Naomi Klein: How Much Democracy Should They Be Asked to Give Up in Exchange for Trade?

From: Per I. Mathisen (Per.Inge.Mathisen@idi.ntnu.no)
Date: Thu Mar 29 2001 - 13:05:25 MET DST

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    Published on Wednesday, March 28, 2001 in the Toronto Globe & Mail
    The Really Tough Question in Buenos Aires
    How Much Democracy Should They Be Asked to Give Up in Exchange for Trade?
    by Naomi Klein

    Next Friday, trade ministers from the 34 countries negotiating the Free
    Trade Area of the Americas will meet in Buenos Aires. Many in Latin America
    predict that the ministers will be greeted with protests much larger than
    the ones that exploded in Seattle in 1999.

    The FTAA's cheerleaders like to pretend that their only critics are white
    college kids from Harvard and McGill who just don't understand how much "the
    poor" are "clamouring" for the FTAA. Will this public display of Latin
    American opposition to the trade deal change all that?

    Don't be silly.

    Mass protests in the developing world don't register in our discussions
    about trade in the West. No matter how many people take to the streets of
    Buenos Aires, Mexico City or Sao Paulo, defenders of corporate-driven
    globalization just keep on insisting that every possible objection lobbed
    their way was dreamed up in Seattle, by somebody with newly matted
    dreadlocks slurping a latte.

    When we talk about trade, we often focus on who is getting richer and who is
    getting poorer. But there is another divide at play: which countries are
    presented as diverse, complicated political landscapes where citizens have a
    range of divergent views, and which countries seem to speak on the world
    stage in an ideological monotone.

    In North America, we are finally hearing the debates about whether or not
    more of the same model of deregulation, privatization and liberalization
    will protect our heath and education and water systems. In Western Europe,
    the foot-and-mouth inferno is putting the entire model of export-oriented
    industrial agriculture on trial.

    And yet such diversity of public opinion is rarely attributed to citizens of
    Third Word countries. Instead, they are lumped into one homogenous voice,
    channelled by dubiously elected politicians or, better yet, ousted ones such
    as Mexico's Ernesto Zedillo, now calling for a global campaign against
    "globophobes."

    The truth is that no one can speak on behalf of Latin America's 500 million
    inhabitants, least of all Mr. Zedillo, whose defeat was in part a
    repudiation of NAFTA's record. All over the Americas, market liberalization
    is a subject of extreme dispute. The debate is not over whether foreign
    investment and trade are desirable -- Latin America and the Caribbean are
    already organized into regional trading blocs such as Mercosur. The debate
    is about democracy: what terms and conditions will poor countries be told
    they must meet in order to qualify for trade and investment?

    For the past two decades, these terms and conditions have been negotiated
    and enforced by the IMF and the World Bank in exchange for loans. Social
    services have been privatized, user fees introduced, agricultural subsidies
    cut (while richer countries kept theirs), hard-won land-redistribution
    programs abandoned, and minimum wage controlled -- all in the name of
    becoming "investment ready."

    Argentina, the host of next week's FTAA meeting, is currently in open revolt
    over massive cuts to social spending -- almost $8-billion (U.S.) over three
    years -- that have been introduced in order to qualify for an IMF loan
    package. Last week, three cabinet ministers resigned, unions staged a
    general strike, and university instructors moved their classes to the
    streets.

    Though anger at wrenching austerity measures has focused primarily on the
    IMF, it is rapidly expanding to encompass trade deals such as the proposed
    FTAA. The Zapatistas began their uprising on Jan. 1, 1994 -- the day the
    North American free-trade agreement came into force. Seven years later,
    three-quarters of the population of Mexico live in poverty, real wages are
    lower than they were in 1994, and unemployment is rising. No wonder the
    Zapatistas were able to draw 150,000 supporters to the streets of Mexico
    City earlier this month.

    And despite the claims that the rest of Latin America is clamouring for a
    NAFTA to call its own, the central labour associations of Brazil, Argentina,
    Paraguay and Uruguay -- representing 20 million workers -- have come out
    against the plan. They are now calling for countrywide referendums on
    membership in the FTAA.

    Brazil, meanwhile, has threatened to boycott the summit altogether, furious
    at Canada's dirty trade war and wary that the FTAA will contain protections
    for drug companies that will threaten its visionary public health policy of
    providing free generic AIDS drugs to anyone who needs them.

    Defenders of free trade would have us believe in a facile equation of trade
    = democracy. The people who will greet our trade ministers on the streets of
    Buenos Aires next week are posing a more complex, and challenging,
    calculation: how much democracy should they be asked to give up in exchange
    for trade?

    Copyright © 2001 Globe Interactive



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