Alliance for Democracy

​

​
  • Home
  • About Us
    • National Council and staff
    • Founder, Ronnie Dugger
  • Campaigns
    • Disarming Violence
    • System Change Initiatives
    • Public Banking >
      • Article: Money and Democracy
  • Media
    • Corporations and Democracy >
      • Archives
    • Justice Rising
    • Populist Dialogues >
      • Broadcast in your city
    • In the News
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Support Our Work
  • Links

Alliance for Democracy National and Portland chapter comment on NAFTA renegotiation

6/19/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Recently, the ​office of the US Trade Representative solicited public commentary on NAFTA renegotiation. Both the national Alliance for Democracy and the Alliance's Portland Chapter submitted statements.

The Portland Alliance statement reads:

As the US begins to re-negotiate NAFTA, the Alliance for Democracy in Portland, Oregon requests that negotiations be public, and transparent, and  benefit all people in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.  The negotiations must be open, public and transparent. Any negotiations which is done by the 500 corporate trade advisers only will be rejected by the people. Representative of the people must be present, participating fully and have a meaningful part of all negotiations. They must not be excluded from any talks, even if the talks are not about the environment or labor. The people's representatives must be on an equal footing with the corporate representatives.  
  
Negotiations which happen behind closed doors are undemocratic and will result in an agreement which benefits those behind the doors, not the people of our three nations. The result of any such negotiations will be rejected by the people.  
  
  • The negotiations objectives must 
  • Address the needs of the people for a healthy environment, addressing the causes and effects of climate change,  with the goal of reducing carbon in the environment and eliminating the use of fossil fuels and encourage the use of renewable non-nuclear energy sources,  
  • Address the need for equality among people by including enforceable labor standards in the agreement itself and provisions which reduce dramatically the income and wealth gaps among the peoples of our three nations and within each nation, and  
  •  Enhance democracy and democratic practices by removing Chapter 11 in its entirety. Chapter 11 provides for secret trade tribunals to settle “trade” disputes filed by multi-national corporations against national governments. 
  
It is not our belief that NAFTA can be renegotiated and achieve our objectives. In fact, we must repeal NAFTA. And then if we need to establish new tariffs or quotas in order to facilitate trade among our nations,  then new treaties should be negotiated and approved in the Senate according to our Constitution.  

The national Alliance submitted the following: 

NAFTA renegotiation presents an opportunity to fix a flawed trade deal, but only if the US Trade Representative and the White House are determined to stand up for jobs, environmental protection and climate stability, small farms and food safety, and the rights of nations, states, and municipalities to regulate corporate activity to protect public health, natural resources, in particular our surface and groundwater sources on which all life depends, and local economies. 

The Alliance for Democracy stands with other civic, environmental, consumer and labor organizations to demand that a new NAFTA incorporate the following changes:
  • Eliminate Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions that allow corporations to attack ordinances and regulatory decisions before secret tribunals.
  •  Add binding labor, wage and environmental standards to a new NAFTA, including requirements and mechanisms for enforcement. Eliminate rules that incentivize offshoring jobs.
  • Include robust, binding and enforceable standards for food, product, and transportation safety, requiring imported goods and transport to meet the highest domestic standards.
  • Include protection for "buy local" and "buy American" ordinances, which protect and strengthen national and local economies.
  • Eliminate agricultural rules that harm small farmers and the local food systems that they support. 
  • Most importantly, negotiations should be transparent, and drafts of agreements available for public and congressional examination. 
  • Finally, a revamped NAFTA should not be passed by Congress under expedited Trade Promotion Authority, or Fast Track rules, but instead should be fully examined, deliberated, and debated by Congress and the public before it goes to a vote.
NAFTA has resulted in the direct loss of almost 1 million jobs in the US, as certified by the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program. In addition it has displaced millions of Mexican farmers and workers, and locked Canada into climate and environmentally-damaging fossil fuel export quotas. What has been a boon for multinational corporations has been a bust for US workers and for the cities and towns that once dominated US manufacturing.

None of this has surprised the many millions of Americans who were opposed to NAFTA when it first passed, and have been working to block subsequent multinational trade deals, including the Multinational Agreement on Investments, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the Trans Pacific Partnership, ever since. 
We are not "anti-trade." But we are completely opposed to any trade policy that privileges corporate profits over the lives and well-being of citizens and the communities in which they live and work, or the ecological systems that sustain all life. 
​
NAFTA renegotiation represents a chance to affirm the importance of jobs, local economies, strong communities, and the environment, and to be a model of what a "fair trade" agreement can do.



0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2023
    January 2023
    April 2022
    March 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    November 2015
    August 2015
    September 2013
    August 2013

    Categories

    All
    Afghanistan
    Boston
    Candidate Questions
    Corporations And Democracy
    Democracy
    Democracy Convention
    Fast Track Authority
    Health Care
    Local Food
    Militarization
    Money In Politics
    NAFTA
    National Council Actions
    Peace
    Peoples Vote Must Count
    Portland OR
    President Obama
    Public Banking
    Public Health
    Ronnie Dugger
    System Change Initiatives
    Take Action
    Tpp
    Tpp Free Zone
    Trade Justice
    Washington DC
    Water

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.