NAFTA, FTAA, and the Global Economic Justice Movement

John Barry

The 'globalization' we are witnessing today is in fact an acceleration of historical political and economic trends, hastened by the advent of increasingly sophisticated and rapid communications and transportation technologies, the decline of the nation-state (especially in the [global] South), the absence or ineffectiveness of democratic systems of global governance, and the rise of neoliberal economic ideology. Its primary beneficiaries are both the transnational corporations, as well as the privileged consumer classes in the North and to a growing degree, in the industrializing nations of the South. ⁱ

- Joshua Karliner, Executive Director of CorpWatch

I. Introduction

In the last few years, a worldwide movement has emerged in opposition to what has been termed "corporate-led globalization". From Prague, Seattle, and Porto Alegre to Quebec City, Barcelona, Genoa, and Washington, a broad association of organizations has aggressively targeted international trade and financial institutions like the WTO, IMF and World Bank for their alleged complicity in implementing and defending "corporate-led globalization". Multinational free trade agreements like NAFTA and now the proposed FTAA have also been targeted by this movement because they are regional institutions that share many of the same economic assumptions and have the same consequences as the global institutions mentioned above.

This worldwide movement has been dubbed the "Anti-Globalization Movement" by most of the mainstream media. Other elements of the mainstream media have gone much further in referring to this movement as "anti-free-trade extremists" and "luddites" for their negative views regarding free trade and other tenets of orthodox neo-classical economics. The well-known American journalist, Thomas Friedman, the author of the book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, provides an excellent example of the mainstream aversion to the more radical elements of the Anti-Globalization movement. In distinguishing between those activists who support mild reforms for the globalization process (like Friedman) and those activists who are very critical of the dominant economic paradigm and are opposed to "corporate globalization", Friedman asserts:

[w]hom to root for: [t]here are many. . . activists. . .who understand that globalization has its upsides and downsides, and they have come not to destroy this system but to improve it-by agitating for the World Bank to be more sensitive to the environment in its building projects, by urging rich countries to write off the debts of the poorest countries, and by urging the IMF to be more open to alternative, possibly less harsh remedies for rescuing countries in financial distress. All worthy issues.. .


[w]hom to root against: [r]oot against the economic quacks peddling conspiracy theories about globalization; the anti-free-trade extremists, such as Ralph Nader's group, Public Citizen; the protectionist trade unions; and the anarchists. These groups deserve to be called by their real name: "The Coalition to Keep the World's Poor People Poor." ^iv

All of the above epithets only serve to misrepresent and caricature the valid skepticism of the more critical elements of the movement that believe that the global economic system needs a major overhaul rather than slight improvements as advocated by Friedman. Unfortunately, as with the example above, the mainstream media has been content to use these epithets and dismiss most of what the movement has to say without a serious evaluation of the stronger arguments and policy proposals advocated.

In spite of the disparaging media coverage, the so-called Anti-Globalization movement cannot be so hastily dismissed. Gauged in numbers alone, the movement consists of dozens of global organizations mobilizing thousands of people in venue after venue. Around the world, labor organizations, environmental groups, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), other civil society organizations, and progressive think tanks have united in opposition to the neoliberal assumptions and policies at the center of the process of corporate-led globalization. A small list of these organizations includes the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, the Network for Environmental and Social Justice, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Public Citizen, ATTAC, Direct Action Network, Global Exchange, the National Lawyers Guild, Asia's 3rd Eye Movement, the French Peasant Confederation, Brazil's Sem Terra movement, Mexico's EZLN movement, the People's Global Action movement, Italy's Ya Basta! movement, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and dozens of others.

The importance of these groups cannot be underestimated. There has always been criticism of NAFTA, FTAA, and other international trade and financial institutions, but now this criticism has erupted into open defiance and resistance. What is more, the challenge of these groups has brought a great deal of press coverage to the secretive operations of these institutions and have forced them to be more responsive, reflexive, and accountable. They are making these institutions take proposals to implement major global economic, social, and environmental reforms seriously.

