Trade Agreements

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see globalization. immigration, NAFTA, TPPsee transnational corpsnote corps

=<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-corporations-go-global/">https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-corporations-go-global/</a>...<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px; font-size: 1.3125rem; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, Palladio, "URW Palladio L", "Book Antiqua", Baskerville, "Bookman Old Style", "Bitstream Charter", "Nimbus Roman No9 L", Garamond, "Apple Garamond", "ITC Garamond Narrow", "New Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook L", Georgia, serif; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">War Profits for the Largest Transnational Corporations<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px; font-size: 1.3125rem; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, Palladio, "URW Palladio L", "Book Antiqua", Baskerville, "Bookman Old Style", "Bitstream Charter", "Nimbus Roman No9 L", Garamond, "Apple Garamond", "ITC Garamond Narrow", "New Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook L", Georgia, serif; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">War has become big business in America, and now not only are we a big user of military equipment but we sell it to the world: we’re the world’s largest exporter of weapons of virtually all sizes and types. While some consider the U.S. defense budget excessive, others argue that we live in a dangerous world and that a strong military is necessary. After all, there are sociopaths and psychopaths out there, and sometimes they rise to the highest levels of power and threaten life and liberty around the world.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px; font-size: 1.3125rem; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, Palladio, "URW Palladio L", "Book Antiqua", Baskerville, "Bookman Old Style", "Bitstream Charter", "Nimbus Roman No9 L", Garamond, "Apple Garamond", "ITC Garamond Narrow", "New Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook L", Georgia, serif; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">But in a nation where the political process is more strongly influenced by the profit value than by human and life-based values—where corporations have human rights but not human vulnerabilities—Eisenhower’s warning becomes more of a concern.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px; font-size: 1.3125rem; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, Palladio, "URW Palladio L", "Book Antiqua", Baskerville, "Bookman Old Style", "Bitstream Charter", "Nimbus Roman No9 L", Garamond, "Apple Garamond", "ITC Garamond Narrow", "New Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook L", Georgia, serif; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">Military spending is the least effective way to help, stimulate, or sustain an economy for a very simple reason: military products are used once and destroyed.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px; font-size: 1.3125rem; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, Palladio, "URW Palladio L", "Book Antiqua", Baskerville, "Bookman Old Style", "Bitstream Charter", "Nimbus Roman No9 L", Garamond, "Apple Garamond", "ITC Garamond Narrow", "New Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook L", Georgia, serif; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">When a government uses taxpayer money to build a bridge or highway or hospital, that investment will be used for decades, perhaps centuries, and will continue to fuel economic activity throughout its lifetime. But when tax- payer dollars are used to build a bomb or a bullet, that military hardware will be used once and then vanish. As it vanishes, so does the wealth it represented, never to be recovered.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px; font-size: 1.3125rem; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, Palladio, "URW Palladio L", "Book Antiqua", Baskerville, "Bookman Old Style", "Bitstream Charter", "Nimbus Roman No9 L", Garamond, "Apple Garamond", "ITC Garamond Narrow", "New Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook L", Georgia, serif; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">As Eisenhower said in an April 1953 speech, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-corporations-go-global/#23" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[23]</a><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px; font-size: 1.3125rem; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, Palladio, "URW Palladio L", "Book Antiqua", Baskerville, "Bookman Old Style", "Bitstream Charter", "Nimbus Roman No9 L", Garamond, "Apple Garamond", "ITC Garamond Narrow", "New Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook L", Georgia, serif; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">It was a brilliant articulation of human needs in a world increasingly dominated by nonbreathing entities whose values were not human values. But it was a call unheeded, and today it is nearly totally forgotten.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px; font-size: 1.3125rem; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, Palladio, "URW Palladio L", "Book Antiqua", Baskerville, "Bookman Old Style", "Bitstream Charter", "Nimbus Roman No9 L", Garamond, "Apple Garamond", "ITC Garamond Narrow", "New Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook L", Georgia, serif; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">Meanwhile the ruling elites of the developing world, aligned with trans- national corporations, generally become richer and better armed as their people become poorer. The world, in part as a result of the notion contained in the Santa Clara ruling’s corrupt headnote—that corporations have the rights of persons—is becoming more unsafe and unequal day by day.=<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/capitalisms-bullets-in-latin-america-invisible-empires-state-power-and-21st-century-colonialism/">https://truthout.org/articles/capitalisms-bullets-in-latin-america-invisible-empires-state-power-and-21st-century-colonialism/</a>no lnxCapitalism’s Bullets in Latin America: Invisible Empires, State Power and 21st Century ColonialismBY Benjamin Dangl, Upside Down WorldJune 21, 2014Police open fire on protestors blocking road in Bagua Grande, Peru. June 5, 2009. (Image: powless / Flickr)]Updated 6/17/14“Soccer, metaphor for war, at times turns into real war,” wrote Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. For many people in Brazil, a war has indeed broken out surrounding the current World Cup. Poor communities have been displaced by stadiums and related infrastructure for the event, the high level of security has increased police violence, and the enormous economic costs of the World Cup are seen by many as a blow against the rights of the country’s most impoverished people. As a result of these controversies, the international sports event has been met with wide-spread protests.Cracking down on some of these protests are Brazilian security forces trained by the US private military and security company Academic, previously known as Blackwater. This training was brought to light by the Brazilian press and US sportswriter David Zirin, who, in an article on the topic, pointed to a 2009 diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, which showed that Washington anticipated the World Cup-related crises in Brazil would provide opportunities for various types of US involvement. Zirin wrote that for Washington, “Brazil’s misery created room for opportunism.”Capitalism’s bullets follow the World Cup just as they do Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed with the US. Five years ago this month, protests were raging in northern Peru where thousands of indigenous Awajun and Wambis men, women and children were blockading roads against oil, logging and gas exploitation on Amazonian land. The Peruvian government, having just signed an FTA with the US, was unsure how to deal with the protests – partly because the controversial concessions in the Amazon were granted to meet the FTA requirements. According to a diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, on June 1st, 2009 the US State Department sent a message to the US Embassy in Lima: “Should Congress and [Peruvian] President Garcia give in to the [protesters’] pressure, there would be implications for the recently implemented Peru-US Free Trade Agreement.” Four days later, the Peruvian government responded to the protest with deadly violence, leading to a conflict which left 34 dead, including 24 police officers and 10 civilians. The US-supported escalation of the conflict worked; the FTA moved forward as planned.The US is infamous for its imperial history in the region. But Washington isn’t the only empire in its backyard. Global and local forces of capitalism, imperialism and modern-day colonialism are at work across Latin America, from soccer stadiums to copper mines.China has outpaced the US as the primary trading partner with the region’s richest countries; most of its business is in the area of natural resource extraction. And for many nations in the southern cone, Brazil – now a world superpower outpacing Britain as the 6th largest economy – is an imperial force, utilizing much of the region’s natural wealth, land and hydroelectric power to fuel its booming industries and population.Capitalism has many faces and allies, and they’re not just based in the global north or within these economic giants. As sociologist William Robinson writes “The new face of global capitalism in Latin America is driven as much by local capitalist classes that have sought integration into the ranks of the transnational capitalist class as by transnational corporate and financial capital.” From Mexico to Argentina, this local capitalist class has created some 70 globally-competitive transnational conglomerates.Friends of empire and capital are found at the heights of power among Latin America’s political leaders. While the US has spied on Latin America for years, as recently made clear by Edward Snowden’s leaks, Chile’s Michelle Bachelet administration asked for the US government’s help in spying on Mapuche indigenous leaders defending land rights during her first term in office. While the US supported the coup against Fernando Lugo of Paraguay in 2012, before he was pushed out of office, Lugo himself called for a state of emergency in the countryside to expand repression of campesino activists fighting soy company incursions on their land.For many indigenous communities in Latin America, the state, often in alliance with transnational corporations, maintains a colonialist worldview into the 21st century, particularly in the area of natural resource extraction in mining, oil and gas industries. As Professor Manuela Picq of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador writes, “The unilateral expropriation of land for mining today is a continuation of the Doctrine of Discovery. It conceptualized the New World as terra nullis, authorizing colonial powers to conquer and exploit land in the Americas. […] Today, the idea of ’empty’ lands survives in extractivist practices.”Indeed, mining concessions have been granted on 80% of Colombia’s legally-recognized indigenous territories, and 407,000 square kilometers of Amazon-based mining areas are on indigenous land. As a part of this region-wide extractivist land grab, Picq explains that 200 activists were killed in Peru between 2006 and 2011, 200 people were criminalized in Ecuador for protesting the privatization of natural resources, and 11 anti-extractivist activists have been murdered in Argentina since 2010.The mining industry is also typically devastating for the environment, whether it’s run by the state or the private sector. Picq points out that Guatemala’s Marlin mine, owned by the Canadian company Goldcorp, utilizes in just one hour the same amount of water a local family uses over the span of 22 years, and the mining industry in Chile – where the state owns the largest copper producing company in the world – utilizes 37% of the nation’s electricity.Capitalism, empire and 21st century colonialism come from afar and descend on their victims in Latin America. But these forces are also in the tear gas canisters that Brazil’s security forces use at the World Cup, in the state that extracts natural resources on indigenous territory, and in the free trade deals signed in blood.=<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-is-a-fraud-trade-deficit-soars-to-12-year-high-despite-the-presidents-promises/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-is-a-fraud-trade-deficit-soars-to-12-year-high-despite-the-presidents-promises/</a></div><div>
</div><div></div>kpfa public citizen house vote 12/19/19house dems forced fix of nafta, djt made it worse. [// china? there is no deal yet]=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-top-economic-aide-just-made-a-stunning-admission-about-the-presidents-dealing-with-china">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-top-economic-aide-just-made-a-stunning-admission-about-the-presidents-dealing-with-china</a>no lnxTrump’s top economic aide just made a stunning admission about the president’s dealings with ChinaWhite House Director of Economic Policy Larry Kudlow addresses reporters Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of White House, on the upcoming G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Official White House Photo by Keegan Barber)Written by Cody Fenwick December 19, 2019White House Director of Economic Policy Larry Kudlow made a stunning admission on Wednesday as he was discussing President Donald Trump’s trade negotiations with China.Eamon Javers, a CNBC journalist covering the economy, reported on the remarks Kudlow made to a group of reporters. Kudlow said that Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s former secretary of State, had recently been to the White House — and he has also recently met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping twice.
“I asked if Kissinger is playing a back channel role in trade talks,” Javers said.
“Well, now you’re getting into the family jewels,” Kudlow responded.
This alone is a jarring revelation. Kissinger has been persuasively accused of international war crimes as he has enabled dictators and mass atrocities abroad. Having ties to Kissinger, let alone having him actively work to shape policy, should be toxic for any sitting politician.

