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ContactThe Issues below are representative of the many problems associated with NAFTA and the neo-liberal “Free Trade” agenda. But there is an alternative. One that ensures healthy trade between nations while ensuring tat social and environmental rights are upheld. That alternative is called the Peoples Trade Agreement. And it carefully sets forth alternatives to WTO trade rules on everything from labor and agriculture to intellectual property rights and immigration. To quote the Alliance for Responsible Trade:
“To achieve a true integration among peoples that transcends the commercial and economic arenas, recognizing the differences of each country, and at the same time prioritizing the protection of internal production and national companies. A treaty which holds, above all, the well being of the people and a respect for their history and cultures.”
During the decade of the 90s, we were told that the ‘Washington Consensus’ policies would help the poor countries ‘catch up’ to the rich countries. Today we recognize that the exact opposite has happened. The rich countries are richer and the poor ones are poorer. For this reason, in Latin America the people have started to act as architects of their own destiny, and are punishing in the voting booths the policy makers who have been handing over our destinies to the rich countries for the last 20 years.
It is no longer acceptable for a small group of powerful countries to deny poor nations the right to design their own development models based on internal necessities and to dictate ‘global’ economic models which don’t provide adequate solutions to our development problems, as even the World Bank admits in its documents.
Another integration is possible. In response to the FTAs, being promoted by the US: The first alternative proposal from President Morales to promote fair trade and integration based on solidarity among the Peoples of Latin American. THE PEOPLE’S TRADE AGREEMENT proposed by President Evo Morales is a response to the collapse of the neo-liberal model which is based on the core principles of deregulation, privatization and the indiscriminate opening of markets.
You can read the latest document of alternatives to NAFTA on the Alliance for Responsible Trade website. Spanish language version is available here.
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