November 5, 2005
Among Latin Americans, polls show George W Bush to be
the most unpopular American president in history. On
November 3, 2005, the Argentine daily reported the
results of a poll that showed 6 out of ten Argentines
opposed Bush’s presence in their country.
In the same poll, 75% of those surveyed said they
welcomed a visit by Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez,
Bush's staunchest opponent in his up-ill battle to win
passage of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
The FTAA, with the exception of Cuba, would include
all Caribbean and Latin American countries. If passed,
some experts predict that it will be the largest free
trade agreement in history, with an expected combined
GDP of over $9 trillion, and a market of more than 750
million people.
The FTAA agreement was designed to bring 34 countries
into a single market but it missed its deadline for
enactment on January 1, 2005. Earlier this year,
10-year drive toward passage of FTAA was derailed
completely after talks broke down when Argentina,
Venezuela, and Brazil made it clear that they were
unwilling to accept the terms set forth by the Bush
administration.
In the meantime, the Central American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA) was signed in August 2005, to extend
the policies of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), to Central American countries to
include Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica,
and El Salvador, with a side agreement with the
Dominican Republic (DR-CAFTA).
Overall, the FTAA faces widespread opposition in Latin
America and for good reason. 20 years of NAFTA's
so-called economic reforms have resulted in widespread
poverty, high unemployment, massive debt, and a series
of other economic crises.
Bush is hoping to get the deal back on track while
attending the summit, but his prospects look grim.
Protests against his visit were already underway in
Argentina, 3 days before he got there, with the
blocking of bridges and streets in the capital of
Buenos Aires, and posters bearing the slogans "Stop
Bush" and "Fuera Bush," some of which were
superimposed over graphic pictures of wounded children
in Iraqi.
Argentine Nobel Prize winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel,
recently told a radio audience that Bush is "a
torturer, violator of human rights, an assassin, a
violator of United Nations resolutions, of
international treaties and of the sovereignty of
peoples, as has happened in Iraq."
There were even attempts to obtain a court order to
bar Bush from entering the county and back in July
2005, Daniel Katz, the mayor of Mar del Plata,
described Bush as the "most unpleasant guy in the
world."
Same Old GOP Tactics To Pass CAFTA
"Though constituents widely opposed CAFTA, the
agreement passed Congress through the use of bribery,
threats, and deception," according to the article,
Vote-buying and Arm-twisting, by William F Jasper on
August 22, 2005.
The Senate and House set new lows for political
prostitution, corruption, and betrayal, with the White
House and Republican leaders openly propositioning
members in the halls of Congress with billions of
dollars in federal projects, along with promises of
special trade concessions, Jasper maintains, "all to
win passage of a misbegotten agreement that will cost
America hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions of
dollars in foreign aid, additional waves of illegal
aliens, and further entanglement in
sovereignty-destroying international regulatory
regimes," he wrote.
Congressman, Ron Paul (R-Texas), one of the 27
Republicans who voted against CAFTA, said the
vote-buying price tag may end up being $50 billion or
more. "Most of the bribery is hidden away in projects
funded by the massive energy and transportation
appropriation bills," he told Jasper.
The truth is, CAFTA will do nothing to improve the US
economy. In an August 30, 2005 letter to the Forum,
Rep Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), tells how "the economies of
the CAFTA countries is smaller than that of the state
of Connecticut, just two-thirds that of
Minneapolis-St. Paul. The idea that we are instantly
going to be sending trucks and ships full of American
products – high-quality commodities and goods – to the
citizens of these countries, where 40 percent of
workers earn less than $2 a day, is simply a myth."
In per capita terms, "the countries range from
Nicaragua with a GNI per capita of $730, which the
World Bank classifies as a low-income country, to
Costa Rica with per capita income of $4,280, which is
classified as an upper middle income country. The rest
of the countries are classified as lower middle-income
countries by the World Bank," according to an August
4, 2005 CRS Report for Congress.
The economies of the countries in Central America are
so poor that they cannot afford to buy a significant
quantity of any product from the US. "With a combined
national income of about $84 billion, the Gross
National Incomes (GNI) of the countries range from
$5.5 billion for Nicaragua to $23.5 billion for
Guatemala," according to the CRS Report.
