 Imagine this:
A local union goes on strike. The employer successfully sues the town to
recover lost profits, costing taxpayers (including union members) millions of dollars.
A county government blocks a toxic waste dump, citing the potential
health risks and negative impact on property values. Investors file suit; an international
tribunal overrules the county supervisors.
The U.S. government is powerless to prevent wholesale purchase of the
American news media, banks and utilities by foreign interests.
Impossible? Apparently not.
A treaty, negotiated in secret by government officials and corporate
executives, would give transnational corporations sweeping new rights and overrule
decision-making by democratically-elected legislatures.
Meet the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI).
MAI is more sweeping in scope than NAFTA or GATT. Business Week
calls it "The most explosive trade deal you’ve never heard of."
It’s been called "NAFTA on steroids," a coup in slow
motion, "a dangerous and audacious power grab," and "a dagger through the
heart of democracy."
Big business, of course, has a different view. "When concluded, the
MAI will become the next pillar in the global system of trade, finance, and
investment," says the United States Council for International Business.
"We are writing the constitution of a single global economy,"
says Renato Ruggerio, director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The problem is, this "constitution" would override the U.S.
Constitution, and that of every other signatory nation. MAI would nullify the checks and
balances of our constitutional system and overawe our Bill of Rights.
And the new constitution is a creation of, by and for transnational
corporations.
"Behind the scenes, big business is pushing for the MAI and helping
to draft its language," says journalist David Moberg. The U.S. Council for
International Business, representing more than 300 transnational corporations and global
law firms (and including foreign-based corporations, like Matsushita and Nestle), is prime
force behind the treaty.
The goal of MAI, simply put, is to finish what GATT (the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade) started. MAI would deregulate investment in manufacturing and
services, currency trading, trade in stocks and bonds, and ownership of land and natural
resources — world-wide. But while the rules would come off big business and banks,
new rules would be slapped on government at every level.
WORLD-WIDE NAFTA
 MAI
is designed to make it easier for individual and corporate investors to move assets,
either money or production, across international borders. It’s a NAFTA of global
proportions.
MAI would force signatory nations to:
Open all economic sectors, including real estate, broadcasting and
natural resources, to foreign ownership.
Treat foreign investors no less favorably than domestic firms.
Remove performance requirements — those laws that require investors
to behave in a certain way in order to achieve market access. These might include paying a
living wage, using local suppliers, hiring minority contractors or investing in
impoverished areas.
Remove restrictions on movement of capital.
Compensate investors in full when their assets are expropriated, either
through seizure or "unreasonable" regulation.
Hold taxpayers responsible for compensating corporations for profits
lost as a result of strife — boycotts, public protests, strikes.
Allow corporations and investors to sue governments directly for alleged
violations of MAI rules — and for cash compensation in relation to almost any
government action that undermines profits.
Submit to a dispute-resolution process involving international panels,
not domestic courts.
Force states, counties, cities and towns to comply with MAI.
The rights granted by this treaty go only to foreign investors and
corporations. The responsibilities (and potential burden and liabilities) affect
only the people, through their elected governments.
MAI would tie the hands of any government at any level to
choose their own social and economic policies.
A leading environmentalist worries, "We’re concerned about
[MAI’s] deregulation aspects on the environment... and there’s no balance in it.
Corporate rights are not balanced with corporate responsibility."
And there won’t be any balance, if the prime movers of the treaty
have their way. "We will oppose any and all measures to create or even imply binding
obligations for governments or business related to the environment or labor," says
the United States Council for International Business (USCIB).
Not even voluntary guidelines are acceptable to the would-be dictators of
the global economy. "We will resist efforts to impose new ‘voluntary’
guidelines or codes of conduct on the operations of multinational corporations," the
USCIB says.
SECRET NEGOTIATIONS
Negotiations
began in May 1995 under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECED), the elite club of the 29 wealthiest nations. The Clinton
Administration, a strong supporter of the treaty, is represented by the U.S. Trade
Representative and the U.S. State and Treasury Departments. The USCIB helps shape U.S.
negotiating positions and has direct access to the chairman of the OECD’s MAI
negotiating group.