Although derided by the mainstream press, academic organizations like the American Sociological Association have seriously considered the resounding impact of these groups. During a recent conference on the theme of globalization, the American Sociological Association was initiated with the following statement:

'Globalization' is a contested term that has quickly moved to the center of discourse addressing power and political culture in the developing world economy. As the recent (1999) demonstrations at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle showed, the term is now part of a larger contest over boundaries and acceptable limits in the ongoing social construction of a reconstituted world economic system. The outcome of this contest, over which discourses and symbols succeed in blocking or legitimating the meanings accorded the term "globalization," will profoundly influence the restructuring of the global economy." ^vii

Consequently, there is a clear need for a critical exploration of the skepticism of this movement with regards to the orthodox assumptions of free trade in general and the specific manifestations of these assumptions in free trade agreements like NAFTA and FTAA in particular. To avoid the negative connotations placed on this movement through the above mentioned epithets assigned by the mainstream media, this essay will refer to the movement as the Global Economic Justice Movement. This title is not without its shortcomings and may be justly criticized for being just as biased as the mainstream media. However, this title aptly represents the aspirations of the movement. Consequently, the real criticism that may be lodged against this title and against the movement in general is that although these aspirations may be legitimate, the analysis and policies made to further these aspirations may not be.

As mentioned above, this paper will delimit its focus on the Global Economic Justice Movement's critiques of the NAFTA and proposed FTAA. Judging whether or not the criticisms and goals of the movement are misguided is up to the discretion of the reader.

II. NAFTA, FTAA, and Globalization

"Modern industry has established the world market. All old-established national industries have been destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries whose products are consumed in every corner of the globe. In place of the old wants, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes…All fixed, fast-frozen relations are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air.

The bourgeoisie by its rapid improvement of all the instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all . . .nations into civilization. In one word, it creates a world after its own image."

- Marx & Engels, the Communist Manifesto, 1848

Although the mainstream media has been very critical of the Global Justice Movement, it has ironically become fond of Marx and Engels when it comes to describing globalization. In the July 23rd, 2001 issue of time, Time author Michael Elliot printed the above quote in almost its entirety. Elliot enthusiastically endorsed the quote, calling it "[t]he sharpest description of globalization ever written." Elliot, a confessed non-Marxist, continued his enthusiastic agreement with Marx and Engels regarding globalization stating that

For Marx and Engels, globalization was a revolutionary phenomenon. The triumph of global capitalism had weakened the chains that held human potential in check. Autocratic rulers and priests had seen their power wither away; technology had offered the promise of plenty; great cities had rescued millions from the 'idiocy of rural life.' Trade had diminished the differences and antagonisms between states so that it was possible to dream of a true internationalism. Globalization, in other words, was potentially liberating.^x

Marx and Engels were certainly trying to point out the positive and revolutionary aspects of globalization (i.e. the internationalization of capital, growth of technology, the disintegration of archaic and oppressive political systems, etc.), but they were definitely not as sanguine as Elliott in how the yields of globalization would be distributed throughout the world. Today, the skepticism of Marx and Engels is still very much alive in the Global Justice Movement, but fortunately free of the historical and doctrinal yoke of Soviet-style state socialism. It is in fact this skepticism that informs so much of the critique against NAFTA and the FTAA.

It can be said that NAFTA, FTAA, and the movement in question are both causes and consequences of the globalization phenomenon. It follows that any discussion of the Global Economic Justice Movement's critiques of NAFTA and FTAA will necessarily begin with an explanation of these institutions as well as an explanation of the densely complex term "globalization". This will help to view NAFTA and FTAA as discrete manifestations of the globalization phenomenon and to contextualize the specific critiques of the Global Economic Justice Movement.

A. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entered into force for the Canada, Mexico, and the United States on January 1st, 1994. Article 102 of NAFTA succinctly summarizes the objectives of the North American free trade area and obligates the signing Parties to

- eliminate barriers to trade in, and facilitate the cross-border movement of, goods and services between the territories of the Parties;
- promote conditions of fair competition in the free trade area;
- increase substantially investment opportunities in the territories of the Parties;
- provide adequate and effective protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in each Party's territory;
- create effective procedures for the implementation and application of this Agreement, for its joint administration and for the resolution of disputes; and
- establish a framework for further trilateral, regional and multilateral cooperation to expand and enhance the benefits of this Agreement. ^xiii

In a phrase, NAFTA is ostensibly about free trade. However, given the fact that trade barriers among the Signing countries were already extremely low before the agreement was signed, many are skeptical about what the 'real' reasons for signing were. According to Mark Weisbrot, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington D.C., the real reasons for NAFTA were to obtain international guarantees for U.S. corporations. Concerning NAFTA, Weisbrot claims that what began as a pitch for free trade has "morphed into a marketing tool to sell a whole range of new property rights for investors and corporations through an alphabet soup of sweeping international pacts: NAFTA, GATT, MAI, FTAA."

