Several major international
agreements are under negotiation which would greatly empower multinational
corporations and the World Economic Forum is promoting a new model of
global governance that creates a hybrid government-corporate structure.
Humankind is proceeding on a path to global corporate rule where transnational
corporations would not just influence public policy, they would write the
policies and vote on them. The power of nation-states and people to determine
their futures would be weakened in a system of corporate rule.
The Obama administration has been negotiating the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP) over the past five years (and?) is currently pushing Congress
to pass trade promotion authority (known as fast track) which would allow
him to sign these agreements before they go to Congress. Then Congress would
have a limited time to read thousands of pages of technical legal language,
debate the contents and be banned from making amendments.
Fast track would drive us down a dangerous path. The TPP
and TTIP have been negotiated with unprecedented secrecy. For the first time
texts of international agreements have been classified so that members of
Congress have had very limited access and are not able to discuss what
they’ve read. These are more than trade agreements. The portions that have
been leaked show that they will affect everything that we care about from the
food we eat to the jobs we have to the health of the planet. The fast track legislation
could last seven years, meaning that more agreements could be rushed through
Congress without open consideration of their potential impacts, cementing
corporate rule.
Given the harm that has already been done to economies,
human rights and the environment by neo-liberal economic systems required
by the World Trade Organization and ‘free’ trade agreements such as NAFTA;
this is not the time to be rushing into new agreements or to cede our power
to write the future of the planet.
We are in the midst of a critical political conflict
over the future of global governance. Do we want to be ruled by corporations
or ruled democratically? This not the time to fast track , it is the time
to step back and re-think how to conduct global trade and manage the global
economy to prevent further exploitation and harm.
Twenty Years of Experience: Lost
Jobs, Trade Deficits and Increased Inequality
Globalization was initiated in its current form by
President Bill Clinton when he signed NAFTA and the World Trade Organization
(WTO). NAFTA came into force on January 1, 1994 and the WTO became law on January
1, 1995. Modern trade agreements have had serious negative effects on the
US economy. Reuters reports:
“Since the pacts were implemented, U.S. trade deficits,
which drag down economic growth, have soared more than 430 percent with our
free-trade partners. In the same period, they’ve declined 11 percent with
countries that are not free-trade partners. Since fast-track trade authority
was used to pass NAFTA and the U.S. entrance into the World Trade Organization,
the overall annual U.S. trade deficit in goods has more than quadrupled, from
$218 billion to $912 billion.”
Trade agreements have also undermined jobs in the United
States. Reuters continues: “Nearly 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs —
one in four — have been lost since NAFTA and the various post-NAFTA expansion
deals were enacted through fast track.” And, the Bureau of Labor Statistics
reports: 3 out of 5 displaced workers who
found a job are earning less money and one-third took a pay cut of 20%
or more.
These are just two examples of many of the negative economic
impacts. The impacts in other countries are also negative. The only beneficiaries
are trans-national mega corporations which desire to move capital and businesses
across borders without restrictions. Trade agreements consistently expand
the wealth divide and increase
income inequality as transnational corporations
seek lower wages and costs in order to increase profits.
The current global economic system is unstable because
of the connections between global trade and global financial markets. Interconnectedness
and a lack of regulation of finance created a cascading worldwide impact
during the 2008 financial crisis. Around the world, this has led to tremendous
economic dislocation and revolts against the unfair economy and the financial
institutions and governments that are responsible.
With this record it is not time to fast track more of the
same rigged corporate agreements through Congress; it is time to stop and
ask: How can global trade be made to work for everyone?
At a Crossroads in Global
Governance
The economic crash raised doubts about whether international
governmental institutions can handle the globalized economy. It
resulted in calls for transformation of the government and economy from
both grass roots revolts protesting lost jobs, lower incomes, austerity, corruption
and an unfair economy as well as from corporate elites.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) began a Global
Redesign Initiative (GRI) as a result of the 2008
economic crash (GRI is bankrolled mainly by Qatar). WEF participants
saw globalization threatened because there has been a loss of legitimacy
and ineffectiveness of global governance: Too many countries, organizations
and people were openly critical of globalization and multinational banking. The
WEF blames nation-states, the United Nations and groups like the G-8 for failing
to respond appropriately to the economic crisis. In an analysis of the
GRI, the
Center for Governance and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts
Boston writes:
“WEF is concerned that such widespread public skepticism
can lead to widespread doubt about the underlying principles of the global
system. They recognize that when corporate leaders are seen as lacking
morals, it does not take much for the institutions of globalization to be
seen as immoral. In this situation, it would become harder and harder for
the G20, for the IMF, or for individual corporate spokespersons to command
respect and effective leadership on global matters of concern to the Davos
community. They know that it would be increasingly problematic if important
messages from the world’s elite leaders were ignored by large communities
of people around the world.”