The talks have been kept tightly under wraps. U.S. government officials
denied the existence of MAI until late January 1997 when citizens’ groups obtained a
copy. To the chagrin of the State Dept., the text is now posted in full on Public
Citizens’s website at www.citizen.org.
MAI’s original completion date was May 1997, when only a very few
legislators in any of the countries involved in the talks knew anything about the treaty.
Most members of Congress had no idea of MAI’s existence — and many may not yet
fully understand its terms.
FIGHT BACK
Unions and citizens’ organizations pulled off an important victory last
fall by blocking renewal of fast track authority, the special presidential power to
side-step Congress in trade negotiations. Awareness of the effects of NAFTA fueled public
opposition to fast track. The understanding that MAI is a vast, global NAFTA that
threatens national sovereignty could weld together a coalition powerful enough to stop
this assault on our living standards and rights as citizens.
"The more people learn about this, the more scared they
get," says Alan Tonelson, a research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industrial
Council, an organization of small and medium-sized businesses. "And they should,
because it is a dangerous and audacious power grab that must be stopped."
(This article is based, in part, on material prepared by Public
Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and the International Forum on Globalization.)
| Top of Page | Contents
| Back to UE News |
If the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) had been in effect
twenty years ago, Nelson Mandela would still be in prison, and not the president of a
democratic South Africa.
Labor-backed sanctions against investment in South Africa aided the
democratic forces in that country which toppled the apartheid system of racial segregation
and oppression.
MAI would make it illegal for government to distinguish between foreign
investors based on a country’s human rights, or labor rights, record. So government
sanctions and boycotts, like those against investment in South Africa, would be
prohibited.
"Under MAI, worker protection laws might be challenged as an obstacle
to investment," writes Jonathan Tasini of the National Writers’ Union.
"For example, living wage laws could be challenged by multinational
corporations as imposing a cost of doing business that threatens investment. No longer
would governments be able to ban or restrict investments in countries that violate human
or workers’ rights — giving a bigger boost to the spread of global sweatshops
and the suppression of labor unions around the world. Many laws already on the books that
contradict the MAI’s provisions would have to be eliminated."
| Top of Page | Contents
| Back to UE News |
Corporations filing suit when government does its job? The bizarre
scenario threatened by the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) world-wide is
already a reality in the nations covered by the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA).
The Ethyl Corporation has filed suit against Canada because the Canadian
government banned the gasoline additive MMT — an Ethyl Corp. product —- as a
public health risk and a pollutant. (MMT is believed to be a poison that attacks the human
nervous system.)
As it happens, some states also ban MMT. When the U.S. Trade
Representative’s office refused to pursue the case, using NAFTA’s governmental
dispute resolution system, Ethyl Corp. filed its own direct suit against Canada — for
$251 million.
Citing a provision of NAFTA which guards corporate assets against
"expropriation," Ethyl is claiming that the very act of the Canadian parliament
in debating an MMT ban constituted an expropriation of the company’s assets.
MAI’s provisions are even broader. Investors could sue government to
recover losses from a "lost opportunity to profit from a planned investment."
These provisions would give every foreign investor or corporation the
power to challenge nearly every government action or policy — the 40-hour week, the
minimum wage, occupational safety and health requirements or environmental controls, for
example.
| Top of Page | Contents
| Back to UE News Archives |
Suppose our wishes came true. Suppose the Labor Party won a majority
in Congress and began working on behalf of working people.
Celebration would quickly turn to frustration if the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI) was in effect.
MAI would be a straight-jacket preventing any movement by government to
expand the people’s rights or social benefits. MAI would drastically limit the
ability of any government to shape economic or social policy in the interests of working
people.
MAI represents a pre-emptive strike against any future progressive
governments, here or abroad.
Sound far-fetched? Consider this: Any country having second thoughts about
MAI can not get out of the treaty until after completing five years of membership —
but then a country remains bound to all of its obligations to foreign investors and
corporations for an additional 15 years!
| Top of Page | Contents
|
Home
-> UE News -> Feature
Archives -> Feature Home • About UE • Organize! • Independent Unions
• Search • Site Guide • What's New • Contact UE
UE News • Political Action • Info for Workers • Resources
• Education • Health & Safety • International • Links
Copyright © 2003
UE. All Rights Reserved
|
FEATURE