B. The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)

Section (f) of Article 102 of NAFTA mentioned above provides for the objective to "establish a framework for further trilateral, regional and multilateral cooperation to expand and enhance the benefits of this Agreement" The formal title "Free Trade Area of the Americas" (FTAA) is the name given to the proposed expansion of NAFTA to all of the countries of the Western Hemisphere with the notable exception of Cuba.
Regarding the FTAA, Public Citizen, a North American NGO, has stated that

The goal of the FTAA is to impose the NAFTA model of new corporate investment and patent protections, trade liberalization, deregulation, and privatization hemisphere-wide. The FTAA draft texts are secret, but information that has leaked out reveals that many of the FTAA chapters are literally extensions of NAFTA rules. These rules would significantly increase the power corporations would have to constrain governments from setting standards for public health and safety, to safeguard their workers, and to ensure that corporations do not pollute the communities in which they operate. Effectively, these rules would handcuff government public interest policymaking and enhance corporate control at the expense of citizens throughout the Americas. ^xix

With this basic introduction and critique of both NAFTA and FTAA, we will now explore the interrelationships between these trade agreements and the phenomenon of globalization according to proponents of the Global Justice Movement.

C. NAFTA and FTAA through the Globalization Looking Glass

"Globalization" is a complex and multifaceted term involving intertwining economic, cultural, political, and social aspects. Before attempting to define globalization, it is important to point out that there is a range of positions regarding the viability of the very term itself. Hyperglobalizers, for example, believe that globalization is growing fast and affecting us all more and more, so that our lives are all subject to the disciplines of the global market. Such hyperglobalizers see regional trade pacts like NAFTA, Mercosul, FTAA, and the EU as well as international trade agreements like GATT and the WTO as manifestations of a new global period reflecting an enormous and relatively recent historical transformation.

However, globalization skeptics believe that the claims about globalization have been exaggerated. Such skeptics assert that the world is more regionalized than globalized, clearly divided into three main economic blocks: Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America. Accordingly, the trade agreements mentioned above are considered to have emerged slowly during a long historical process that does not reflect any particularly radical or sudden break with the past. In addition, skeptics emphasize the importance of regional trade pacts (e.g. NAFTA, FTAA, etc.) over global trade agreements in that the former better explain the nature of current economic, political, cultural, and military realities. Skeptics therefore believe that many of the claims made by hyperglobalizers are "shallow and unfounded". The position of the Global Economic Justice Movement is similar to that of the globalization skeptics.

There is a third position held by transformationalists that incorporates aspects of the previous two positions to describe globalization. For transformationalists, "Globalization is a central driving force behind the rapid social, political and economic changes that are reshaping modern societies and world order." Although transformationalists do not believe that globalization has been a sudden historical phenomenon signifying a significant break with the past, they are not skeptical about the real and dramatic impact that globalization is having throughout the world. At any rate, all three of these positions help to illustrate the following definitions of globalization below. They also aid in the explanation of the appearance and significance of NAFTA and the FTAA proposal as well as the Global Justice Movement.

1. Globalization and Economics

Economists Dean Baker, Gerald Epstein, and Robert Pollin have written at length about the economic aspects of globalization. They speak of globalization as the "ubiquitous buzzword" that has invaded public discourse with the perception that the global economy is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Regarding these perceptions, the authors mention that

[i]t is widely believed, first of all, that the extent of economic interactions between people in different countries is simply growing, at an ever-accelerating rate: that there is increasingly more trade, more foreign exchange transactions, more foreign investment, and more people migrating. But in addition to the increase in international economic interactions, it is also widely held that something more fundamental is occurring: that the quantitative increase in interactions is producing a qualitative change in the way that nation-states operate within any given country's economy. In particular, most discussions of globalization hold that the power of nation-states to influence economic activity is eroding as economies become more integrated, while the power of private businesses and market forces is correspondingly rising. ^xxvii

Following these comments, a tentative definition for economic globalization would be "a substantial increase in international trade, foreign exchange, investment, and migration flows leading to the greater integration of national economies, the erosion of state sovereignty, and the rise of private corporate power and a truly world market."

Such a definition may possibly be pleasing to many pro-globalizers, but many are skeptical about the true nature of globalization. What would make the definition more agreeable would be to emphasize again that globalization is the perception that the global economy is undergoing these transformations.

But these perceptions appear to be unfounded, and many are skeptical about claims regarding the economic growth wrought by free trade and globalization for good reasons. From 1960 to 1980, global output per person grew by an average of eighty-three percent. From 1980 to 2000, the two decades when the world economy was supposedly enjoying tremendous gains from economic globalization, the average growth of global output per person was only thirty-three percent. More than three-quarters of the countries of the world saw their per capita rate of growth fall by at least five percentage points from the 1960-1980 period compared to the 1980-2000 period. Global merchandise exports as a percentage of GDP only reached the 1929 level of nine percent in 1973. Global foreign direct investment flows relative to output, capital formation, and exports only reached the 1913 level of nine percent in 1995. In terms of immigration flows, the percentage of foreign born as a percentage of total population for industrialized countries increased from three percent in 1965 to four and a half percent in 1990, while developing countries experienced a decrease during the same two years from nearly two percent to slightly more than one and a half percent.