And then he went on:

Eamon Javers?@EamonJaversReplying to @EamonJaversKudlow said President Xi told Kissinger that he would rather “deal with President Trump, who will focus more on trade in the economy, rather than democrats who won't talk about key trade issues, but instead will go on about human rights and other things.”
1523:29 PM - Dec 18, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy116 people are talking about this
Eamon Javers?@EamonJaversReplying to @EamonJaversHe added: “Now, let me be careful here. President Trump made it very clear that we favor freedom and democracy and a peaceful solution in Hong Kong, and that we oppose, of course, the maltreatment of the Muslims and the Uigurs.”Of course, it’s no secret that Trump doesn’t about human rights abuses in China — or anywhere. Nothing about his moves on foreign policy or his public statements have given any indication that he genuinely cares about countering authoritarian regimes, promoting democracy, or empowering the rights of minorities. And Trump openly embraces and lauds brutal rulers like Xi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, while often spurning the leaders of democratic allies of the United States.But still, Kudlow’s caveat aside, it was remarkable for a top adviser to the president to admit on the record that the Chinese prefer Trump over Democrats because he doesn’t “go on about human rights and other things.”=odd signed same day as impeachment?!<h1 class="headline" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: 700;">Dems lament climate a no-show in North American pact</h1><section class="homepage byline" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0.25em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: block !important;">By <a href="https://www.eenews.net/staff/Geof_Koss" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">Geof Koss</a> and <a href="https://www.eenews.net/staff/Nick_Sobczyk" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">Nick Sobczyk</a> in <a href="https://www.eenews.net/eed" class="publication eed" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; font-weight: 700;">E&E Daily</a> <time datetime="2019-12-11 06:59:06 -0500" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; white-space: nowrap;">6:59 AM EST</time></section><a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1061778749" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;"></a><section class="excerpt" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;">Progressive lawmakers are still figuring out whether to support the latest version of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.</section><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/free-trade-for-liberals-can-a-us-europe-alliance-protect-democracy-fight-inequality-and-save-the-environment/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/free-trade-for-liberals-can-a-us-europe-alliance-protect-democracy-fight-inequality-and-save-the-environment/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">...But the fracturing of Europe predates Trump, and it will likely outlast him. Extreme nationalist parties have made steady gains in EU parliamentary elections. Unchecked, they will win control of more European countries, and they will use their authority to persecute minorities, weaken civil society, and perhaps even rip the union apart. Given the continent’s history, that’s a scary prospect. The United States needs new ways to bind European states to each other, to America, and to liberal democratic values.</div><div class="p6_45" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Here’s one: establish a large, powerful trade agreement with the European Union. Call it the Atlantic Alliance. If implemented, it would bring Europe and America closer together by making them part of the largest free trade zone in the world. <div class="p7_45" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Proposing a new free trade deal in 2019 might sound backward. Recent trade agreements have been archetypes of the runaway free market-ism that produced the very inequality fueling nationalist backlash on both sides of the Atlantic. There’s a reason that Trump ran—and won—on a stridently anti-trade platform. And indeed, the deal that policymakers have already proposed, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), shows the flaws of the existing system. It’s designed to liberalize the flow of capital without serious respect for the consequences. Like trade agreements past, it would establish international tribunals that let corporations challenge and undermine the regulations of sovereign states.<div class="p8_45" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">But there’s no reason why a new deal with Europe has to follow this discredited template. Tariffs between the U.S. and Europe are already low. The Atlantic Alliance would lower them further not as an end in itself, but as a means of reinforcing strategic ties and strengthening liberal values....<div>=</div></div></div></div>WITH pod tradewatch public citizen 3 lawyer bd out of nafta 2?<a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/us-china-investment-war-quietly-emerging-and-environment-will-be-ultimate-casualty-0">https://www.alternet.org/environment/us-china-investment-war-quietly-emerging-and-environment-will-be-ultimate-casualty-0</a>~ envir/AGWOctober 3, the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-development/congress-eying-china-votes-to-overhaul-development-finance-idUSKCN1MD2HJ" style="text-decoration-line: none;">U.S. Senate passed a law</a> to create an agency called the International Development Finance Corporation (IDFC), to replace the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) set up in 1969. The IDFC will invest up to $60 billion in developing countries and, unlike OPIC, is empowered to make equity investments. It is designed to counter what some in Washington describe as China’s “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/40d7eee4-bdc1-11e8-94b2-17176fbf93f5" style="text-decoration-line: none;">economic warfare</a>” of indebting developing countries and garnering diplomatic influence and support, largely through infrastructure projects such as the <a href="https://tinyurl.com/yddoqb6u" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Belt & Road Initiative</a>.The IDFC is set up by the Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act (<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/2463/text" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the Build Act</a>), which passed the House of Representatives in August with bipartisan support, and has been <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2018/07/10/how-the-build-act-advances-development/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">lauded</a> in international development circles for its <a href="https://www.devex.com/news/build-act-for-new-us-development-finance-corporation-sails-through-senate-committee-vote-93015" style="text-decoration-line: none;">pro-development agenda</a>. But there are at least four very concerning aspects of the Build Act, making it likely that the environment will be the ultimate casualty in this new front in the US-China war of influence.1. Key environmental threshold removedA key environmental safeguard imposed on OPIC has slipped out of the Build Act. <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2015-title22/pdf/USCODE-2015-title22-chap32-subchapI-partII-subpartiv.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">OPIC</a>’s authorizing statute required it to refuse support for any project which “will pose an unreasonable or major environmental, health, or safety hazard, or will result in the significant degradation of national parks or similar protected areas.”This underpinned the very first step in OPIC’s project screening procedures, designed to ensure that environmentally damaging projects don’t get supported. A <a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc812651/m1/1/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">2003 report to Congress</a> shows that this provision formed the basis for OPIC to decide whether a project was ‘categorically prohibited’ from receiving support. According to OPIC’s <a href="https://www.opic.gov/sites/default/files/docs/opic_env_handbook.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">environmental handbook,</a> this captured “large dams that disrupt natural ecosystems, infrastructure and raw material extraction in primary tropical forests and other protected or ecologically fragile areas.”History also shows us how important this provision could be for pulling support for projects already underway. In 1995 OPIC <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/02/business/international-business-us-cancels-indonesian-mine-s-insurance.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">canceled $100 million of political risk insurance</a> for a U.S. company operating the world’s largest gold mine in Indonesia. The cancellation was prompted by environmental contamination from the mine that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/world/asia/below-a-mountain-of-wealth-a-river-of-waste.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">poisoned fish and local water</a> supplies, and reports of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/02/business/international-business-us-cancels-indonesian-mine-s-insurance.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">killings and torture</a> by the company’s private security services. While the legal basis for the decision has never been made clear, it could well have been the above provision.2. Host country notification requirements removedAnother of OPIC’s environmental mandates has been stripped from its successor organization under the Build Act. OPIC’s authorizing statute required it, before supporting a project, to contact the host country government, inform them of the likely environmental impacts and the international environmental standards applicable to the project, and any U.S. regulations that would apply if the project was carried out there. OPIC had to share any environmental impact assessments carried out, and to take into account any comments received in response. This provision was used by OPIC to notify governments from <a href="https://www3.opic.gov/environment/eia/buchanan/Host%20Country%20Notification.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Liberia</a> to <a href="https://www3.opic.gov/Environment/EIA/amandienergy/Host_Country_Notification_Amandi.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Ghana</a> to <a href="https://www3.opic.gov/environment/eia/evtl/dochostcountrynotificationengrovopak.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Pakistan</a> of OPIC’s potential support to projects in those countries with the potential to have “<a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2015-title22/pdf/USCODE-2015-title22-chap32-subchapI-partII-subpartiv.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">significant adverse environmental impacts</a>.” IDFC, on the other hand, will not be required by its authorizing statute to engage and assist host country governments in this way.3. Climate ignoredClimate considerations are entirely absent from the Build Act. OPIC was <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-lawsuit/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">sued in 2003</a> by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and four cities in Colorado and California. OPIC accepted liability for financially supporting fossil fuel projects from 1990 to 2003 that accounted for nearly <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-lawsuit/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">eight percent of global carbon emissions</a>—almost one-third of total U.S. emissions. In a settlement agreement, OPIC committed to establishing a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with its projects by 20 percent over ten years and increasing financing for renewable energy. The creation of IDFC would have been an opportune moment to carry such commitments over to the new body taking over OPIC’s mandates by enshrining them in the Build Act. As it stands, climate does not appear anywhere in the law.4. Foreign policy interests prioritizedThe Build Act explicitly mixes sustainable development with geopolitical strategic objectives, stating that one of the objectives of the IDFC is “to provide countries a robust alternative to state-directed investments by authoritarian governments and United States strategic competitors using high standards of transparency and environmental and social safeguards, and which take into account the debt sustainability of partner countries.”This explicit inclusion of foreign policy objectives is a major departure from OPIC’s authorizing statute, which did not even contain the words ‘foreign policy.’ The reference to environmental and social safeguards rings hollow in light of the key environmental safeguards imposed on OPIC that have been stripped from IDFC’s authorizing statute.The Build Act requires the IDFC to develop guidelines and criteria to ensure that each project it supports has “<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/2463/text" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a clearly defined development and foreign policy purpose</a>.” The requirement that all projects serve a foreign policy purpose, combined with weakened environmental protections, could see the IDFC supporting environmentally damaging projects if they are seen to be in US foreign policy interests—for instance, if it was thought that if not financed by IDFC, the project would instead be financed by a ‘strategic competitor,’ with debt, influence and diplomatic relations accruing to that competitor rather than the U.S.OPIC’s track record has included support to projects that reportedly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-hydropower/exclusive-lenders-auditors-raise-red-flags-at-chilean-hydro-project-idUSKCN1B11CQ" style="text-decoration-line: none;">mismanaged hazardous waste</a> in Chile, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5848a141e4b013b566b2bab4?timestamp=1481224763673" style="text-decoration-line: none;">contaminated water and degraded forests</a> in Liberia, and <a href="https://www.ciel.org/news/investigation-finds-that-opic-denied-that-project-affected-community-is-indigenous-did-not-comply-with-its-policies/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">failed to recognize the existence of an indigenous community</a> in Bolivia because it did not carry out a social and environmental assessment. It is hard then to see how its successor agency, with a weaker environmental mandate, a broader potential investment portfolio, and an explicit dictate to out-compete Chinese money, is well placed to do better.<interaction data-token="5b96855f8198b4e625350260" data-context="true" data-tags="" data-fallback="true" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" />This article was produced by <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/earth-food-life/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Earth | Food | Life</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute, and was originally published by <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/the-build-act-environmental-consequences-2622384653.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">EcoWatch</a>.<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=57b70785cc&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Turning Trump’s Trade War Into a Tool to Fight Climate Change</a> BY: SABRINA SHANKMAN
What if countries responded to Trump’s tariffs by taxing imports based on their carbon footprint instead?int'l coop works
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/how-science-based-policy-and-international-cooperation-can-protect-marine-ecosystems-and">https://www.alternet.org/environment/how-science-based-policy-and-international-cooperation-can-protect-marine-ecosystems-and</a><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-undermine-food-safety-2492082082.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-undermine-food-safety-2492082082.html</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px;"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;">Alarm Sounded Over Trump's 'Little Noticed' Push to Undermine Food Safety</h1></div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px;"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2492082082" data-headline="Alarm Sounded Over Trump's 'Little Noticed' Push to Undermine Food Safety" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px;"><div class="body-description">By Jake JohnsonIn what critics are describing as a move to prioritize exports over public health, the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Trump administration</a> is quietly planning to transfer work on international food safety standards from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) health arm to its brand new trade arm, which is supervised by former animal-drug industry executive Ted McKinney.Politico's Helena Bottemiller Evich first <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/02/food-safety-agriculture-usda-fda-243351" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">reported</a> the "<a href="https://twitter.com/hbottemiller/status/914810503414853632" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">little-noticed</a>" plan on Monday. Much of the concern "involves the USDA's staff that manages the U.S.' participation in the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a little-known but powerful standards-setting panel that sits under the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization and is crucial for resolving trade disputes under the WTO," Bottemiller Evich noted.The Codex Commission is currently debating whether to impose residue limits on the controversial drug zilpaterol, marketed as "<a href="https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/patent-watch/2013-archive/patent-watch-april-15-2013.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">beef-improvement technology</a>" that is primarily used to promote growth in cattle.Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union, told Politico that the Trump administration's decision to place McKinney—former global corporate affairs director of the animal pharmaceutical giant Elanco—in charge of what is often called "<a href="http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2017/09/moving-codex-out-of-fsis-will-boost-trade-not-food-safety/#.WdJhRjlrxz8" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">the food code</a>" raises serious questions about "whether the U.S. will put even more pressure to make sure zilpaterol gets through."The European Union, China and other nations have insisted that zilpaterol—as well as ractopamine, a drug that promotes leanness and muscle growth in animals—is not safe for human or animal consumption and should not be used in food production. The U.S. approved the drug despite these concerns.While representatives of the food industry were quick to praise the Trump administration's decision to place the Codex office under the watch of a former corporate executive, Michael Taylor, former deputy commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration under former President Barack Obama, argued that the move had been undertaken with virtually no debate or discussion and that it "threatens the scientific credibility of the United States in Codex proceedings.""There has been no dialogue on this proposal with the broad food safety community and no explanation from USDA of the problem the proposed reorganization solves," Taylor said.The Trump administration's decision, Taylor concluded, could ultimately lower food safety standards, which would lead to "significant negative consequences in Africa and other developing regions."</div></div></div><div>
</div><div></div></div>trump? gop? wants to insert TPP into reboot of nafta?!corps will be able to use extra-judicial ct/panel to sue on climate restrictionscits shd be able to sue too, to force enforcement of law/agreementold nafta get big squeeze out small farmers, endanger food safety an climateeven when labor and envir included not enforeceablejosh iatp.org 25 yrs of research  josh wise <a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/rising-up-with-sonali-august-18-2017/">https://kpfa.org/episode/rising-up-with-sonali-august-18-2017/</a><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trade-nominees-meat-growth-hormones-2467602005.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/trade-nominees-meat-growth-hormones-2467602005.html</a>...Gregg Doud, who was <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/16/president-donald-j-trump-announces-key-additions-his-administration" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word;">nominated </a>for the top agricultural trade position by President Trump last month, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3902830-Doud-Paper.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word;">authored a paper</a> in 2013 arguing that the U.S. should "absolutely" walk away from trade talks with the EU if it refused to drop restrictions on U.S. meat imports.Doud previously spent eight years working for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA)—a powerful lobby group that has identified Brexit as an opportunity to lift UK restrictions on the import of beef reared with substances that increase animal growth rate—such as hormones and <a href="http://newsroom.unl.edu/announce/beef/2563/14863" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word;">beta agonists</a>.Energydesk can further reveal that Trump's nominee for the new role of undersecretary of trade at the U.S. department of agriculture, Ted McKinney, is a former director at Elanco Animal Health—a major manufacturer of growth hormones and beta agonists.During last week's visit to Washington, Fox downplayed the significance of U.S. meat exports to any future trade deal between the UK and U.S.But some U.S. trade experts believe that getting rid of barriers preventing the export of U.S. beef, pork and chicken will be a red line for the U.S. in any negotiations.Speaking to Energydesk, Daniel Pearson, a senior fellow in trade policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, said that a post-Brexit deal will not happen if the UK is not willing to drop restrictions:"The agriculture community here can prevent a UK-U.S. agreement from happening and probably would unless there's some significant progress on those issues. I can't see the Farm Bureau and the commodity organizations being willing to say yes, let's do a deal with the UK under the same terms that we have with the European Union."
<a id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1460735741210_55018" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank" href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Haji7ibYcT9xnTYFWESVwXOt3%2Bp5Ok8U">ALEC Touted "Transparency" in Pushing for the Panama Free Trade Agreement</a>