But then the true goal of CAFTA has never been about
making money off these tiny countries. Three years ago
the Bush administration admitted that the purpose of
CAFTA was to instigate a drive for the passage of
FTAA, in a January 16, 2002 press release upon opening
of negotiations for CAFTA: "This negotiation will
complement the United States’ goal of completing the
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) no later than
January 2005 by increasing the momentum in the
hemisphere toward lowering barriers," it said.
According to, Protectionism And Free Trade, by Harley
Shaiken, "the DR-CAFTA is more a pleading of special
interests than a free-trade deal. It manages
simultaneously to fleece the people of six poor
countries and to put U.S. workers in harm's way," in
Tom Paine, on May 31, 2005.
Bush Lobbies For Pharma
By now, the records of the House ethics committee
confirm that the Bush administration and its puppets
in Congress, do little more than provide a trolley for
private gain. I for one am getting tired of watching
these lobbyists doing their bidding while on the
clock, in addition to tax payers having to foot the
bill for all expense paid trips to foreign countries.
While pursuing these trade agreements, Bush is doing
the bidding for Pharma, his party's top campaign
contributor. CAFTA was clearly designed to protect the
interests of large drug companies in Central America.
Drug makers currently invested in Costa Rica include
Abbott, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly and Bristol-Meyers
Squibb. See Department of Commerce, US Commercial
Service, Costa Rica Country Commercial Guide 2002.
CAFTA includes intellectual property rights for
pharma, that extend the time a drug maker may keep
test data secret which will result in an extension of
monopolies because impoverished countries cannot
afford to conduct their own clinical studies.
"For American drug companies," Harley Shaiken says,
"this agreement extends the time period during which
brand-name pharmaceuticals have exclusive access to
markets, postponing the entry of generic drugs and
thus limiting competition."
"The Bush Administration's trade negotiators have
repeatedly pressured the developing countries to forgo
their rights ... and to adopt intellectual property
standards that impede access to essential
medications," says a report by Rep Henry Waxman,
(D-CA).
"For Central Americans, the cost of drugs will soar,
straining budgets and gutting health care," Shaiken
writes, "The result may be a death sentence for many."
Four of the 6 Latin American countries with the
highest rate of HIV are in Central America. Hundreds
of thousands of HIV patients could die as a direct
result of CAFTA.
"In effect, the President's trade representatives have
elevated the protection of pharmaceutical patents
above the pressing health needs of developing
countries," according to, Big Pharma's Free Ride, in
Salon Magazine on August 12, 2005
War On The Supplement Industry
The dietary supplement industry has become a real
threat to pharma as the number of people who stay
healthy grows as a result of taking dietary
supplements. In response to the threat, pharma has
launched an undeclared all-out--global-war against the
supplement industry.
The industry has already paid huge fines for illegal
conduct aimed at supplement makers. Over the years,
the US Department of Justice has brought actions
against industry giants, Hoffman La Roche, Merck and
others, for conspiring to fix prices of raw materials
used to manufacture supplements, in violation of the
Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
In the case of LaRoche, the company was fined a record
setting $540,000,000 for price fixing by creating a
false shortage of raw materials for vitamin B3, in
order to increase sales of their anti-cholesterol
drugs.
Considering the fine, it does not require much of an
imagination to recognize the financial motives behind
the war. The customer base that pharma is after is
enormous. Recent polls show that 60 to 70% of North
Americans now use complementary medicines and dietary
supplements.
In addition to those already discussed above, another
gift to pharma is buried in the language of CAFTA in
Section 6, which requires that all member countries
form a Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) committee for
the purpose of insuring ongoing harmonization under
the terms of the SPS Agreement in the WTO, according
to the July 2, 2005, Urgent Alert Health Freedom Is
Being Threatened, by Paul Anthony Tayler.
The World Trade Organization's SPS Agreement reads in
part: "To harmonize sanitary and phytosanitary
measures on as wide a basis as possible, Members shall
base their food safety measures on international
standards, guidelines or recommendations."