When analyzing NAFTA and FTAA through the lens of the hyper-globalizer, these trade pacts appear as natural and beneficial byproducts of the process of economic globalization. NAFTA and FTAA are intended to facilitate and increase international trade, foreign exchange, investment, and migration and have certain provisions granting corporations a political status that was once the monopoly of nation-states. However, supporters of the Global Justice Movement point out that NAFTA and FTAA are really only neoliberal vehicles for facilitating the international movement of capital and commodities, not people and ideas.

Accordingly, the figures above demonstrate that hyper-globalizers have clearly exaggerated claims of substantial increases in world economic growth and integration. For many, the claims about globalization and free trade in general and the claims about the benefits of trade agreements like NAFTA and FTAA are much ado about nothing. But skeptics do claim that some things have changed as a result of globalization and greater free trade. They claim that what has changed has been an increase in global human misery.

Specifically, skeptics claim that global economic growth has fallen, not risen over the last twenty-five years; that the lion's share of the benefits of globalization and free trade go to the multinational corporations and investors of wealthy countries; that free trade and foreign debt have been disastrous for most of the developing world; that globalization has vastly increased the gap between rich and poor worldwide; that a 'race to the bottom' effect has been created by the liberalization of trade and international investment, leading to the reduction of wages, labor standards, and environmental standards globally; and that neoliberal reforms have made possible a 'great global asset swindle' where multinational corporations have been able to acquire developing market assets at fire-sale prices in the wake of international financial meltdowns.

2. Globalization and Culture

The globalization of culture is one particular area of ambivalent positions. Hyperglobalizers claim that the increased flows in information, people, capital and technology resulting from globalization will lead to a much more profoundly syncretic and heterogeneous world. Globalization skeptics claim that in spite of all its multicultural rhetoric, globalization is really a vehicle for colonizing the world in the image of the North American consumer.

In characterizing the former position, cultural critic Douglass Kellner explains that

[hyperglobalizers] champion. . .the local, diversity, difference, and heterogeneity, and sometimes claim that globalization itself produces hybridity and multiplicity, arguing that global culture makes possible unique appropriations and developments all over the world with new forms of hybrid syntheses of the global and the local, thus proliferating difference and heterogeneity. Postmodernists also argue that every local context involves its own appropriation and reworking of global products and signifiers, thus producing more variety and diversity. ^xxxvi

The Global Economic Justice Movement believes that the globalization process is currently not bringing about this global cultural mélange, but is rather serving the parochially narrow goals and interests of certain nation-states in the Global North and multinational corporations. The movement would, nevertheless, like to see this vision of cultural heterogeneity become a reality and is striving to make it so.

In characterizing the latter position, Kellner asserts that

[f]or its critics. . .globalization is bringing about the devastating destruction of local traditions, the continued subordination of poorer nations and regions by richer ones, environmental destruction, and a homogenization of culture and everyday life. These critics include Marxists, liberals, and multiculturalists who stress the threat to national sovereignty, local traditions, and participatory democracy through global forces, environmentalists who fear the destructive ecological effects of unchecked globalization, and conservatives who see globalization as a threat to national and local cultures and the sanctity of tradition.


Kellner continues his explanation by stating that

[f]or some theorists, globalization is seen as a process of standardization in which a globalized media and consumer culture circulates the globe creating sameness and homogeneity everywhere, thus bringing to light the bland and boring universality and massification in the modern project . ^xxxix

In the same vein, supporters of the Global Economic Justice Movement have long been critical of the standardization and massification of culture wrought by NAFTA and FTAA. Although NAFTA and the proposed draft of the FTAA contain certain cultural exemptions, the movement argues that such exemptions are insufficient to stop the process of creating a North American-inspired, homogenized consumer culture. Canadian activists have been particularly vociferous about one of the ways that NAFTA, and by extension the FTAA, operate to homogenize culture. NAFTA and FTAA give the signing parties (i.e. the Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.) and their investors the ability to find certain cultural measures 'inconsistent' with the agreements. Canadian activist M.G. Clark explains that