            <br />
            <a id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1460735741210_55017" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GJlcxmIs2Dp%2FHZK5qg3d63Ot3%2Bp5Ok8U">By Jessica Mason</a>

— An unprecedented leak of millions of documents has revealed how some

of the world's most powerful figures hide their wealth from taxation and

public scrutiny.

            <br />
            <a rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=e1fVSmw5eV5nQ9tQLODozXOt3%2Bp5Ok8U">Read more >></a></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">==</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/look-future-how-tpp-could-create-environmental-nightmares">http://www.alternet.org/environment/look-future-how-tpp-could-create-environmental-nightmares</a></span></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">he air was hazy from distant wildfires on August 29 when a gift arrived on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in southeast Montana. Carvers from the Lummi Tribe in Washington state brought a totem pole as a sign of support for those fighting the Otter Creek project, a proposed strip mine and rail spur on the Northern Cheyenne Tribe’s traditional lands.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">At a ceremony marking the pole’s arrival, ranchers, whose families have been on the land for generations, and tribal members, whose families go back even further, joined together to speak of the sacredness of the land and water, and of their duty to protect this inheritance for generations to come</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The new mine would extract around 1.3 billion tons of coal.<b>&nbsp;Arch Coal&nbsp;</b>and its partners would blast a new rail spur through hills, across ranches, and along the Tongue River to connect the mine to the Burlington Northern main line. Open train cars would carry coal to a proposed export terminal to be built on the Lummi Tribe’s traditional lands. From there, the coal could be shipped to Asia; burning it would emit billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Although some welcome the jobs associated with this project, thousands—from southeast Montana to the Pacific coast—have expressed opposition, citing concerns about pollution, noise, impacts on fisheries, and climate change.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But local leaders who resist mining, fracking, and pipelines face a gauntlet of challenges. The people of Denton, Texas, for example, overwhelmingly adopted a fracking ban, even though opponents outspent them nearly 10 to 1. But then the Texas legislature overturned their ban with a law that preempts local ordinances like Denton’s.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Even when local leaders get state and national support, corporations can still have the last word. Provisions in many trade agreements, including NAFTA, allow foreign corporations to sue governments for lost profits. According to Manuel Pérez-Rocha, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, these investor-state dispute settlement provisions are increasingly pitting governments against foreign mining or drilling companies in front of trade panels made up of three attorneys empowered to make decisions that supersede local, state, and federal law.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Here’s one example</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">: In 2009, the Canadian-based Pacific Rim mining company (now owned by Australian-based OceanaGold) sued </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">El Salvador</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">for refusing to allow the company to mine for gold. El Salvador had banned the project due to widespread water contamination. The lawsuit demands $300 million from the small, impoverished country. Even if El Salvador prevails, it will be out millions of dollars in legal costs, according to Pérez-Rocha.&nbsp;</span></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Now that the text has been officially released, we know that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would extend this sort of investor-state provision to countries that represent 40 percent of the global economy.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">How would this apply to the Otter Creek dispute? Because Arch Coal is a U.S. corporation, Pérez-Rocha told me, it could not sue under investor-state provisions, unless the company sold out to a foreign company based in one of the countries covered by one of these trade agreements. As shown by the El Salvador case, that kind of buyout is not unusual, Pérez-Rocha says.</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span id="amzn_assoc_ad_div_sns1_0" style="line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></span></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The TPP and other global trade pacts take away the power of governments to protect the environment. As I’ve traveled across the United States, visiting reservations, hollowed-out rust belt cities, and farming towns, I’ve met people working to combat climate change and racial exclusion, and to rebuild local food systems and economies. I believe that work represents our best shot at navigating the crises now unfolding around us. Instead of making global laws that increase the power of giant corporations, our policies should support people in communities everywhere who are building a better world.</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">==</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">==</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4"><font style="line-height: 19.5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman">Prakash was the lead orator in May 2003 when US Trade Representative&nbsp;<a href="http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php?title=Robert_Zoellick&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Robert Zoellick (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Robert Zoellick</a>&nbsp;announced the US's intention to file a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php?title=World_Trade_Organization&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="World Trade Organization (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">World Trade Organization</a>&nbsp;case against the European Union over its "illegal five-year moratorium on approving agricultural biotech products</font><font style="line-height: 19.5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" face="Times New Roman">"<sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference"><a href="http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/CS_Prakash#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[9]</a></sup>. &nbsp;GMO</font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">==</font></font></p><h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Picking Apart One of the Biggest Lies in American Politics: 'Free Trade'</font></font></h1><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/economy/picking-apart-one-biggest-lies-american-politics-free-trade">http://www.alternet.org/economy/picking-apart-one-biggest-lies-american-politics-free-trade</a></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 1992, Ross Perot won almost 20% of the entire presidential vote on the single issue of stopping so-called “free trade.” Today, several presidential candidates are gaining huge traction with similar opposition to NAFTA, CAFTA, and the upcoming Southern Hemisphere Asian Free Trade Agreement (</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">SHAFTA</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, now called the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP).&nbsp;</span></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Time has proven Perot right, and his arguments were consistent with a long history of American industrial success prior to the “free trade” era of the past 30+ years. &nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Our radical experiment of so-called “free trade” has clearly failed America, although few Americans know why or how. Here’s the back-story.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">George Washington on “Made In America” goods</font></strong></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On April 14, 1789, George Washington was out walking through the fields at Mount Vernon, his home in Virginia, when Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress, rode up on horseback. Thomson had a letter for Washington from the president pro-tempore of the new, constitutionally created United States Senate, telling Washington he’d just been elected president and the inauguration was set for April 30 in the nation’s capital, New York City.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This created two problems for Washington.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The first was saying goodbye to his 82-year-old mother, which the 57-year-old Washington did that night. She gave him her blessing, and told him it was the last time he’d see her alive as she was gravely ill. She died before he returned from New York.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The second was finding a suit of clothes made in America. For that, he sent a courier to his old friend and fellow general from the American Revolutionary War, Henry Knox. &nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Washington couldn’t find a suit made in America because in the years prior to the American Revolution, the British East India Company (whose tea was thrown into Boston Harbor by outraged colonists after the Tea Act of 1773 gave the world’s largest transnational corporation a giant tax break) controlled the manufacture and transportation of a whole range of goods, including fine clothing. &nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Cotton and wool could be grown and sheared in the colonies, but had to be sent to England to be manufactured into clothing.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This was a routine policy for England, and is why until India achieved its independence in 1947, Mahatma Gandhi (who was assassinated a year later) illegally sat with his spinning wheel for his lectures and spun daily in his own home. It was, like his Salt March, a protest against the colonial practices of England and an entreaty to his fellow Indians to make their own clothes to gain independence from British companies and institutions.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Fortunately for George Washington, an American clothing company had been established on April 28, 1783, in Hartford, Connecticut by a man named Daniel Hinsdale, and they produced high-quality woolen and cotton clothing, and also made things from imported silk.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It was to Hinsdale’s company that Knox turned, and helped Washington get – in time for his inauguration two weeks later – a nice, but not excessively elegant, brown American-made suit. (He wore British black later for the celebrations and the most famous painting.)&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">When Washington became president in 1789, most of America’s personal and industrial products of any significance were manufactured in England or in its colonies.&nbsp; Washington asked his first Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, what could be done about that, and Hamilton came up with an 11-point plan to build American manufacturing, which he presented to Congress in 1791. &nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">By 1793, most of its points had either been made into law by Congress or formulated into policy by either Washington or the various states.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Those strategic proposals built the greatest industrial powerhouse the world had ever seen, and were only abandoned, after more than 200 successful years, during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, and Bill Clinton (and remain abandoned to this day, as President Obama prepares to further expand “free trade”). &nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">China, instead of following our recent path, implemented most of Hamilton’s plan, and it brought about a remarkable transformation of that nation in just a single generation.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Hamilton’s 11-point plan for “American Manufactures” laid out how to do it (it’s at the end of this article).</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">He looked at the nation and determined what needed to be done to rebuild the country after the Revolutionary War had devastated it, and subservience to England’s Tudor Plan “free trade” policies had left us without any significant domestic industrial base.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The High Cost of “Free Trade”</font></strong></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">During the 1930s, none of the “Asian powerhouse economies” had adopted Hamilton’s industrialization strategies, so when Franklin Roosevelt put money into worker’s pockets through the New Deal and they bought toys or clothes or radios, all of those items were made in Alabama or Connecticut or Michigan.&nbsp; Now they’re made in China, which experienced a “labor shortage” in 2009 causing its average wage to increase to $1.14 an hour from eighty cents, and its economy to grow by over 8 percent.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">China has been following the lead of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea during the past half century, and has become an industrial powerhouse as a result.&nbsp; And, ironically, each of those countries got their strategy from us: George Washington’s Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, proposed it in 1791, and by 1793 most of the parts of his Report on the Subject of Manufactures had been instituted as a series of legislative and policy steps.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">And it didn’t start with Hamilton; he was just building on King Henry VII’s “Tudor Plan” of 1485, which turned England from a backwater state with raw wool as its chief export into a major developed state which produced fine clothing and other textile products from wool. &nbsp;</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman" size="4">King Henry VII accomplished this by severely restricting the export of wool from England with high export tariffs and restricting the import of finished wool products with high import tariffs.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman" size="4">King Henry learned this from the Dutch.&nbsp; They copied the Romans.&nbsp; And the Romans got it from the Greeks, three thousand years ago.&nbsp; It’s not new, and it’s not rocket science.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Nonetheless, President Obama continues to follow his predecessors – Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush – in the religious belief that “free trade” will save us all.&nbsp; It’s nonsense. “Free trade" is a guaranteed ticket to the poorhouse for any nation, and the evidence is overwhelming.&nbsp; (Ironically, the concept of “free trade” was introduced by Henry VII in 1487 as something that England should encourage other countries to do while it maintained protectionism.&nbsp; It was invented as a scam.)</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A more contemporary example of the application of the wisdom of trade protectionism can be seen in South Korea.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In the 1960s, Korea was an undeveloped nation whose major exports were human hair (for wigs) and fish, and their average annual income was around $400 per working family.&nbsp; Today it’s a major industrial power with an average annual per capita income of over $32,000, and it beats the US in its rate of college attendance, exports, and lifespan.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">South Korea did all this in a single generation by closing its economy and promoting its export industries. A decade earlier Japan had done the same thing.&nbsp;Forty years earlier Germany had done it.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In July, 2009, with no evident irony or understanding of how South Korea went about becoming a modern economic powerhouse, President Obama lectured the countries of Africa during his visit to Ghana.&nbsp;As the New York Times reported: “Mr. Obama said that when his father came to the United States, his home country of Kenya had an economy as large as that of South Korea per capita.&nbsp; Today, he noted, Kenya remains impoverished and politically unstable, while South Korea has become an economic powerhouse.”