Make Trade Fair in The Americas: Agriculture, Investment and Intellectual Property: Three Reasons To Say No To The FTAA
Make Trade Fair in The Americas: Agriculture, Investment and Intellectual Property: Three Reasons To Say No To The FTAA
Make Trade Fair in The Americas: Agriculture, Investment and Intellectual Property: Three Reasons To Say No To The FTAA
Agriculture, Investment
and Intellectual Property:
Three Reasons to Say
No to the FTAA
While poverty, inequality and the concentration of wealth persist
in Latin America and the Caribbean, trade and investment
agreements are being promoted that would seriously limit the
possibilities of development and poverty eradication in the
countries of the region. The Free Trade Area of the Americas is
an agreement that would favor the interests of large
corporations over the rights of the people of the Americas.
Summary
Trade and investment have great potential for creating sustainable
development, reducing poverty and meeting basic rights. Instead of realizing
this potential, however, trade and investment have contributed to increasing
poverty, greater inequality between and within countries, and a greater
concentration of wealth produced by the global economy.
Oxfam International believes that these contradictions are a result of the
unfair rules that govern trade and international investment, as well as the
double standards by which rich countries and large companies define their
own terms for inclusion in the global economy, to the detriment of poorer
countries.
Oxfam International has launched the Make Trade Fair campaign, aimed at
changing international trade rules, especially those of the World Trade
Organization. However, parallel to the WTO, the plan to integrate Latin
America and the Caribbean into the Free Trade Area of the Americas is
moving forward at full speed. Some aspects go much further than the most
worrisome WTO rules, as in the case of investment and intellectual property.
In addition to the FTAA, the US is pushing for other bilateral and sub regional
agreements at an accelerated pace. A free trade agreement between the
United States and Central America (CAFTA), which reproduces the same
framework of rules, has been given particular momentum.
In 2001, 214 million people, nearly 43% of the Latin American population,
were living in poverty, 92.8 million (18.6%) of whom lived in abject poverty.
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
projections for 2002 indicate a poverty increase of approximately 7 million
1
people, of whom nearly 6 million are living in extreme poverty. Any
integration project in the Americas should address this social reality, but the
trade and investment policies put forth by the FTAA do not promote
sustainable development and poverty reduction and could further intensify
the scenario of inequality and exclusion in the region.
Oxfam International opposes the FTAA and we, along with a broad range of
civil society organizations on the continent, propose that alternative rules be
discussed for a different type of integration, such as those put forth by the
Hemispheric Social Alliance and the continental campaign against the FTAA.
Eliminating poverty and promoting development in the Americas require
radical changes in the existing trade and investment rules. Oxfam
International has prioritized three themes: agriculture, investment and
intellectual property, for which we propose the following:
Agricultural Dumping
One of the most important causes for the collapse of rural livelihoods
in Latin America and the Caribbean is dumping by transnationals
from the US, i.e. the export of products below production cost that
compete unfairly with local products and force global prices down in
an artificial manner. For example, the US exports wheat at 46% below
the production cost and corn at 20% below production cost.
Furthermore, when poor countries adopt open market policies, as all
Latin American and Caribbean countries except Cuba have done to
varying degrees, local prices match global prices. This means that
local farmers are deprived of to their own domestic markets, with
devastating effects on their income.
4 Conclusions
[T]he current rules have not helped our countries overcome, nor even
reduce, our economic problems. We propose alternative rules to
regulate the global and hemispheric economies that are based on a
different economic logic: that trade and investment should not be ends
in themselves, but rather tools for achieving just and sustainable
development.
Alternatives for the Americas, Hemispheric Social Alliance, December 2002, pp.8-9
1
Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean. Panorama
Social de Amrica Latina, 2001-2002. November, 2002. Available at:
www.cepal.cl
2
Ibid, p. 211
3
According to ECLAC and Institute for Food and Agricultural Development
figures.
4
Declaration of the World Food Summit: 5 Years Later. Rome. June 2002.
5
Oxfam International. Rigged Rules and Double Standards. 2002. Ch. 4.
Available at: www.maketradefair.com
6
Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, November 2001.
7
ECLAC, op cit., p.109.
8
CODEDCO, Efecto de las Acuerdos GATS y ASA en los consumidores de
Bolivia (2001), La Paz, Bolivia.
9
Information from the Asociacin Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras
del productores del Campo (based on official statistics).
10
ECLAC, op cit. Ch. 5.
11
Cited in Murphy, S. Managing the Invisible Hand: Markets, Farmers, and
International Trade. The Institute for Agricultural Trade Policy/Canadian
Foodgrains Bank, 2002.
12
CEPES, Algodn: menos reas, ms importaciones. Agraria Magazine 40.
October 2002. Lima, Peru.
13
Draft text of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Chapter on Agriculture.
Derestricted November 1, 2002. Available at: www.ftaa-alca.org.
14
Oxfam International, op cit.
15
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Handbook of
Statistics. 2002. Available at www.unctad.org.
16
ECLAC. Proyecciones Latinomericanas 2001-2002. 2002. p.54. Serie
Estudios Estadsticos y Prospectivos, n. 16. Santiago, Chile. Available at
www.eclac.cl.
17
ECLAC.op cit.
18
Banco de Mxico, Balanza de Pagos. Taken from the National Institute for
Statistics and Geography.2002.
19
Oxfam International, op cit. Chapter 7.
20
ECLAC. Foreign Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean. 1999.
21
Oxfam International, op cit.