NAFTA cedes to the U.S. power to manage and shape Canada's culture. For practical purposes, this power is exercised by U.S. broadcasting, publishing, film, and recording corporations whose objective, as you well know, is to maximize profits. Since Canada has given the U.S. the unfettered right to retaliate, it is defenceless and you cannot implement any measure to nourish culture that impinges on perceived U.S. interests without, sooner or later, facing retaliation. NAFTA has thus made Canada an extension of the U.S. by giving Americans an unconditional license to market their programs, books and magazines, films and recordings - i.e., their way of life - here and make us more and more like them. ^xliii

However, the Global Economic Justice Movement has an even stronger argument to explain the homogenization of global culture. In her book, Selling America's Culture to the World, author Nancy Snow demonstrates how the U.S. foreign policy establishment has utilized a variety of institutions to 'educate' the world U.S. trade and economic interests. According to Snow, the U.S. propaganda machine has successfully promulgated U.S. business interests disguised with the rhetoric of democracy and free trade. The homogenizing message of these parochial interests can be witnessed from regional agreements like NAFTA and FTAA to global institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and the WTO.

3. Globalization and Politics

Regarding the impact of globalization on politics, Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham provide the following neutral definition: "globalization is the process whereby state-centric agencies and terms of reference are dissolved in a structure of relations between different actors operating in a context which is truly global rather than merely international." In this sense, NAFTA, FTAA, and the Global Economic Justice Movement are examples of political globalization. NAFTA and FTAA are trade agreements that reduce the power of the member nations to act unilaterally, therefore reducing state sovereignty to a degree. In addition, NAFTA and FTAA provide an important status for certain private actors, namely the corporations and private investors of the member countries.

The Global Economic Justice Movement is also an example of political globalization in that the various groups comprising the movement are globally active and are not limited to any single national context. Furthermore, this movement is acting on a global stage in concert over a range of such global issues as the environment and human rights, to name a few. It is also important to point out the sociological dimension of the movement in that the activists and their globally interconnected groups and NGOs have created a kind of global 'civil society' that has strengthened human interaction and the potential for collective human action on a global stage outside of the traditional national context.

4. The Specific Charges Against NAFTA and FTAA by the Global Economic Justice Movement

Following all of the criticisms above launched by the Global Justice Movement against corporate-led globalization, NAFTA, and FTAA, below are a series of more specific charges lodged by the movement against these regional trade pacts:

- NAFTA has been a nightmare for workers and for the environment. For all the free trade rhetoric of NAFTA, "[t]here is nothing 'free' about creating new property rights for corporations while eroding national environmental protections." NAFTA has allegedly created a "race to the bottom effect" that has decreased wages, labor standards, and collective bargaining power. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in the U.S. because of NAFTA, and wages have decreased substantially. Similarly in Mexico, eight million families have allegedly been thrown into poverty because of NAFTA. - The NAFTA promises of a growing U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, improved environmental conditions, and improved health-care have allegedly all failed to materialize.
- According to the World Bank, since the inauguration of NAFTA in 1994, the poverty line for Mexican workers has increased to thirty six million (sixty two percent of the economically active population) and the minimum wage has decreased by nearly forty one percent.
- Chapter 11 of NAFTA elevates corporations and investors "to the level of sovereign nations" that makes it possible to frustrate the popular will as expressed through legislation to favor profits over democracy.
- NAFTA is allegedly a vehicle for deregulating and privatizing key economic sectors, including public services, primarily through 'trade' disciplines to cover the service sector. This is expected to result in the effective disenfranchisement of public services for entire sectors of the NAFTA countries as governments are pressured to privatize and/or deregulate.
- NAFTA will allegedly increase poverty and inequality and lead to greater dependency of the Global South on the Global North.
- NAFTA and FTAA extend the enforcement of intellectual property rights to the developing world. One major problem with this is that generic drugs and other life-saving medicines may be effectively priced out of reach for the ill of the developing world, creating enormous global health problems. As economist Mark Weisbrot explains, "[e]xtending patent rights to life-saving pharmaceuticals is the antithesis of free trade. It is, in fact, the most costly and deadly form of protectionism in the world today. By any standard economic analysis, a patent monopoly creates the same kind of economic distortion as a tariff."
- Under NAFTA corporations are encouraged to attack government regulations to improve the food security, public health, and safety of its citizens. In addition to limiting the ability of governments to protect its citizens, NAFTA limits the ability to regulate foreign direct investment (FDI) and other forms of volatile capital flows.
- NAFTA particularly disadvantages women, minorities, and indigenous peoples.
- Since the FTAA is essentially a mirror of NAFTA, it is argued that the proposed trade agreement will represent the extension of the above problems to the entire Americas Region.

There are, of course, many more critiques focusing on the allegedly negative economic, social and political consequences of NAFTA and its fundamentally undemocratic, corporate-oriented procedures and objectives, but this is a sufficient sampling of what the Global Economic Justice Movement thinks about NAFTA and the FTAA.