</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In the same day’s newspaper, the lead editorial, titled “Tangled Trade Talks,” repeated the essence of the mantra of its confused op-ed writer, Thomas L. Friedman, that so-called “free trade” is the solution to a nation’s economic ills.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“There are few things that could do more damage to the already battered global economy than an old-fashioned trade war,” Friedman opined in the Times.&nbsp;“So we have been increasingly worried by the protectionist rhetoric and policies being espoused by politicians across the globe and in this country.”&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But South Korea did not ride the “free trade” train to success.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang details South Korea’s economic ascent in his 2008 book Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In 1961, South Korea was as poor as Kenya, with an $82 per capita annual income and many obstacles to economic strength.&nbsp; The country’s main exports were primary commodities such as tungsten, fish, and human hair for wigs.&nbsp;That’s how the Korean technology giant, Samsung, started—by exporting fish, fruits and vegetables. Today, it’s the world’s largest conglomerate by revenue ($173 billion in 2008). By throwing out “free trade” and embracing “protectionism” during the 1960s, South Korea managed to do in 50 years what it took the United States 100 years and Britain 150 years to do.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">After a military coup in 1961, General Park Chung-hee implemented short-term plans for South Korea’s economic development.&nbsp; He instituted the Heavy and Chemical Industrialization program, and South Korea’s first steel mill and modern shipyard went into production.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In addition, South Korea began producing its own cars and used import tariffs to discourage imports.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Electronics, machinery, chemicals plants soon followed, all sponsored or subsidized and tariff-protected by the government.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Between 1972 and 1979 the per capita income grew over 5 times – more than 500 percent!&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In addition, South Korean citizens adopted new protectionist slogans.&nbsp; For example, it was viewed as civic duty to shame anyone caught smoking foreign cigarettes.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">All money made from exports went into developing domestic South Korean industry.&nbsp; South Korea enacted import bans, high tariffs and excise taxes on thousands of products.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In the 80’s South Korea was still far from the industrialized West but it had built a solid middle class.&nbsp;South Korea’s transformation was, to quote Chang, as if “Haiti had turned into Switzerland.”&nbsp;This transformation was accomplished through protecting fledgling industries with high tariffs and subsides, and only gradually opening itself to global completion.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In addition, the South Korean government heavily subsidized many of the larger industries at startup, at least until they were globally competitive. The government carefully regulated the banks and therefore the credit.&nbsp; It controlled foreign exchange and used its currency reserves to import machinery and industrial imports.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">At the same time, the South Korean government tightly controlled foreign investment in that nation.&nbsp; Korea focused on exporting basic manufactured goods to fuel and protect its high-tech industries with tariffs and subsides.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Had South Korea adopted the “free trade” policies espoused by Friedman and the New York Times, it would still be exporting fish.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Another favorite Freidman free-trade example is the success of Toyota’s Lexus luxury car, immortalized in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But again, the reality is quite different than what Friedman naively portrays in his book.&nbsp; In fact, Japan subsidized Toyota not only in its development but even after it failed terribly in the American markets in the late 1950’s.&nbsp; In addition, early in Toyota’s development, Japan kicked out foreign competitors like GM.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Thus, because the Japanese government financed Toyota at a loss for roughly 20 years, built high tariff and other barriers to competitive imports, and initially subsidized exports, auto manufacturing was able to get a strong foothold and we now think of Japanese exports being synonymous with automobiles.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Founding Father Knows Best</font></strong></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">For about 200 years, we understood well the benefits of tariffs, subsidized exports and protectionist policies in the United States.&nbsp;Had the fathers of the United States like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Andrew Jackson or Ulysses Grant applied for IMF loans, they would have been denied: All of them believed in high tariffs and a heavy control of foreign investment, and considered “free trade” to be absurd.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But it was another Founding Father—Alexander Hamilton—who knew best how to spawn American industry to make the country independent and competitive. As the nation’s first Treasury Secretary, Hamilton submitted his Report on the Subject of Manufactures in 1791 to the US Congress, outlining the need for our government to foster new industries through “bounties” (subsidies) and subsequently protect them from foreign imports until they become globally competitive.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Additionally, he proposed a roadmap for American industrial development.&nbsp; These steps included protective tariffs on imports, import bans, subsides, export bans on selected materials, and the development of product standards.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It was this approach of putting America first that our government followed for most of our history, with average tariffs of 30 percent through the 19th and 20th centuries. There is no denying that it helped turn America into an industrial and economic juggernaut in the mid-20th century and beyond.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman" size="4">The three periods when we radically dropped tariffs – for three years in 1857, for nine years in 1913, and by Reagan in 1987 – were all followed by economic disasters, particularly for small American manufacturers.</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman" size="4">The post-Reagan era has been particularly destructive to our economy because not only did we mostly eliminate the tariffs, but we became “free trade” proponents on the international stage. After Reagan blew out our tariffs in the 1980s, and Clinton kicked the door totally open with GATT, NAFTA, and the WTO, our average tariffs are now around 2 percent.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">And the predictable result has been the hemorrhaging of American manufacturing capacity to those countries that do protect their industries through high import tariffs but allow exports on the cheap – particularly China and South Korea.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The irony is that we have abandoned Hamilton’s advice—and our own history—while China, South Korea, Japan and other nations are following his prescriptions and turning into muscular and prosperous economic entities.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It’s high time we re-learned Alexander Hamilton’s lessons for our nation.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The first third of Hamilton’s report deals with Jefferson’s objections to it (withdrawn later) which were primarily over the subsidies to industry as Jefferson favored America being an agricultural rather than an industrial power in 1791. After that, though, Hamilton gets to the rationale for, and the details of, his 11-point plan to turn America into an industrial power and build a strong manufacturing-based middle class.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">First, Hamilton notes that real wealth doesn’t exist until somebody makes something. A “service economy” is an oxymoron – if I wash your car in exchange for your mowing my lawn, money is moving around, it’s an “economy” of some sort, but no real and lasting wealth is created.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Only through manufacturing, when $5 worth of iron ore is converted into a $2000 car door, or $1 worth of raw wool is converted into a $1000 suit, is real wealth created. Hamilton also notes that people being paid for creating wealth (manufacturing) creates wages, which are the principal engine of demand, which drives an economy. And both come from a generally protectionist foreign trade policy.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In an early version of Keynes, Hamilton noted that when people make things, they also earn money, which will be used to buy more things, thus creating a real internal domestic economy with things of real value circulating in it.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In addition, Hamilton saw a clear government role in fostering manufacturing, not just in subsidizing it until it could compete on its own, but also in crafting a foreign trade policy that protected American enterprises.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“‘Tis for the United States to consider by what means they can render themselves least dependent,” of other nation’s manufactures, Hamilton wrote, “on the combinations, right or wrong, of foreign policy.”</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But there were many voices in 1791 – the loudest being the young Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson – who argued that instead of becoming an industrial power we should remain an agricultural nation.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Hamilton believed both were possible, and there would even be a desirable synergy between the two. He felt that if America wanted to be competitive, it couldn’t just leave it to the so-called free market.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Government ought to play a role in fostering a strong industrial base, he argued: “To produce the desirable changes, as early as may be expedient, may therefore require the incitement and patronage of government.”&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In fact, Hamilton believed success was not possible without government. “To be enabled to contend with success, it is evident that the interference and aid of their own government are indispensable,” he wrote.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">His reasons were pretty straightforward: it would take government’s power to set up a playing field for the game of business where investors who would otherwise be able to make more money overseas would keep their money in the United States.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“There are weighty inducements [in my plan] to prefer the employment of capital at home even at less profit, to an investment of it abroad, though with greater gain,” he wrote.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Having provided this overview, Hamilton got right to the meat of the matter – his 11-step plan (see end of article). It called for government to take an active role in developing its own industry, in discouraging imports through tariffs and prohibitions, in building transportation routes at home for internal trade, and in subsidizing manufacturing until companies become strong enough to compete on their own.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Consider the historical impact of Hamilton’s plan, which was adopted in a series of piecemeal legislative and executive action steps mostly by 1793: Tariffs became so important that they constituted pretty much the only source of revenue for the federal government until the Civil War, were the single largest source of federal revenue from then until World War I. And even when government had grown exponentially as we led up to World War II, fully a third of all federal revenues came from tariffs.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It is only since the Reagan era and subsequently with Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama, that we have forsaken tariffs and have been chanting the “free trade” mantra—to our own detriment and destruction. A protectionist approach, including tariffs, is what the USA needs so it can get back in the game of manufacturing—before it’s too late.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">How badly Reaganism and “free trade” have damaged us</font></strong></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">When Ronald Reagan came into office, as the result of 190 years of Hamilton’s plan, the United States was the world’s largest importer of raw materials; the world’s largest exporter of finished, manufactured goods; and the world’s largest creditor. &nbsp;</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After 34 years of Reaganomics, we’ve completely flipped this upside down.&nbsp; We’ve become the world’s largest exporter of raw materials, the world’s largest importer of finished goods, and the world’s largest debtor</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> We now export raw materials to China, and buy from them manufactured goods.&nbsp; And we borrow from them to do it.&nbsp; Our trade debt right now stands at over $11 trillion, and it’s the principle reason why one-seventh of all assets in the United States are foreign-owned.&nbsp;</span></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">China’s 2009 “stimulus package” – about the same size as ours at around $800 billion – could explicitly only be spent on Chinese-made products from Chinese-owned companies employing only Chinese workers.&nbsp; Ditto for the 2009 Japanese version of “Cash for Clunkers,” which mandated the purchase of exclusively Japanese-made cars. &nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Here’s how we can unwind the damage Reagan and Clinton did to our nation:</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">First, go back to charging an import tax – a tariff – on goods made overseas that compete with domestic manufacturers, while keeping import taxes low on raw materials that domestic industries need.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It has become unfashionable in the post-Reagan era to talk about tariffs. &nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">An easy way of explaining tariffs is to say, “If there’s a dollar’s worth of labor in a pair of shoes manufactured in the United States, and you can make the same pair of shoes with twenty cents worth of labor in China, then we’re going to charge you an eighty-cent tariff when those shoes are imported into the United States. If you can make them with fifty cents of labor in Mexico, then our import tariff from Mexico is fifty cents.”&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In short, import duties are used to equalize manufacturing costs and protect domestic industries.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">And the tariffs’ equalizing effects shouldn’t just be limited to labor.&nbsp; Products from other countries where toxic chemicals can just be poured into rivers (eventually ending up in the oceans we all share) instead of being more expensively disposed of or recycled, should be assessed a tariff to reflect that environmental cost.&nbsp; The same should apply to the way they generate their electricity (for example, using old coal-fired power plants that belch toxins into our air) to manufacture parts for the products. &nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Second, pull us out of the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, and the rest, and mandate that all purchases made with US taxpayers’ dollars be spent on goods and services provided by American workers employed by US-domiciled and incorporated businesses on American soil. No exceptions. (No more hiring Dubai-based Halliburton, for example.)</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Third, have the government support new and emerging industries through tax policy, direct grants, and funding things like the National Institutes of Health, which funds most university research that leads to profitable new drugs for our pharmaceutical companies.