Global free trade agreements impact local environment

by Erika McDonald

Fair trade advocates from Houston and around the country traveled to New Orleans in July to protest private negotiations for the Central American Free Trade Agreement. With CAFTA talks already underway, anti-globalization activists are working to build awareness about trade agreements already impacting local jobs, economies and the environment.

Amid discussion of the World Trade ministerial meetings taking place in Cancun this December and a meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami this November, many Houstonians may not have heard of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. But with CAFTA talks underway and more scheduled in New Orleans next week, anti-globalization activists are working to enhance awareness about trade agreements already impacting local economies.

CAFTA is essentially a geographical expansion of NAFTA picking up where the latter left off in the expansion of trade agreements that affect public environmental policy. The five principal countries involved in the new proposed agreement are Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

University of Houston history professor Bob Buzzanco spends much of his time lecturing local environmental and community organizations about the downside to free trade agreements. He said international treaties like NAFTA have engendered a “race to the bottom” when it comes to environmental law enforcement. Companies that declare an environmental law is a barrier to free trade can easily seek exemption.

With the U.S. government currently brokering CAFTA negotiations, Buzzanco warned free trade agreements supercede municipal protections on citizens’ health, environment and civil rights.

“Under NAFTA, clean air regulations have been struck down, clean water regulations have been struck down and there is no reason to believe that this won’t continue with CAFTA.”

Houston city council member Ada Edwards said once corporations invoke free trade status, there is little local law makers can do to protect their citizens.
“Treaties trump local ordinances and that’s just the bottom line,” Edwards said.

She said there was a lack of understanding and interest on the part of local officials when it comes to addressing the local impacts of globalization.

“I’ve only seen one other colleague and that’s (Houston City Council Member) Annise Parker to show any interest in even looking at the issue from a local perspective,” she said. “There’s not a lot of interest, I think, because our own local officials, our Senators and Congressman who passed the treaty, a lot of them didn’t even know what was involved in the bill.”

Edwards said when citizens are kept in the dark about international trade agreements they will not understand the impacts of globalization on their own lives until it’s too late.

The secret nature of the current negotiations is a NAFTA legacy free-trade opponents say they will continue to rally against. At the July talks in New Orleans, the negotiating texts were not available to the public or to Congress. The only opportunity for public input was an adjoining room where public could sit and request a meeting with trade representatives who may or may not honor their request.

“I think the American public are being duped and their quality of life and their livelihoods are being reduced to a bottom-line profit line on a financial statement and that’s a sad place to be,” Edwards said.

Houston business leaders tend to downplay the effects of free-trade agreements, citing the city’s thriving Port and energy sector as the most important factors affecting the local economy. But Harris County AFL-CIO’s Richard Shaw said manufacturing jobs lost to globalization threaten the long-term health of Houston’s economy.

“The effects will be secondary, but in the end they’re going to hurt us,” Shaw said. “Houston might be able to survive for a while based on the oil and chemical industry, some of the major energy corporations headquartered here and our Port, but we’re losing our manufacturing base.”

Shaw pointed to the recent shut down of the Abitibi paper plant, which resulted in the loss of 300 well-paying jobs with benefits. He said Houston has no chance to replace lost manufacturing jobs, which means hard times ahead for the city’s working class families.

While losing manufacturing jobs, the city also faces a growing population of unskilled workers, Shaw said. “Without jobs to put them in, many Houston families will be unable to ever work themselves out of poverty.”