III. Alternatives to NAFTA and FTAA

Future historians will certainly marvel at how trade, originally a means to obtain what could not be produced locally, became an end in itself. In our age it has become a measure of economic and social progress more important even than the well-being of the people who produce or consume the traded goods.
- Mark Weisbrot of CEPR

In contemplating the possible alternatives to NAFTA and the FTAA, Robin Hahnel, a major supporter of the Global Economic Justice Movement, urges people that the most essential thing to do is dispel the myth of TINA (i.e. that there is no alternative) regarding the neoliberal model of economic development underlying most global economic institutions - including these trade agreements. Hahnel then argues for the return of heterodox solutions to economic issues. These solutions include dual national and international approaches.

On the international front, Hahnel calls for the reorganization of multilateral financial institutions to facilitate more public and social investment to developing market countries on terms "that are actually beneficial to [Lesser Developed Countries] LDCs. He also supports greater debt relief "without strings" as well as a more equitable distribution of the efficiency gains from world trade to help the development of LDCs.

On the national front, Hahnel advocates a return to the following Keynesian policies: "[f]iscal and monetary policies aimed at full employment, egalitarian reforms that also fortify domestic demand, land reform combined with technical services, credit, and incentives to promote sustainable land management." Most importantly, with regards to such 'free' trade agreements as NAFTA and FTAA, Hahnel urges nations to have a "highly selective interaction with the global economy".

Hahnel reminds us that free trade agreements that lock countries into supposedly immutable comparative advantages overlook the fundamental fact that comparative advantages are not acts of God, they are created. Accordingly, to support his argument about the need for countries to have a selective interaction with the world economy, Hahnel states that "protectionism can play an important role in changing comparative advantages. . .empirical studies of the relatively few successful cases of national economic development reveal that protectionism almost invariably has, in fact, played a crucial positive role." As a special reminder to the Latin American countries considering membership in the FTAA, Hahnel also states that "it remains the case that Latin America has never grown more rapidly than during the period when it was most cut off from international trade and investment during the Great Depression and World War II, and when Latin American governments pursued import substitution policies."

Since NAFTA has already become a reality, the Global Economic Justice Movement has been focusing its opposition on the proposed FTAA. In line with the above critiques and broad policy recommendations, the NGO Public Citizen has neatly summarized the movement's counter-proposal to the FTAA with the following ten-point initiative:

• No New Corporate Power Tools: Any NAFTA-style Chapter 11 Investment language allowing corporate suits against governments is unacceptable.
  
• Hands Off Basic Social Rights and Needs of the Americas: It is inappropriate and unacceptable for social rights and basic needs to be constrained by trade rules.
  
• Services Needed for Survival. . .such as health, education, water, energy and other basic social services must not be subject to trade rules.
  
• Stop Corporate Patent Protectionism - Seeds & Medicine are Human Needs, not Commodities.
  
• Food is a Basic Human Right, Not a Commodity.
  
• Control over Natural Resources: Citizens and governments - not transnational corporations - must have the right to make decisions about the use and protection of natural resources.
  
• Do No Further Harm: NAFTA contain[s] provisions that undermine domestic environmental, health, safety, agriculture and labor laws. There is no place for such anti-public interest provisions in future international commercial agreements.
  
• Disadvantaging Women, Minorities and Indigenous Peoples: There is no place in just international agreements for provisions that disallow a country from providing special and differential treatment to women, minorities, and indigenous people.
  
• Promoting Development vs. Corporate Control: The FTAA must not prevent governments from employing a variety of policy tools to promote equitable and sustainable development.
  
• Speedbumps Against Speculation: In order to prevent international financial crises from spreading, countries must maintain the power to take measures against speculative portfolio investment.

IV. Conclusion

Developing countries, as a result of their underdevelopment, tend to export natural resources, agricultural goods, and very 'basic' manufacturers. . .the market prices for these goods rise very little over time if at all. Developed countries, on the other hand, export more capital intensive goods and manufactures that have large R&D expenditures behind them thus commanding higher prices. This trading situation continually deteriorates the terms of trade for the developing countries. As the volume of trade increases with increased integration, so does this worsening of the terms of trade. This will also be true for the developing countries of the FTAA most probably.
- Diane Monaco

In a world other than the rarefied realm of abstruse and oversimplified mathematical models, the concept of free trade might actually be a good idea. If the efficiency gains from trade were more equitably distributed among the countries of the world, instead of primarily resting in the hands of the developed countries, free trade would be a workable idea. However, as the above quote by Diane Monaco demonstrates, 'free' trade can be very costly for developing countries. Accordingly, NAFTA and FTAA are examples of how developing market countries may be arresting their potential for future development. To conclude, whether the heterodox economic counterproposals to the reigning neoliberal economic order mentioned above will work is a question that is begging to be answered, and the Global Economic Justice Movement will make sure that the question is asked.