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In Japan, it’s the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MITI) which helped develop the Lexus so beloved by Thomas Friedman. There is no shame in subsidizing our own companies—as long as they show their loyalty to the U.S. by employing American workers, investing in American enterprises, and not engaging in international business ventures that hurt America.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Then there are other tax incentives and domestic policies to pursue that will benefit the creation of jobs at home. Encourage Americans to save, so there’s a strong pool of investment capital for businesses to borrow against and grow – the best way to do this is to offer people an above-the-inflation-rate interest rate on savings. &nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This could easily be accomplished by offering US government savings bonds with a guaranteed rate of return (for example, inflation plus 3 points) and limiting their purchase to people who have a net worth of less than $5 million and selling no more than $1 million per person.&nbsp; This would establish a benchmark against which banks would have to compete, stimulating private banks and credit unions to offer higher returns on savings.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">These are bold moves, no doubt, for any president or pa“Free Trade” Isn’t Free and Doesn’t Workrty to make, but they do have the advantage of pleasing the Tea Party populists as well as the Coffee Party progressive populists.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Of course, such protectionist policies would not sit well with some of the multinational conglomerates, whose loyalty is not to America, but only to their investors and shareholders. A lot of them manufacture products in China or Vietnam and sell them here at a huge profit without giving a damn about the consequences of these actions to American workers.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">But if we want to “bring our jobs back home to America,” as politicians keep saying, all we need do is repudiate Reaganism and so-called “free trade” and go back to what George Washington and Alexander Hamilton worked out in 1791 that served our country so well until Reagan and Clinton dismantled them in the 1980s and 1990s.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Footnote:&nbsp; Here is part of Alexander Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures” 11-point plan to build America, submitted to Congress in 1791 and largely instituted in a variety of ways by Congress and the George Washington administration by 1793.&nbsp; It stood in large part and built American industry from 1793 until the Reagan Revolution, and is now (in more modern forms, including using VAT taxes as functional tariffs, and “national security” as a form of “prohibition”) the principle trade policy for countries like China, Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan:&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A full view having now been taken of the inducements to the promotion of manufactures in the United States, accompanied with an examination of the principal objections which are commonly urged in opposition, it is proper, in the next place, to consider the means by which it may be effected. In order to a better judgment of the means proper to be resorted to by the United States, it will be of use to advert to those which have been employed with success in other countries. The principal of these are:</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>1. Protecting duties or duties on those foreign articles which are the rivals of the domestic ones intended to be encouraged.</strong><br />Duties of this nature evidently amount to a virtual bounty on the domestic fabrics; since, by enhancing the charges on foreign articles, they enable the, national manufacturers to undersell ;all their foreign competitors. It has the additional recommendation of being a resource of revenue. Indeed, all tile duties imposed on imported articles, though with an exclusive view to revenue, have the effect, in contemplation, and, except where they fill on raw materials, wear a beneficent aspect towards the manufacturers of the country.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>2. Prohibitions of rival articles, or duties equivalent to prohibitions.</strong><br />This is another and an efficacious means of encouraging national manufactures; Of duties equivalent to prohibitions, there are examples in the laws of the United States, but they are not numerous. It might almost be said, by the principles of distributive justice; certainly, by the duty of endeavoring to secure to their own citizens a reciprocity of advantages.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>3. Prohibitions of the exportation of the Materials of Manufactures.</strong><br />The desire of securing a cheap and plentiful supply for the national workmen, and where the article is either peculiar to tile country, or of peculiar quality there, the jealousy of enabling foreign workmen to rival those of the nation with its own materials, are the leading motives to this species of regulation.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It is seen at once, that its immediate operation is to abridge the demand, and keep down the price of the produce of some other branch of industry -generally speaking, of agriculture-to the prejudice of those who carry it on; and though, if it be really essential to the prosperity of any very important national manufacture, it may happen that those who are injured, in the first instance, may, be, eventually, indemnified by the superior steadiness of an extensive domestic market, depending on that prosperity; yet, in a matter in which there is so much room for nice and difficult combinations, in which, such opposite considerations combat each other, prudence seems to dictate that the expedient in question ought to be indulged with a sparing hand.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>4. Pecuniary bounties [Support Payments].</strong><br />This has been found one of the most efficacious means of encouraging manufactures, and is, in some views, the best. Though it has not yet been practised upon by the Government of the United States (unless the allowance on the expiration of dried and pickled fish and salted meat could be considered as a bounty), and though it is less favored by public opinion than some other modes, its advantages are these:</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A. It is a species of encouragement more positive and direct than any other, and, for that very reason, has a more immediate tendency to stimulate and uphold new enterprises, increasing the chances of profit, and diminishing the risks of loss, in the first attempts.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">B. It avoids the inconvenience of a temporary augmentation of price, which is incident to some other modes; or it produces it to, a less degree, either by making no addition to the charges on the rival foreign article, as in the case of protecting duties, or by making a smaller addition. The first happens when the fund for the bounty is derived from a different object (which may or may not increase the price of some other article, according to the nature of that object), the second, when the fund is derived from the same, or a similar object, of foreign manufacture.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">One per cent duty on the foreign article, converted into a bounty on the domestic, will have an equal effect with a duty of two per cent., exclusive of such bounty; and the price of the foreign commodity is liable to be raised, in the one case, in the proportion of one per cent; in the other in that of two per cent. Indeed the bounty, when drawn from another source, is calculated to promote a reduction of price; because, without laying any new charge on the foreign article, it serves to introduce a competition with it, and to increase the total quantity of the article in the market.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">C. Bounties have not, like high protecting duties, a tendency to produce scarcity.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">D. Bounties are, sometimes, not only the best, but the only proper expedient for uniting the encouragement of a new object.<br />The true way to conciliate these two interests is to lay a duty on foreign manufactures of the material, the growth of which is desired to be encouraged, and to apply the produce of that duty, by way of bounty, either upon the production of the material itself, or upon its manufacture at home, or upon both.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Pecuniary bounties are, in most cases, indispensable to the introduction of a new branch. Bounties are especially essential in regard to articles upon which those foreigners, who have been accustomed to supply a country, are in the practice of granting them.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The continuance of bounties on manufactures long established, must almost always be of questionable policy: because a presumption would arise, in every such case, that there were natural and inherent impediments to success. But, in new undertakings, they are as justifiable as they are oftentimes necessary.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>5. Premiums.&nbsp;</strong>These are of a nature allied to bounties, though distinguishable from them in some important features. Bounties are applicable to the whole quantity of an article produced, or manufactured, or exported, and involve a correspondent expense. Premiums serve to reward some particular excellence or superiority, some extraordinary exertion or skill, and are dispensed only in a small number of cases. But their effect is to stimulate general effort;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>6. The exemption of the materials of manufactures from duty.</strong><br />The policy of that exemption, as a general rule, particularly in reference to new establishments, is obvious. Of a nature, hearing some affinity to that policy, is the regulation which exempts from duty the tools and implements, as well as the books, clothes, and household furniture, of foreign artists, who come to reside in the United States-an advantage already secured to them by the laws of the Union, and which it is, in every view, proper to continue.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>7. Drawbacks of the duties which are imposed on the materials of manufactures.</strong><br />Such drawbacks are familiar in countries which systematically pursue the business of manufactures; which furnishes an argument for the observance of a similar policy in the United States; and the idea has been adopted by the laws of the Union, in the instances of salt and molasses. It is believed that it will be found advantageous to extend it to some other articles.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>8. The encouragement of new intentions and discoveries at home, and of the introduction into the United States of such as may have been made in other countries; particularly, those which relate to machinery.</strong><br />This is among the most useful and unexceptionable of the aids which can be given to manufactures. The usual means of that encouragement are pecuniary rewards, and, for a time, exclusive privileges. The first must be employed, according to the occasion, and the utility of the invention or discovery. For the last, so far w respects " authors and inventors," provision has been made by law. It is customary with manufacturing nations to prohibit, under severe penalties, the exportation of implements and machines, which they have either invented or improved. As far as prohibitions tend to prevent foreign competitors from deriving the benefit of the improvements made at home, they tend to increase the advantages of those by whom they may have been introduced, and operate as an encouragement to exertion.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>9. Judicious regulations for the inspection of manufactured commodities [Consumer Protections]</strong>.<br />This is not among the least important of the means by which the prosperity of manufactures may be promoted. It is, indeed, in many cases, one of the most essential. Contributing to prevent frauds upon consumers at home, and exporters to foreign countries; to improve the quality, and preserve the character of the national manufactures…</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>10. The facilitating of pecuniary remittances from place to place [Banking] --</strong><br />A general circulation of bank paper, which is to be expected from the institution lately established, will be a most valuable mean to this end.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>11. The facilitating of the transportation of commodities [Infrastructure].</strong><br />There is, perhaps, scarcely any thing which has been better calculated to assist the manufacturers of Great Britain, than the melioration of the public roads of that kingdom,&nbsp; and the great progress which has been of late made in opening canals. Of the former, the United States stand much in need;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">These examples, it is to be hoped, will stimulate the exertions of the Government and citizens of every State. There can certainly be no object more worthy of the cares of the local administrations; and it were to be wished that there was no doubt of the power of the National Government to lend its direct aid on a comprehensive plan.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This is one of those improvements which could be prosecuted with more efficacy by the whole, than by any part or parts of the Union. "Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of a country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighborhood of the town. They are, upon that account, the greatest of all improvement."&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It may confidently be affirmed, that there is scarcely any thing which has been devised, better calculated to excite a general spirit of improvement, than the institutions of this nature. The are truly invaluable.&nbsp;In countries where there is great private wealth, much may be effected by the voluntary contributions of patriotic individuals; but in a community situated like that of the United States, the public purse must supply the deficiency of private resource. In what can it be so useful, as in prompting and improving the efforts of industry?</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">All which is humbly submitted,</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ALEXANDER HAMILTON,</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Secretary of the Treasury</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">i From Our Country, published in 1877 by Benson J. Lossing,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/Our_Country_vol_2/georgewas_bfb.html%C2%A0" style="">http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/Our_Country_vol_2/georgewas_b...</a>&nbsp;<span class="print-footnote">[3]</span></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ii Washington’s American Made Inaugural Clothes, by Rosemary E. Bachelor, published at Suite 101, and educational site,&nbsp;<a href="http://americanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/washingtons-american-made-inaugural-clothes%C2%A0" style="">http://americanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/washingtons-american-mad...</a>&nbsp;<span class="print-footnote">[4]</span></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">iii Defying Global Slump, China Has Labor Shortage By KEITH BRADSHER New York Times&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Published: February 26, 2010 “As American workers struggle with near double-digit unemployment, unskilled factory workers here in China’s industrial heartland are being offered signing bonuses.</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Factory wages have risen as much as 20 percent in recent months.”</font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">iv The New York Times, “Obama Wins More Food Aid but Presses African Nations on Corruption” by Peter Baker and Rachel Donadio, July 11, 2009.</font></font></p><div class="bio-new body_economy" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-bio"><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://www.thomhartmann.com/" style="">Thom Hartmann</a>&nbsp;<span class="print-footnote">[5]</span>&nbsp;is an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest book is "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Crash-2016-Destroy-America/dp/0446584835" style="">The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America — and What We Can Do to Stop It.</a>&nbsp;<span class="print-footnote">[6]</span>"</font></font></p></div></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">==</font></font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">

