The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) plans to be the biggest corporate power grab yet.  Essentially, what the FTAA negotiators have done, urged on by the big business community in every country, is to take the worst elements of every global trade and investment agreement---existing or proposed---and put them all together in one hemispheric pact. By Maude Barlow

The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), currently being negotiated by the 34 countries of North, Central and South America and the Caribbean (excluding Cuba), is intended by its architects to be the most far-reaching trade agreement in history. If reports coming from the Negotiating Groups working on the deal are correct, the FTAA will form the largest free trade zone in the world, encompassing a population of 800 million and a combined (GDP of $11 trillion (U.S.), and reach into every area of life for the citizens of the Americas.

The FTAA, launched at the December 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami, Florida, will be the focus of talks in Quebec City, April 20-22, 2001. Although it is based on the model of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it goes far beyond NAFTA in its scope and power. As it now stands, the FTAA would introduce into the Western Hemisphere all the disciplines of the proposed services agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO)--- the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)---- with the powers of the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), to create a new trade powerhouse with sweeping authority over every aspect of life in Canada and the Americas.

The GATS, now being negotiated in Geneva, is mandated to liberalize the global trade in services, including all public programs, and gradually phase out all government "barriers" to international competition in the services sector. The Trade Negotiations Committee of the FTAA, led by Canada in the crucial formative months when the first draft was written, is proposing a similar, even expanded, services agreement  in the hemispheric pact. It is also proposing to retain, and perhaps expand, the "investor-state" provisions of NAFTA (Chapter II), which give corporations unprecedented rights to pursue their trade interests through legally binding trade tribunals.   Combining the powers of NAFTA and the WTO into one agreement will give unequaled new rights to the transnational corporations of the hemisphere to compete for and even challenge every publicly funded service of its governments, including health care, education, social security, culture and environmental protection.

As well, the proposed FTAA contains new provisions on competition policy, government procurement, market access and dispute settlement that, together with the inclusion of services and investment, could remove the ability of all the governments of the Americas to create or maintain laws, standards and regulations to protect the health. safety and well-being of their citizens and the environment they share. Moreover, the FTAA negotiators appear to have chosen to emulate the WTO rather than NAFTA in key areas of standard-setting and dispute settlement, where the WTO rules are tougher.

Essentially, what the FTAA negotiators have done. urged on by the big business community in every country, is to take the most ambitious elements of every global trade and investment agreement----existing or proposed---and put them all together in one hemispheric pact.

If the terms and recommendations of the FTAA Negotiating Groups are the substantive basis for a hemispheric trade pact the whole process is unacceptable and the citizens of the Americas must work to defeat it. In spite of government protestations that they have negotiated these new trade and investment rules in full collaboration with their citizens, the proposed FTAA reflects none of the concerns voiced by civil society and contains all of the provisions considered most objectionable by environmentalists, human rights and social justice groups, farmers, indigenous peoples, artists, workers, and many others.  Every single social program, environmental regulation and natural resource is at risk under the proposed FTAA.  As it appears to stand now, there is no possible collaboration to make this trade pact acceptable.

That is not to say that the citizens of the Americas are opposed to rules governing the trade and economic links between our countries. However, it cannot start with the assumptions and goals of this FTAA.  Rather, it must begin by revisiting current international trade agreements like the WTO and NAFTA. It is time for a new international trading system based on the foundations of democracy, sustainability, diversity and development.  As a beginning, Chapter 11 must be removed from NAFTA; water must be exempted; the energy provisions rewritten with an emphasis on conservation; and culture must he truly exempted.

Most important, the world of international trade can no longer be the exclusive domain of sheltered elites, trade bureaucrats and corporate power brokers.  When they understand what is at stake  in this hemispheric negotiation the peoples of the Americas will mobilize to defeat it.  That is the fate it deserves. #

Maude BarIow is Volunteer  C hairperson of The Counil of Canadians