To save globalization the WEF believes governance must
be redesigned. David
Sogge describes their view in “Davos Man”:
“When it comes to tackling global problems, nation-states and their public
politics are not up to the job. Their old, run-down institutions should be
re-fitted …” The WEF solution is a greater role for multi-national corporations
in decision making and the weakening of nation-states. They want the UN
remade into a hybrid corporate-government entity, where corporations are
part of decision-making. The goal is to end nation-centric decision making
and include corporations as decision makers.
The WEF points to how trade rules have stalled
in the WTO as an example of the failure of nation-state governance. They believe by making corporations partners in decision
making the ‘can do’ attitude of business will push these rules forward
where the ‘failure mentality’ of the state-centric system stalls trade
rules. From the perspective of people’s movements, this is an example
of why we do not want corporations to replace nations as decision makers.
The WTO has been stalled because their rules are opposed by
people around the globe. There have been massive protests at their negotiations
because, for example, international trade agreements (misnamed “free”
trade, really rigged trade for transnational corporations) have had a devastating
impact on agriculture by destroying traditional farming, forcing farmers
into cities and creating a downward depression of wages. Social movements
oppose policies that promote private profit over public necessities.
A growing worldwide movement led by communities most affected by
globalization seeks another direction.
In light of the failure of the WTO, the elite’s push toward
global corporate rule is now being codified into law through international
agreements like the TPP and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
Under these agreements corporate sovereignty will increase while the sovereignty
of governments shrinks and people lose their ability to influence public
policy. These corporate trade agreements will create a series of laws
designed to aid corporate profits over the health, safety, income and
well-being of most people and further undermine the already at-risk ecology
of the planet.
National and local laws will be required to be rewritten to
be consistent with trade agreements negotiated in secret. This “harmonization”
will require a new bureaucracy to review all laws and regulations for
consistency.
The profits of transnational corporations will become
so important that governments can be sued if their laws to protect public
health, safety or the planet interfere with expected profits. The cases will
be heard in special trade tribunals, staffed mainly by corporate lawyers on
leave from their corporate jobs. Their decisions cannot be appealed to any
other courts. This makes the public interest secondary to the market interests
of big business.
The WEF sees itself as the model for future governance
writing “The time has come for a new stakeholder paradigm of international
governance analogous to that embodied in the stakeholder theory of corporate
governance on which the World Economic Forum itself was founded.” The Center
for Governance and Sustainability describes this in
the context of the UN:
“This integration of global executives with UN diplomats
and civil servants was seen as a way to rejuvenate the acceptance of globalization.
The thinking is that, if globalization leaders were more involved in the
policy development and program implementation of the UN, then organizations
and peoples throughout the world may well look more favorably on the legitimacy
of their combined efforts.”
People will react in horror to the dystopian idea of the
UN becoming a corporate-government hybrid. People already see corporations
wielding too much influence at the UN and within nations. The WEF approach
will inflate corporate power, creating a corporate neo-feudalism that
will kill democracy and the body politic.
How did the WEF arrive at this proposal that so narrowly
focuses on building the power of corporations, while weakening national
sovereignty? The Center for Global Governance and Sustainability describes
the process:
“A key constraint for the broad acceptability of WEF’s
new system is the narrow band of experts they convened to develop their proposals.
WEF did not call openly for proposals. It did not invite a number of key
international constituencies to participate in the process. And it did
not even establish a website for public comments. WEF selected its friends
to work on its Global Redesign Initiative. Over 50% of WEF’s experts were
working in the US while advising World Economic Forum on this project,
hardly an indication of a geographically well balanced team. Even though
GRI’s finances came heavily from non-OECD countries, only 2% of its experts
were working in developing countries at the time. Of WEF’s friends, only
17% were women. This narrow base has serious consequences. It undermines
the WEF claims that it truly understands a multi-polar world and that it has
the ability to pick the global leaders of today and tomorrow.”
