Faith in Big Trade Deals Keeps Crumbling
Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of globalization?
‘Bad deal’: French trade minister Matthias Fekl said his country is likely to drop TTIP talks after leaks that US wants lower labour and environmental standards.
The ads were expensive, but easily afforded by Canada’s 160 largest public corporations, who paid for them as the Business Council on National Issues.
The ad blitz was intended counter the effective campaign by opponents who warned Canadians that tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs would be lost.
Opponents won the battle for hearts and minds but lost the 1988 election on the issue, thus making Canada and the US “free trade” guinea pigs.
Hundreds of such deals have been signed since, in spite of the fact that the critics were right. Canada lost some 334,000 jobs between 1988 and 1994 as a direct result. Still, since 1988, the promoters of these investment protection agreements have held sway in large part because of massive support by corporate media.
Now, three decades later, citizens around the world are waking up and asking: just whom do governments govern for?
Battlegrounds in US and Europe
That question is being raised loudly in the E.U. and the U.S. In those two powerhouse economies, opposition to such deals could save us from more of them. On the line specifically are the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Canada’s proposed deal with the E.U., the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). If the U.S.-E.U. deal (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – TTIP) fails CETA is unlikely to survive.
So-called trade deals empower transnational corporations by radically compromising the nation-state’s capacity for democratic governance.
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