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i Joshua Karliner, THE CORPORATE PLANET: ECOLOGY AND POLITICS IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION 1 (Sierra Club Books 1997).
ii ROBIN HAHNEL, PANIC RULES, 10 (South End Press 1999).
iii Thomas L. Friedman, Parsing the Protests, N.Y. TIMES, April 14, 2000, at A1.
iv Id.
v See THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, THE LEXUS AND THE OLIVE TREE: UNDERSTANDING GLOBALIZATION 207 (Anchor Books, 1999) (2000) (Friedman provides an example of ‘acceptable’ reformist activism is the following quote: “Activists have to learn how to use globalization to their advantage. They have to learn how to compel companies to behave better by mobilizing global consumers through the Internet. I call this the ‘network solution for human rights,’ and it’s the future of social advocacy. It is bottom-up regulation, or side-by-side regulation – not top-down regulation. You empower the bottom, instead of waiting for the top, by shaping a coalition that produces better governance without global government.”)
vi See Naomi Klein, How to Confront Globalization: Take It to the Streets, IN THESE TIMES, Mar. 19, 2001, at 15-17; Roger Bybee, Times Unmasks Protesters, Z MAGAZINE, July/Aug. 2001, at 21-24.
vii The American Sociological Association Conference on Globalization, at http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/BibEc/data/Papers/wopnwuipr00-10.html (last visited Jan. 5, 2002).
viii Michael Elliot, The Wrong Side of the Barricades, TIME, July 23, 2001, available at http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/erchadi/time.html.
ix Id.
x Id.
xi David Graeber, The Globalization Movement: Some Points of Clarification, at http://slash.autonomedia.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/09/
2216253&mode=nocomment&threshold= (last visited Jan 5, 2002) (In distinguishing the Global Justice Movement from old left and new left forms of organization, Graeber explains that “this is a movement about reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to organization; it is about creating new forms of organization. It is not lacking in ideology; those new forms of organization are its ideology. It is a movement about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down [especially, state-like, corporate or party] structures, networks based on principles of decentralized, nonhierarchical consensus democracy”.)
xii DUNCAN GREEN, LA REVOLUCIÓN SILENCIOSA: EL AUGE DE LA ECONOMÍA DE MERCADO EN AMÉRICA LATINA, 181 (TM Editores 1995) (1996).
xiii RALPH H. FOLSOM, MICHAEL WALLACE GORDON, & DAVID LOPEZ, 2000 DOCUMENTS SUPPLEMENT TO NAFTA: A PROBLEM-ORIENTED COURSEBOOK, 12 (West Group, 2000).
xiv Mark Weisbrot, Tricks of Free Trade, Center for Economic and Policy Research, at http://www.kalamazoogreens.org/content/items/The%20Tricks %20of%20Free%20Trade.html (last visited Jan. 5, 2002).
xv Id.
xvi Id.
xvii Supra note 16.
xviii Public Citizen, Unveiling “NAFTA for the Americas” – NAFTA + WTO = FTAA, at http://www.citizen.org/print_article.cfm?ID=1763.
xix Id.
xx Douglass Kellner, Globalization and the Postmodern Turn, at http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/dk/GLOBPM.htm.
xxi K. OHMAE, THE END OF THE NATION STATE 403-4 (New York: Pantheon 1973).
xxii PAUL HIRST & GRAHAM THOMPSON, GLOBALIZATION IN QUESTION: THE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF GOVERNANCE (Cambridge: Polity Press 1996).
xxiii Id.
xxiv WILL HUTTON & ANTHONY GIDDENS (EDS), ON THE EDGE – LIVING WITH GLOBAL CAPITALISM 12 (London: Jonathan Cape 2000).
xxv DEAN BAKER, GERALD EPSTEIN, & ROBERT POLLIN, GLOBALIZATION AND PROGRESSIVE ECONOMIC POLICY, (Cambridge University Press 1998) (1999).
xxvi Id. at 2.
xxvii Id.
xxviii William K. Tabb, Questioning Globalization, available at http://www.monthly review.org/1001tabb.htm (last visited Jan. 5, 2002).
xxix Supra note 5, at 2-4.
xxx Id.
xxxi Id. at 5.
xxxii Id. at 9.
xxxiii Id. at 12.
xxxiv Graeber, supra note 11 (Among other things, Graeber points out that “the size of the US border guard has in fact almost tripled since signing of NAFTA”).
