects of "integration". "For the US the alliance does not mean considering existent and current plans and programs but to strengthen them... This country has made it clear in diverse occasions that themes on migration and trade controversies will be treated independently to the SPP, despite the close relation it has with border security" (Trejo García, 2006), that is via the "normal" bilateral relation.

8. The SPP exacerbates far right nationalism. Critical positions from the far right (eg. Minutemen) consider the SPP as a process of constructing an "EU of North America" which would dilute the national sovereignty of the US. However, the SPP builds on the NAFTA model in which it was always avoided to build upon the EU model of integration based on supranational "democratic" institutions.

The NAFTA model is contrary to underlying social principles of the EU, which include free movement of workers and the harmonization of social standards (including labor standards) and environmental protections, in order to prevent "social dumping" within the common market.

Far from the cry of the xenophobes, our organizations must strive to convey the message that we are for a more profound integration among our countries, possibly including the building of democratic institutions that tackle the causes of migration and other social problems.

9. Alternatives

With regards to immigration within the framework of hemispheric regionalization, the Hemispheric Social Alliance has proposed the following guiding principles; these principles may well be applied in the North American context in a long term vision.

1. While it is not now possible to achieve the creation of a hemispheric "open doors" migration policy, that goal should remain on the horizon in the medium and long term in the process of hemispheric integration.
2. Any agreement in the Americas should ensure respect for migrants' human and labor rights regardless of their migration status and should incorporate actions among a broad range of actors (including governments, churches, educational institutions, and intellectuals) to limit the discretionary application of immigration policies, thus promoting respect for basic rights and adherence to minimal diplomatic norms, as well as humanitarian considerations for refugees.
3. Migration policies should not criminalize migrants but rather confront internationally the causes of their expulsion from their countries of origin, establishing international assistance to promote just and sustainable development.

What we must understand is that "free trade" policies have created insecurity for hundreds of millions of people in North America, and we must work with organizations of migrants, (and indigenous and peasants, and workers, and small businesses etc.) to restore it NOW!.

Some sources used for this document.

• Alternatives for the Americas. See www.art-us.org, www.commonfrontiers.ca, www.rmalc.org.mx, www.rqic.alternatives.ca
• The 2^nd North American Forum on a People Centred Approach to Trade, Summary Report, Ottawa, Canada, June 5^th, 2006
• Healy Teresa, Deep Integration in North America: Security and Prosperity for Whom?, Canadian Labour Congress, February 20, 2007.
• Trejo Garcia Carmen (Investigadora Parlamentaria et.al.) et al. Alianza para la Seguridad y la Proesperidad de America del Norte (ASPAN), Julio, 2006.