Renegotiation Must Replace NAFTA — Not Launch TPP 2.0

By
CTC
– May 18, 2017Posted in: Breaking Issues

For Immediate Release
Thursday, May 18, 2017

Civil Society: Renegotiation Must Replace NAFTA — Not Launch TPP 2.0 
Labor, Environmental, Family Farm, Consumer and Faith Leaders Outline a NAFTA Replacement Plan to Benefit All Three Nations by Putting People and the Planet First
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Washington, DC — In response to the formal notice on North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations, labor, environmental, family farm, consumer and faith leaders today demanded a new agreement that puts human needs ahead of corporate profits in all three countries.
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The organizations, which were key in building a congressional majority against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), vowed to fight any deal that fails to eliminate NAFTA’s threats to good jobs, wages and healthy communities or that fails to add the terms needed for an agreement to provide broad benefits to working people.  This includes elimination of NAFTA’s special investor protections for corporations that make it easier to offshore American jobs and empower corporations to attack domestic laws before tribunals of three corporate lawyers and demand unlimited sums of taxpayer money.
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The cross-sector Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC) coalition also re-sent a letter to President Donald Trump, first delivered in January, outlining ten key areas of change needed in any NAFTA replacement deal, and calling for transparency in the negotiating process.
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Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Chris Shelton said, “Working people want a NAFTA trade deal that works for our families and our communities, not another giveaway to investors and Wall Street.  We’re hearing too many Trump Administration officials praise the worse elements of bad trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership that would send more jobs overseas and allow multinational corporations to attack laws and regulations they don’t like.  That’s unacceptable to millions of working families who are watching to see if President Trump keeps his promise.”
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International Association of Machinists International President Robert Martinez, Jr. said, “NAFTA represents the failed trade model that we warned about. Since its implementation, hundreds of thousands workers in the U.S. and Canada have lost their jobs as company after company have moved production to Mexico, a country where fundamental human rights do not exist. NAFTA should be dissolved immediately. If policymakers insist on renegotiating it, real and enforceable labor standards based on ILO Conventions must be included in the core of the agreement, investor to state dispute mechanisms must be deleted and rules of origin must be strong. Among other things, Mexico must demonstrate that fundamental human rights are enforced and effective, before enjoying the benefits of the trade agreement.”
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“The Teamsters opposed NAFTA from the get-go more than 25 years ago,” Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa said. “While we look forward to discussions with new USTR Lighthizer, any NAFTA renegotiation that doesn’t make highway safety a priority, and specifically cross-border long-haul trucking, is a non-starter.”
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“Trump promised to make NAFTA ‘much better’ for working people. Today’s notice is markedly vague. But Trump’s NAFTA renegotiation plan that leaked in late March described just what the corporate lobby is demanding: using NAFTA talks to revive parts of the TPP, like expanded investor incentives to offshore jobs that could make NAFTA even worse for working people. The obvious measure of whether NAFTA renegotiation is intended to benefit working people is if Trump makes clear he will eliminate NAFTA’s investor protections that make it easier to offshore American jobs and empower corporations to attack our laws before tribunals of three corporate lawyers to demand unlimited sums of taxpayer money,” said Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
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“NAFTA remains broken, but Trump’s empty rhetoric will not fix it. We need a serious plan to replace NAFTA with a people-first approach to trade. All indications thus far show that Trump will fail to deliver. Donald Trump promised that he’d fix NAFTA on his first day in office. 119 days later he has managed to send Congress a single page that failed to include any real plan to fix a deal that has undermined environmental protections, eliminated jobs, undercut wages, polluted our air and water, and fueled climate change,” said Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club.  “If Trump’s cabinet full of corporate polluters and Wall Street billionaires is any indication of what he has planned, his NAFTA redux will likely include even more handouts to the corporations that have used NAFTA to profit off of Americans’ misfortune for more than 20 years.”
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“Trump’s approach to NAFTA renegotiation presents a clear and present danger to the environment of North America and planet as a whole,” said Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth. “Trump will use NAFTA renegotiation to continue to gut both domestic environmental laws and undermine international environmental agreements. Further, we are gravely concerned the administration will import language from the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal in an effort to undercut essential environmental, public health, and climate safeguards.”
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“NAFTA installed, and has since cemented, a set of trade parameters that have benefitted corporate America and damaged rural American communities and economies,” said National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson.  “Provisions like Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) tip the scales, consolidating money and power into the hands of multinational corporations. They need to be eliminated to support vibrant family farm operations and rural communities.”
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“Family farmers in all three countries have been hurt by rules in NAFTA’s approach to expand trade for agribusiness, while encouraging low prices for farmers. We need different trade and farm rules that strengthen rural communities, protect the environment, pay farmers fairly and build healthier food systems, but there is no evidence that the Trump administration will go beyond an ‘Agribusiness First’ approach,” said Juliette Majot, Executive Director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
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“Leaked documents of the NAFTA renegotiations suggest an ongoing focus on expanding corporate power. The Administration’s intent to destroy US public protections in the areas of agriculture, agricultural technology and food safety will endow agribusiness, aquaculture and processed food corporations while depreciating family farmers and fishermen, farm workers, consumers and their communities, just as NAFTA has done for 20 years,” said Lisa Griffith, Acting Executive Director of the National Family Farm Coalition.
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“In his letter, ‘The Joy of the Gospel’, Pope Francis warns us of a globalization of indifference. Our NAFTA trade model has been indifferent to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. Maryknoll missioners have witnessed an increase in hunger, income inequality, and environmental degradation in Mexico since NAFTA went into force. We need a new trade model that prioritizes human dignity and God’s creation over corporate profits,” said Gerry Lee, Director of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
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“How this deal is negotiated will determine who benefits.  If the administration keeps the same closed-door process and the hundreds corporate advisors that got us into the original NAFTA debacle, it is not going to deliver a deal that’s good for working people and the planet.  The public needs real transparency from start to finish so it knows what the White House is proposing in our names,” said Arthur Stamoulis, Executive Director of Citizens Trade Campaign.
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The CTC letter calls on the president to make the following changes:
  • Eliminate rules that incentivize the offshoring of jobs and that empower corporations to attack democratic policies in unaccountable tribunals;
  • Defend jobs and human rights by adding strong, binding and enforceable labor, wage and environmental standards to the agreement’s core text and requiring that they are enforced;
  • Overhaul NAFTA rules that harm family farmers and feed a destructive agribusiness model;
  • End NAFTA rules that threaten the safety of our food;
  • Eliminate NAFTA rules that drive up the cost of medicines;
  • Eliminate NAFTA rules that undermine job-creating programs like Buy American;
  • Add strong, enforceable disciplines against currency manipulation to ensure a fair playing field for job creation;
  • Strengthen “rules of origin” and stop transshipment so as to create jobs and reinforce labor and environmental standards;
  • Require imported goods and services to meet domestic safety and environmental rules; and
  • Add a broad protection for environmental, health, labor and other public interest policies.
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According to the letter, “The rubric for assessing a NAFTA renegotiation is clear: Does it put the needs of people and the planet over corporate profits? Does it support — not undermine — good jobs, public health and a more stable climate? If your administration fails to achieve these fundamental goals, or delivers yet another corporate-favoring deal that threatens such priorities, we will oppose it at every step.”
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Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC) is a U.S.-based coalition of labor, environmental, family farm, consumer and faith organizations working together to improve U.S. trade policy.
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