The Codex Alimentarius Commission is the international
body charged with setting global food standards. It
holds an annual gathering of delegates in Europe each
year, many of them trans-national pharmaceutical
corporations, who are primarily focused on increasing
their market share, by pushing their desired and
arbitrary regulatory "standards" into a global
standard and forcing it onto the smaller local
supplement industry, all in the name of "international
regulatory excellence," according to Eve Hillary in
"Codex - The Sickness Indu$try's Last Stand, April 23,
2005.
The Codex subcommittee that specifically deals with
supplements is the Committee on Nutrition and Foods
for Special Dietary Uses, which meets in Bonn, Germany
each November. This committee establishes guidelines
to govern international trade in supplements. In
essence, it has the authority to decide whether or not
consumers can have vitamins, minerals and other
nutrients, in what dosage, and who will be permitted
to manufacture and sell the products.
Under CAFTA, the US government must not only harmonize
federal laws, it must also force state and local
governments to conform their laws with the standards.
Many believe there is a real danger that guidelines
for supplements could be forced on the US because if
it refuses to harmonize, the WTO can apply pressure by
withdrawing trade privileges and imposing trade
sanctions.
Such sanctions could amount to billions of dollars in
tariffs that the WTO could authorize nations to levee
on US exports, and not just supplement exports. This
sanction would make US goods grossly overpriced and
hard to sell. Under such pressure, Congress would
likely adopt the anti-supplement regulations. It has
already given in on past WTO disputes, to avoid
crippling trade sanctions. See Dietary Supplements
Under Imminent Threat, James South M.A, January 26,
2005.
A Major Battle At Home And Abroad
Convincing Latin American countries to adopt the FTAA,
may be the least of the administration's worries.
Considering how much political capital was waged on
passing CAFTA, an even greater battle lies ahead in
trying to get Congress to pass a plan that would
encompass the entire Western Hemisphere.
One need only consider what has occurred in the this
country since NAFTA, to recognize the uphill battle
Bush is facing. The year before NAFTA was adopted, the
US trade deficit with its partners was $9 billion.
Last year the deficit hit $111 billion, over ten times
what it was before NAFTA.
The Economic Policy Institute determined that the
trade deficit has cost US workers nearly 900,000 jobs,
and job opportunities, through 2002, and the deficit
has grown higher since then. Robert Scott, "The High
Price of 'Free Trade," Briefing Paper, November 2003.
And life after NAFTA is even worse for our partners.
NAFTA promised to raise living standards in Mexico and
reduce the flow of illegal immigrants to the US. But
in fact, the opposite has happened. Real wages in
Mexico today are actually lower than when NAFTA began,
the poverty rate is higher, and illegal immigration to
the US has soared.
More than a million small farmers have lost their land
to floods of agricultural imports and are forced to
seek work in factories along the border or in the US,
Economist Mark Levinson told the Senate Finance
Committee, on April 13, 2005.
Our trade relationship with Canada is not looking that
great either. Ottawa, Washington's oldest and largest
free trade partner, is close to giving up hope of
reaching a fair settlement of its softwood lumber
dispute with the US, according to the September 12,
2005, Toronto Star.
Canadian negotiators are refusing to return to the
table, to indicate to the world, the ineffectiveness
of trying to negotiate with the Bush administration.
"The American position is absolutely untenable," said
Prime Minister Paul Martin. "We've got to step up with
retaliation, in my view," Industry Minister David
Emerson told the Star.
The latest flare-up occurred in August 2005, when a
final-appeal panel "ruled that the U.S. had no right
to impose a 27 per cent levy on Canadian lumber
imports. U.S. Trade Representative, Rob Portman, said
the US government disagreed with the decision and
would disregard it, according to the Star.
"Canadians shook their heads in disbelief," the paper
wrote, while "the rest of the world, Latin America in
particular, got a vicarious taste of free trade with
the US."
It appears that a trade relationship with the US is no
longer a sought after prize. According to the Star,
"a growing number of countries regard it as a dubious
asset."
Evelyn Pringle - epringle05@yahoo.com
(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media
TV and an investigative journalist focused on exposing
corruption)
Courtesy and Copiright Evelyn Pringle
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