xxxv Robin Hahnel, Beyond Reaction, Thinking Ahead, NEW POLITICS no. 29. (In analyzing the East Asian crisis of the late 1990s, economist Hahnel explains how the free trade asset swindle worked there: “International investors lost confidence in a number of Asian economies, dumping their currencies, bonds, and stocks. At the insistence of the IMF, in an unsuccessful attempt to protect the currency the central banks in these afflicted economies tightened the money supply to boost domestic interest rates so as to prevent further capital outflows. Even healthy domestic companies could no longer obtain or afford loans, so they joined the ranks of bankrupted domestic businesses available for purchase. As a precondition for receiving the IMF bailout the governments abolished restrictions on foreign ownership of corporations, banks, and land. With a dramatically depreciated local currency, and a long list of bankrupt but highly productive local businesses, the once high flying East Asian ‘miracle’ economies were ready for the acquisition experts from Western multinational corporations and banks, who came to the fire sale with a thick wad of almighty dollars in their pockets.” By extension, NAFTA, FTAA, and the usual multilateral financial institutions can and have created identical ‘asset swindles’ in certain economies of the Americas Region).
xxxvi Kellner, supra note 20.
xxxvii See Graeber, supra note 11 (Graeber states that the Global Economic Justice Movement is both a product of cultural globalization and a catalyst for increasing globalization. Graeber argues that the movement is much more sincere about encouraging the globalization process than nation-states and multilateral institutions).
xxxviii Id.
xxxix Id.
xl See, e.g., M.G. Clark, An Open Letter to the Prime Minister: Canadian Culture Is Not Protected Under NAFTA, The CCPA Monitor, Sept., 1996 and NANCY SNOW, SELLING AMERICA’S CULTURE TO THE WORLD (Seven Stories Press, 1998).
xli Clark, supra note 40.
xlii Id.
xliii Id.
xliv SNOW, supra note 40.
xlv GRAHAM EVANS & JEFFREY NEWNHAM, THE PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 201 (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1998).
xlvi See MICHAEL HARDT & ANTONIO NEGRI, EMPIRE 27 (Harvard University Press, 2000) (Concerning this point, Hardt and Negri claim explain that, “[m]any argue that the globalization of capitalist production and exchange means that economic relations have become more autonomous from political controls, and consequently that political sovereignty has declined. Some celebrate this new era as the liberation of the capitalist economy from the restrictions and distortions that political forces have imposed on it; other lament it as the closing of the institutional channels through which workers and citizens can influence or contest the cold logic of capitalist profit. It is certainly true that, in step with the processes of globalization, the sovereignty of nation-states, while still effective, has progressively declined. The primary factors of production and exchange -money, technology, people, and goods – move with increasing ease across national boundaries; hence the nation-state has less and less power to regulate these flows and impose its authority over the economy. Even the most dominant nation-states should no longer be thought of as supreme and sovereign authorities, either outside or even within their own borders.”).
xlvii Global Exchange, Top Ten Reasons to Oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas, at (still looking for exact web address).
xlviii Weisbrot, supra note 14.
xlix Id.
l Id.
li Public Citizen, NAFTA, at http://www.citizen.org/trade/NAFTA/index.cfm.
lii John W. Warnock, Who Benefits from the Free Trade Agreements?, at http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCur Evts/Globalism/who_benefits.htm (last visited Jan. 5, 2002).
liii Id.
liv Public Citizen, Campanha Cidadã Contra a Imposição do “NAFTA nas Américas”, at http://www.citizen.org/trade/ftaa/ALCA_Port_articles.cfm ?ID=6198.
lv Kellner, supra note 20.
lvi Weisbrot, supra note 14.
lvii Public Citizen, SIGN THE TEN POINT PLAN FOR THE AMERICAS: NO TO FTAA!, at http://www.citizen.org/trade/ftaa/TAKE_ACTION_/ articles.cfm?ID=6046 (last visited Jan. 5, 2002).
lviii Id.
lix Id.
lx Joshua Karliner, THE CORPORATE PLANET: ECOLOGY AND POLITICS IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION 1 (Sierra Club Books 1997).
lxi Hahnel, supra note 35.
lxii Id.
lxiii Id.
lxiv Id.
lxv Id.
lxvi Id.
lxvii Id.
lxviii Weisbrot, supra note 14.
lxix Diane Monaco, Talking Points on the FTAA, at http://csf.colorado.edu /forums/ m-fem/2001/msg 00157.html, April 17, 2001.