This process is exactly what must be avoided in the debate
on global trade and why we mustn’t allow new agreements to be fast tracked through
Congress. The current system has already been too dominated by the interests
of multi-national corporations and has excluded the voices of those who are
harmed by its impacts.
We need a broader debate on how globalization should be
handled. What is the role of transnational corporations? How can transnational
corporations with larger wealth than some nations be regulated? How do we
ensure the planet’s ecology is protected at this critical time of the climate
change tipping point, mass species die-off, oceans under severe stress, depleting
aquifers, floods and increasing desertification? How do we shrink the
wealth divide that is impacting almost every country, creating widespread
poverty and strife?
Twenty years into modern corporate globalization, we
need to stop, think, discuss and debate, not blindly fast track more of the
same failed system. Fast track would permit presidents to approve secretly
negotiated trade agreements and rush them through Congress without transparency,
public participation or real congressional review for the next seven
years. This is the opposite of is needed.
Similar Rhetoric, Different
Visions for the Future
There is a shared frustration in the global community
with the inability of governments and international organizations to
respond to the global financial crisis. The United Nations has shortcomings.
As the Center got Global Governance and Sustainability puts
it:
“Some are frustrated with the international system
because urgent state functions in the international arena are not solved by
the UN system. There are wars and the UN cannot stop them. There are major
ecological catastrophes and the international system cannot get
relief supplies into the affected areas fast enough. There are starving people
in Africa and the IGOs do not prevent their unnecessary deaths.”
The WEF uses language very similar to what social movements
use. For example, the WEF claims it seeks “bottom-up” decision-making, but
does not define what that would look like. For social movements, this means
less hierarchy, public participation, transparency, democracy and governments
listening to the people at the bottom, rather than taking their cue from
the elites at the top.
The WEF promotes a philosophy couched in the concept of
“multi-stakeholderism,” another idea consistent with the view of social movements
that the world is not unipolar, it has many actors. The WEF uses this
concept to give transnational corporations, undemocratic non-state
actors, decision-making power, while social movements see big business
already having too much influence.
Multi-national corporations wield great influence over
the global economy. They decide the distribution of vital necessities,
e.g. the prices and quantities of food and medicine, how much workers will
be paid as well as the distribution of wealth and the selection of products
to be manufactured and where. Control of international markets is more
in the decision-making power of transnational corporations than of governments.
WEF sees this as a reason to formalize the decision making power of
transnational corporations, making them part of government, while
people’s movements see a need to expand public participation in government
to act in the public interest rather than the private interest for commercial
profit.
Which Path Forward? What You
Can Do
David
Sogge writes in the “State of Davos”
that “By custom and by law, the formal management of international
affairs is a matter for sovereign nations and their representatives.” He
points out “the UN Charter begins with ‘We the peoples’ and affirms the
‘equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.’”
As globalization begins its third decade, the question
before us is, do we want corporate rule or people’s rule? Is the wealth of a
few more important than human rights? What can be done to empower people?
Should the nation-state become a thing of the past and corporate sovereignty
reign, or is there another path? This is a debate that cannot be fast tracked;
it must be brought into the open before trade agreements cement corporate
rule for decades to come.
We urge people to put their effort into stopping fast
track legislation in Congress. This will not be easy because it is high on
the president’s agenda, many pro-business legislators and entities like the
Chamber of Congress. It can only be stopped if people work together persistently
to oppose it. Get involved here.
We expect that as fast track legislation moves through
Congress, the White House and corporate lobbyists will inundate members
of Congress with promises in exchange for votes. In the past, votes were held
open past the legal time limit as members of Congress were picked off one by
one until there were enough votes to pass.
We need to maintain persistent pressure on Congress to
oppose fast track. When we stop fast track, there should be a broad discussion
of our vision for a globalized world structured to support universal
human rights and protection of the planet.
Related Posts
-
Filed Under: Agenda 21, Agriculture, Climate Change, Corporatism/Fascism, Medicine, New World Order, Property Rights, Public/Private Partnerships, Regionalism, Surveillance, Sustainability, Technocracy, Trade, United Nationshttp://agenda21news.com/2015/03/stop-the-fast-track-to-a-future-of-global-corporate-rule-the-dangers-underlying-the-tpp-and-ttip-trade-agreements/#more-5042
No comments:
Post a Comment