http://www.prwatch.org/node/326http://www.prwatch.org/files/pdfs/prwatch/prwv8n4.pdfTerrorism as Pretext by Sheldon Rampton References to Pearl Harbor prevailed during the first days following the terrorist attacks of September 11. President Bush joined a chain of pundits and government officials in warning that the “war on terrorism” would be prolonged and difficult like World War II and would require similar sacrifices. Whatever those sacrifices may entail, however, the public relations industry is determined to ensure that they do not include wartime frugality. “PR Needed to Keep Consumers Spending,” proclaimed a headline in O’Dwyer’s PR Online on September 24. It cited marketing and PR executive Maureen Lippe’s opinion that the “greatest service PR pros can provide in support of the country is to ensure that the consumer continues to buy.” The world’s largest public relations firms all have offices in New York and Washington, D.C., and their employees felt the same shock, horror and confusion as the rest of the country when airplanes slammed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Public relations pros joined other volunteers in disaster relief efforts and in raising money for assisting the survivors. America’s home-grown propaganda machine nearly ground to a halt for several days as PR firms advised their clients to hold off for awhile on product launches, news releases and story pitches to reporter...• U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick used the September 11 tragedy to call for fast-track negotiating authority to help President Bush expand the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) into a Free Trade Area of the Americas. “Trade is about more than economic efficiency,” he wrote in the Washington Post. “It promotes the values at the heart of this protracted struggle.” In a September 24 speech before th... The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) used the terror attacks as a pretext to demand that the U.S. Supreme Court override a Clinton Administration decision blocking drilling for oil and natural gas in Montana. “The terrible tragedy of exactly one month ago and the uncertainty as to the reliability of foreign supplies make clear the importance of the United States developing its domestic natural resources,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents the IPAA. • The San Diego-based SureBeam Corporation took the opportunity to promote its food irradiation technology as a way to kill anthrax — even though it would take years and untold millions, if not billions, to install irradiation equipment in post offices throughout the United States. Worse yet, “SureBeam has made these claims without any supporting scientific evidence that the company’s ‘electron-beam’ irradiation equipment is capable of killing the anthrax bacteria or its spores,” observed a Public Citizen news release. “In fact, radiation is ineffective against anthrax spores, called ‘endospores,’ which are surrounded by numerous thick layers of material including protein and calcium.” • The Cato Institute, a libertarian, corporate-funded think tank in Washington, DC, used September 11 as... [guns on planes]
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BM:

Selling NAFTA

In 1990 the Mexican government hired B-M to sell NAFTA to the American public, media and politicians. B-M subcontracted this job to one of its subsidiaries, The Brock Group (TBG), a consulting firm that has done work for American Express, Bell Atlantic, Bacardi, Toyota and the Taiwanese government. TBG is headed by former senator, Republican National Committee chairman, US trade representative and labor secretary William Brock. He was certainly qualified for the job. As US trade representative, Brock engineered the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement, and began the negotiations that would eventually culminate in the signing of the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement.

William Brock co-chairs the Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTN) Coalition, which was founded in 1990 to 'educate' the public-- and lobby for--the now-completed Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The coalition's members include American Express, General Motors, IBM, General Electric, Cargill, Citicorp, Procter & Gamble and other companies and trade associations. According to Malaysian activist Martin Khor Kok Peng, the MTN Coalition had a big influence on the 1990 G-7 Summit meeting held in Houston, USA, in which GATT figured prominently. At the Houston Summit, MTN held a high- profile press conference and released a report by an 'eminent persons group' on world trade.

The Contra Connection

One of TBG's top executives happens to be former Miami businessman and ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich. During the Reagan administration, the Cuban-born Reich headed the US state department's Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), whose task was to disseminate disinformation about the Sandinistas and discourage reporting critical of the contras. This outfit, whose operations were later found to be illegal by the US General Accounting Office, was staffed with five psychological warfare specialists from the 4th Psychological Operations Group of Fort Bragg. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, "the OPD...helped spread a scurrilous story that some American reporters had received sexual favors from Sandinista prostitutes in return for writing slanted stories". In 1987, after the US Congress shut down the OPD, congressman Jack Brooks called it "an important cog in the (Reagan) administration's effort to manipulate public opinion and congressional action".

Interestingly enough, the OPD was conceived at an August 1983 meeting between then CIA director William Casey and a small group of PR industry executives. The meeting, whose purpose was to create a propaganda strategy for the Nicaraguan contras, was attended by B-M senior vice- president Kenneth D. Huszar and Philip Morris publicist James Bowling, who later moved to B-M. Their advice to Casey included the creation of a communications function within the White House, a recommendation that led to the creation of the OPD.

B-M, Mexico and the Neoliberal Project

B-M's success in insuring the passage of NAFTA encouraged the Mexican governing elite to retain the firm's services. It now has a luxurious office in the posh Colonia Anzures district on Mexico City that caters to customers like the Council of Businessmen, the National Stockbrokers' Association, the ministry of commerce and industrial development, and the Office of the President of the Republic. In addition to this, B-M parent Young & Rubicam rakes in over $100 million every year from Mexican clients. It is not an exaggeration to say that the credibility of the neoliberal project in the western hemisphere hinges on Mexico. Businessmen, politicians and neoliberal ideologues all over the hemisphere have touted Mexico as a symbol of capitalist success because of its privatization policy and its faithful adherence to the economic formulas prescribed by multilateral development banks (a.k.a. the Bretton Woods institutions). After the massive expenditure of political energy in getting NAFTA passed, business elites in both Mexico and the US are hard-pressed to put on a convincing performance in order to give credibility to future trade agreements. Bringing Guatemala and Chile into NAFTA has already become an agenda item.

However, neoliberal designs for Mexico are endangered by a series of crises, including the blatantly fraudulent elections of 1994, the embarassing collapse of the peso, revelations of drug-related corruption that compromise the Mexican elite all the way up to the president's office, a spate of political assassinations that seems to be beheading the ruling political party's leadership, and the popularity of the EjE9rcito Zapatista de LiberaciF3n Nacional (EZLN). B-M has a lot of work to do in Mexico. In the words of reporter Jon Reed, who investigated B-M's activities in Mexico, "Burson-Marsteller and other Mexican and transnational PR firms have demonstrated their effectiveness by working behind the scenes-- gauging public opinion, counseling government and corporate leaders, shaping media coverage, and facilitating elite-to-elite communications-- in short, guaranteeing that the inevitable upheavals in an authoritarian and unjust society do not interrupt business as usual".

Destroying Health Care

One of NAFTA's most nefarious consequences will be the dismantlement of Canada's government-run health care system. Since it places very strict limits on what domestic or foreign corporations can do, its more progressive features--such as compulsory licensing in order to control drug costs-- will eventually be challenged as barriers to trade. Once the Canadian system is gutted by NAFTA's notoriously secretive and undemocratic dispute resolution mechanisms, Canadian citizens will have no choice but to turn to the 'free market' for medical services and insurance.

However, American and Canadian pharmaceutical and insurance companies that want to crack open the Canadian market are frustrated by the fact that Canadians are very happy with their health care system. Worse yet, more and more Americans, especially in Vermont, are now calling for the introduction of single-payer health insurance in their country--a step in the direction of a Canadian-style system. This presents a grave problem for neoliberal demagogues, since it exposes the basic conflict between capitalism and democracy.

Enter Burson-Marsteller's health care unit, whose staff includes "a medical doctor/physician; former FDA (Food and Drug Administration) commissioner; former hospital administrator; former pharmaceutical communications executives; former non-profit communications chiefs; grassroots specialists, and former reporters" according to the senior editor of O'Dwyer's newsletter, which monitors the PR business.

B-M has plenty of experience in matters of public health. On behalf of client Philip Morris, B-M created the National Smokers' Alliance (NSA) to fight against smoking restrictions. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, the NSA "is a state-of-the-art campaign that uses full- page newspaper ads, direct telemarketing, paid canvassers, (toll free) numbers and newsletters to bring thousands of smokers into its ranks each week. By 1995 NSA claimed a membership of 3 million smokers". The NSA is headed by B-M vice-president Thomas Humber and its members include B-M executives Pierre Salinger and Kennetz Rietz, as well as Peter Kelly, senior partner of B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar). In addition to this, B-M was hired by the A.H. Robbins company when its Dalkon Shield IUD contraceptive injured thousands of women who used it, and it is now currently promoting the 'virtues' of Eli Lilly's anti-depressant wonder drug Prozac.

The winners of the health care debate in the US were beyond any doubt the pharmeceutical transnational corporations (eleven of which are B-M clients) and the major insurance companies (which include B-M clients Met Life, Equitable Life, Aetna, State Farm and Mutal of Omaha). Now both businesses are vertically integrating themselves into superconglomerates known as health maintenance organizations (HMO's). According to Joyce Nelson, "During 1994 both the pharmaceutical industry and the private insurance industry consolidated into even bigger players on the health care scene, with B-M playing a major role in arranging the mergers among its clients". HMO's are not required to cover all illnesses or people, but can instead discriminate against elderly citizens and/or people with health problems in order to reduce operating costs.

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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic%E2%80%93Central_America_Free_Trade_Agreement">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic%E2%80%93Central_America_Free_Trade_Agreement</a>

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Support[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dominican_Republic%E2%80%93Central_America_Free_Trade_Agreement&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: Support" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States" title="President of the United States" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">U.S. President</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">George W. Bush</a> pronounced CAFTA a priority in January 2002, and Congress gave his administration "fast track" authority to negotiate it. Negotiations began in January 2003, and agreement was reached with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua on December 17, 2003, and with Costa Rica on January 25, 2004. That same month, negotiations began with the Dominican Republic to join CAFTA.

On May 28, 2004, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Trade_Representative" title="United States Trade Representative" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">United States Trade Representative</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zoellick" title="Robert Zoellick" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Robert Zoellick</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Rica" title="Costa Rica" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Costa Rican</a> Minister of Trade <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alberto_Trejos&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Alberto Trejos (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Alberto Trejos</a>, Salvadoran Economy Minister <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miguel_Lacayo&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Miguel Lacayo (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Miguel Lacayo</a>, Guatemalan Economy Minister <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marcio_Cuevas&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Marcio Cuevas (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Marcio Cuevas</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Honduran_Minister_of_Industry_and_Commerce&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Honduran Minister of Industry and Commerce (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Honduran Minister of Industry and Commerce</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Norman_Garc%C3%ADa&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Norman García (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Norman García</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicaraguan_Minister_of_Development,_Industry_and_Commerce&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Nicaraguan Minister of Development, Industry and Commerce (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Nicaraguan Minister of Development, Industry and Commerce</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mario_Arana&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Mario Arana (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Mario Arana</a> signed the 2,400-page document at headquarters of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_American_States" title="Organization of American States" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Organization of American States</a>. Negotiations with the Dominican Republic concluded on March 15, 2004, and a second signing ceremony including<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dominican_Republic_Minister_of_Industry_and_Commerce&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sonia_Guzm%C3%A1n&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Sonia Guzmán (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Sonia Guzmán</a> was held on August 5, 2004.

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Opposition[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dominican_Republic%E2%80%93Central_America_Free_Trade_Agreement&action=edit&section=4" title="Edit section: Opposition" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>

While manufacturing costs of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_drugs" title="Generic drugs" class="mw-redirect" style="line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none; background: none;">generic drugs</a> are relatively cheap, the costs of human tests are relatively expensive, and tests take months or years. If generic manufacturers had to redo the tests, the generic drug would be more expensive, and generic manufacturers might not be able to do the tests at all. Furthermore, if generic manufacturers had to redo the tests, they would have to compare the new, effective drugs to less-effective drugs, which according to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors_Without_Borders" title="Doctors Without Borders" class="mw-redirect" style="line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none; background: none;">Doctors Without Borders</a>, would be unethical. In the United States, drug manufacturers must make test data public for generic manufacturers. Under CAFTA's test data exclusivity, drug manufacturers could keep test data secret, which would make it more difficult for local companies to produce generic drugs, and enable multinational pharmaceutical companies to keep a monopoly on branded drugs, including those used to treat AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic%E2%80%93Central_America_Free_Trade_Agreement#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[8]</a>In May 2004 the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Salvadoran_American_National_Network&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Salvadoran American National Network (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Salvadoran American National Network</a>, the largest national association of Central American community-based organizations in the United States, along with other organizations representing Central American immigrants, expressed its opposition to CAFTA, saying, "Our opposition to CAFTA is not ideological. As immigrants, we have a deep understanding of the potential benefits of improved transnational cooperation. We would welcome an agreement that would increase economic opportunity, protect our shared environment, guarantee workers' rights and acknowledge the role of human mobility in deepening the already profound ties between our countries. However, the CAFTA agreement falls far short of that vision."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic%E2%80%93Central_America_Free_Trade_Agreement#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[7]</a>

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4/15

<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;">Big tobacco is suing Uruguay for their anti-smoking laws. <b id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429110159195_2263" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">If they win, it will threaten public health laws everywhere<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;"> and prove one corporation can trump the public good, even when its product kills! But if we launch a giant call and Avaaz hires a world class legal team to carry our voices into the courtroom, the judges won’t be able to turn a blind eye.

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<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 29px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); display: inline !important;">Shopping for cigarettes in Uruguay isn't a pleasant experience. Photos of decaying teeth, premature babies and gruesome hospital scenes wrap around every pack. In fact, the country requires manufacturers to cover at least 80 percent of the packaging with medical warnings and graphic images.

Cigarette giant <a href="http://www.pmi.com/eng/pages/homepage.aspx" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">Philip Morris International</a> sees this requirement as a violation of a treaty law. So it's suing the country of Uruguay for $25 million.

