A group of some 280 Minnesotans are headed to Miami next week to join protests and workshops organized around the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit Nov. 17-21.
The historic trade summit and events leading up to it next week are expected to draw an estimated 1,000 trade officials from 34 Western Hemisphere countries. They will be negotiating a treaty that would create the world's largest trading zone and eliminate tariffs and other import restrictions.
The Minnesota group will join 10,000 or more who are expected to be in Miami to promote their own trade-related agendas.
The unofficial meetings, regularly staged in conjunction with major meetings of such organizations as the World Trade Organization and the FTAA, are part of a global grassroots effort to hammer out alternative trade models.
Among the Minnesotans packing their bags to join the main protest march Nov. 20 are students, church members, farmers groups, environmentalists and about 30 steelworkers from around the state, most gathered under the banner of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition.
"NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) has been a disaster for most people in countries that participate in it, and now they want to take NAFTA and expand it to 31 additional countries and it's only going to make things worse," coalition coordinator Larry Weiss said.
Manufacturing has been hit hard by unfair trade rules, said Tara Widner of the United Steelworkers of America District 11 in Minneapolis.
So many people like the Minnesota group are anticipated that Miami's federal courthouse will be closed for the week and major cruise lines are docking elsewhere. Security costs are estimated at $12 million.
Although the FTAA is still just a proposal, the Miami meeting is the last scheduled gathering of top-level trade ministers from across the Americas before a final summit next year where the pact is to be signed.
Progress on the vast trade initiative has been rocky. For instance, the United States and Brazil have been at loggerheads over how broad the talks should be, with the United States pushing for additional rules about protecting intellectual property rights and cross-border investments, among other things. Brazil has wanted a pact more limited to phasing out trade -tariffs and has wanted the -United States to include farm subsidies in the talks, something the United States doesn't want to do.
The impasse helped shut down the World Trade Organization's Cancun talks in September. In an emergency meeting held over the weekend, the countries tentatively agreed to let the WTO handle agricultural subsidies and to allow some flexibility in dealing with other sensitive issues.
The new Americas trade pact would extend the NAFTA-like trade rules used by the U.S., Canada and Mexico to all aspects of trade in the Americas, including 31 countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean, excluding Cuba. Supporters say that cutting red tape and barriers to the free movement of goods and workers and technology will help integrate economies in the region and raise living standards. The FTAA proposal can be read at www.ftaa-alca. org/alca_e.asp.
Critics say NAFTA is proof the model has failed. Foreign investment may have boomed in Mexico after the NAFTA trade and investment rules went into effect in 1994, but real manufacturing wages in Mexico dropped by nearly 21 percent, the total number of Mexicans living in poverty has risen to 58 percent, industrial air pollution there has doubled and at least 403,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs were lost to Mexico or Canada, according to Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal Washington, D.C., think tank.
The FTAA drafts don't address labor standards, critics say, and give corporations far too much power to trump the laws and policies of local governments regarding such basics as social services and environmental protection. One of the most contentious provisions would protect investors, much like the so-called "Chapter 11 provision" in NAFTA. It allows foreign investors to sue governments if any of their laws or policies diminishes the value of investors' projects. Dozens of such lawsuits are under way.
One alternative model to FTAA being circulated is the "Alternatives for the Americas," drafted by the Hemispheric Social Alliance, a coalition of labor and citizens groups from various countries. In contrast to the FTAA, it grants citizens and governments the rights to sue investors, calls for imme-diate debt reduction of poor countries and estab-lishesan international tax on foreign exchange transactions to slow currency speculation, among other things. The propo-sal can be read at www.global exchange.org/campaigns/altern atives/americas/.
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Jennifer Bjorhus can be reached at jbjorhus@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2146. The Miami Herald contributed to this story.
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