The lawsuit is based on a 1991 trade agreement between Uruguay and Switzerland, where the company is located. The cigarette manufacturer <a href="http://www.pmi.com/eng/media_center/company_statements/pages/uruguay_bit_claim.aspx" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">says</a> Uruguay is violating its promise to respect intellectual property rights.

Studies have <a href="http://211.144.68.84:9998/91keshi/Public/File/36/380-9853/pdf/1-s2.0-S0140673612608265-main.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">found</a> that such gruesome packaging reduces smoking, particularly in pregnant women.

To better understand this case before it goes in front of the World Bank this month, NPR's David Greene spoke with <a href="https://twitter.com/chalexhall" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">Alexandra Hall</a>, a reporter based in Uruguay's capital city, Montevideo.

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<div class="byline environment">public citizen content: <a href="http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=1328">http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=1328</a></div>

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<div class="byline environment"><a href="http://www.alternet.org">AlterNet</a> [1] / By <a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/thomas-mc-donagh">Thomas Mc Donagh</a> [2]</div>

<h1 class="node-title">How Corporations Use Global Investment Rules to Undermine a Sustainable Future</h1>

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In 2009, when the government of El Salvador refused to issue an environmental permit to a Canadian mining corporation, community activists in Las Cabañas rejoiced. For years they had been fighting a pitched <a href="http://www.stopesmining.org/j25/">battle</a> [3] against the efforts of the company, Pacific Rim, to mine for gold in their region - plans that included the dumping of toxic arsenic in their rivers. It was not a campaign without risk. Four Salvadoran anti-mining activists have been assassinated in the course of their courageous efforts. That victory, however, may well prove to carry a high cost for the people of El Salvador. In a legal assault filed in a World Bank trade court, Pacific Rim is now demanding $315 million in compensation payments from the Salvadoran government, an amount equal to one third of the country’s annual education budget.

That is just one example among many where citizens have fought for and won an important policy victory only to find that victory undermined by corporations using the growing web of international investment rules and arbitration courts. There are many others. Public health campaigners in Uruguay won a huge victory in 2010 when the national government passed new health laws to discourage tobacco consumption. Even though those new laws (including aggressive new warnings on cigarette packages) directly mirrored the guidelines of the World Health Organization, the U.S. corporate tobacco giant Philip Morris retaliated with a $2 billion <a href="http://justinvestment.org/2010/04/phillip-morris-makes-demands-of-uruguay-at-the-international-centre-for-settlement-of-investment-disputes/">legal action</a> [4] against the government.

Nowhere is this muscle-flexing by multinational corporations a greater threat than on issues related to sustainable development. The result is a little known but enormous legal obstacle planted directly in the policy path toward a sustainable future. The Democracy Center has just documented that threat in an important new report released this week: <a href="http://democracyctr.org/new-report-unfair-unsustainable-and-under-the-radar/">Unfair, Unsustainable and Under the Radar:  How Corporations Use Global Investment Rules to Undermine a Sustainable Future.</a> [5]

For many this system of corporate-driven investment rules and “dispute resolution” burst into public view a decade ago when Bechtel, the San Francisco-based engineering conglomerate, sued the people of Bolivia for $50 million following the now-famous Cochabamba <a href="http://democracyctr.org/bolivia/investigations/bolivia-investigations-the-water-revolt/">Water Revolt</a> [6], after investing just $1 million in the country. A global citizen <a href="http://democracyctr.org/bolivia/investigations/bolivia-investigations-the-water-revolt/bechtel-vs-bolivia-details-of-the-case-and-the-campaign/">campaign</a> [7] aimed at the corporation ultimately forced Bechtel to drop that case for a token payment of <a href="http://democracyctr.org/bolivia/investigations/bolivia-investigations-the-water-revolt/#ii-bechtel-vs-bolivia-">30 cents</a> [8]. Yet in the years since, the pile of corporate cases has only grown ever higher.

Another typical current case features dangerous exposure to lead in Peru. When the national government there revoked the operating license for a smelter plant in La Oroyo (operated by Doe Run Peru) in July 2010, the health of the local population and the surrounding environment got some badly <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-09/rennert-800-million-toxic-lead-fight-roils-global-trade.html">needed respite</a> [9]. The village, located high in the Peruvian Andes, has been declared one of the most polluted <a href="http://www.worstpolluted.org/projects_reports/display/41">sites on earth</a> [10], and in 2007 <a href="http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2007/03/peru.html">99% of the children</a> [11] under seven in the neighborhood closest to the town’s smelter had dangerously high levels of lead in their blood. The government deemed that Doe Run Peru’s failure to meet environmental cleanup commitments at the site constituted a breach of the country’s environmental legal standards. However Doe Run’s parent company, the Renco group, has other ideas. The corporation, owned by US billionaire Ira Rennert, has hit back with an $800 million damages claim, enough money to pay the yearly salaries of almost 15,000 Peruvian school teachers (or nearly 6,000 Peruvian health workers).

The world today is covered by an expanding web of over three thousand bilateral and multilateral trade and investment agreements. These agreements grant rights to corporations and allow them to sue governments for policy initiatives that they claim interfere with their profits. The resulting legal cases, despite their far-reaching local consequences, are settled far away and behind closed doors by a small group of unaccountable private lawyers in international dispute arbitration tribunals. Flying in the face of democratic principles and judicial independence, these tribunals operate with little or no public scrutiny and where the communities directly affected are denied a voice.

The number of these investment cases has exploded in recent years, with 2012 breaking all records. By far the most popular tribunal system used by global corporations is the World Banks’ infamous International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICISID).  Corporations can use this and other tribunal systems to demand hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from governments – not just for what they have actually invested in a country, but also vast amounts more for the profits they expected to earn into the future. The lawyers at these tribunals move seamlessly from the role of ‘independent’ arbiter to that of corporate attorney.  Some have strong ties to multinational corporations and <a href="http://www.tni.org/briefing/profiting-injustice">serious questions have been raised</a> [12] about their independence in an unaccountable system in which they have such a huge vested interest. Although previously used as a court of last resort by aggrieved investors, these tribunals have become the weapon of choice for corporations in their attempts to clear the path for profiting at the expense of public health and the environment.

The proliferation of these investor-state cases has three major impacts. First, in cases where the corporations win (as they often do) the result is a massive transfer of scarce public resources to wealthy private corporations. Second, even if governments are successful in mounting a legal defense, doing that comes at a cost of potentially millions of dollars in legal fees paid to one of the handful of high-priced law firms that specialise in such cases. Third, the net impact is a dangerous chilling effect on the willingness of policy makers to implement policies in the public interest for fear of costly international arbitration cases.

The international investment rules/tribunals system has been used to attack anti-nuclear efforts in Germany, public control of water in Argentina and Bolivia, anti-mining efforts across a host of nations, and today has new targets in its sights.

One new likely battleground is citizen and community efforts against oil and gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’. The proposed investment chapter of the Canada-EU free trade agreement, if approved, may give corporations the <a href="http://corporateeurope.org/publications/right-say-no-eu-canada-trade-agreement-threatens-fracking-bans">legal fire-power</a> [13] to challenge government regulation of this highly controversial practice. Efforts to curb the dumping of climate-changing carbon into the atmosphere are also at risk. The South Korean government has shelved a plan to introduce a low-carbon incentive system for the auto industry because of fears that the law would breach a provision in the US-South Korea free trade agreement. If the government were to move ahead with the measure it would risk landing itself before theseinternational trade and investment courts.

Today, just as communities in El Salvador and Peru have taken up the battle to protect their natural resources, a whole global movement is emerging to rethink the relationship between economic development and social and environmental well-being, and is pushing governments to take policy action in that urgent direction. This important shift, however, is in direct conflict with the interests of transnational corporations hard-wired to maximize short-term profit and pass on the environmental and social costs of their operations to others. The Democracy Center’s <a href="http://democracyctr.org/new-report-unfair-unsustainable-and-under-the-radar/">report</a> [5] puts a spotlight on how global corporations are using the investment rules system to undermine the policies essential to sustainable development and the democratic process essential to such policies.

Long an obscure interest of trade and investment lawyers, the system of international investment rules and tribunals has remained off the radar for most of the groups and communities that it affects. This is slowly beginning to change. As the number of controversial cases rises, the injustice of the current system is becoming increasingly clear.

Much as the deregulation of financial markets encouraged by the banking sector helped lead to economic collapse, the system of international investment rules works pushed by multinational corporations is leading us toward environmental collapse. As we hurtle towards a number of ominous tipping points in terms of many of the earth’s natural systems, there has never been a more urgent time for activists, academics, development workers and others to understand the legal and political barriers that block us from changing course. This de facto privatized justice system for big business is a massive such barrier that urgently needs to be brought down.

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<div class="tags">See more stories tagged with:

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/environment-0">environment</a> [14],</div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/fracking-0">fracking</a> [15],</div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/sustainability">sustainability</a> [16],</div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/multinationals">multinationals</a> [17]</div>

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<div class="print-source_url">Source URL: <a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-corporations-use-global-investment-rules-undermine-sustainable-future">http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-corporations-use-global-investment-rules-undermine-sustainable-future</a></div>

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/thomas-mc-donagh

[3] http://www.stopesmining.org/j25/

[4] http://justinvestment.org/2010/04/phillip-morris-makes-demands-of-uruguay-at-the-international-centre-for-settlement-of-investment-disputes/

[5] http://democracyctr.org/new-report-unfair-unsustainable-and-under-the-radar/

[6] http://democracyctr.org/bolivia/investigations/bolivia-investigations-the-water-revolt/

[7] http://democracyctr.org/bolivia/investigations/bolivia-investigations-the-water-revolt/bechtel-vs-bolivia-details-of-the-case-and-the-campaign/

[8] http://democracyctr.org/bolivia/investigations/bolivia-investigations-the-water-revolt/#ii-bechtel-vs-bolivia-

[9] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-09/rennert-800-million-toxic-lead-fight-roils-global-trade.html

[10] http://www.worstpolluted.org/projects_reports/display/41

[11] http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2007/03/peru.html

[12] http://www.tni.org/briefing/profiting-injustice

[13] http://corporateeurope.org/publications/right-say-no-eu-canada-trade-agreement-threatens-fracking-bans

[14] http://www.alternet.org/tags/environment-0

[15] http://www.alternet.org/tags/fracking-0

[16] http://www.alternet.org/tags/sustainability

[17] http://www.alternet.org/tags/multinationals

[18] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

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