Trade Secrets: The Hidden Costs of Free Trade (review)

The short video, Trade Secrets: The Hidden Costs of the FTAA, is a succinct and useful examination of the current neo-liberal free trade assault on workers and their communities. -"NAFTA has not lived up to the pledges and promises made in terms of job creation and protecting the environment," observes AFL-CIO President John Sweeney early in the video. Proposed new agreements like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would extend the worst results of NAFTA to 31 more countries in the hemisphere.

What are some of those results? In its 16 minutes, Trade Secrets concentrates our attention on three telling legacies of NAFTA: job flight, environmental degradation, and loss of regulatory control and sovereignty. Marshalling documentary footage, well-written and performed narration (actor Mike Farrell narrates the video), and on-camera comments from a list of compelling workers, activists, public officials and experts, the video fleshes out NAFTA's legacy.

The story of U.S. job flight, especially to the maquiladora factories on the Mexican border, is a familiar one and the video begins with a good summary, highlighting the injury to both sides of the Rio Grande. But as the narrator states, these problems are only half the story. The other half is the shift in the balance of power between people and governments on the one hand, and corporations on the other. Capturing this development is the strong point of the video. Because of NAFTA, corporations have a lot more power then they used to have.

Nowhere is this more dramatic than the corporate use of NAFTA, Chapter 11, which covers investment and development. Chapter 11 provides a framework for corporations to challenge legitimate government public health, worker rights, and environmental regulation of industry by providing a way companies can sue the government entity for damages. The video explores this issue with two examples.

In the first, a Canadian corporation, Methanex, has sued California for almost one billion dollars because of state regulation of the cancer-causing gasoline additive MTBE. Methanex did not appeal to U.S. or California courts but rather decided it had the right to seek compensation for lost profits resulting from such regulation under NAFTA, Chapter 11. The case has gone before a three-judge international arbitration tribunal. Deliberations of the tribunal are secret and its decisions are legally binding. The NAFTA suit, which is still pending, puts a potentially prohibitive price-tag on California's ability to protect public health.

Equally disturbing is the video's second example, United Parcel Service (UPS). The U.S. package-delivery corporation is suing Canada because the government-run Canadian postal service is subsidized by taxpayer dollars and is therefore unfair to trade. The implications are breathtaking. "Every service is challengeable in Canada," states one Canadian official. Indeed, NAFTA endangers public services like mail delivery, education, health care, water and prisons in all three participating countries.

Agreements like the FTAA will extend that threat and the Chapter 11 provisions to 31 more countries and 400 million more people unless the growing movement against corporate free trade becomes strong enough to stop it. The video ends with a call-to-action , noting how the issues surrounding trade are unifying workers, churches, environmentalists, community activists and all the people of the Americas.

Included with the video is a helpful workshop teaching guide, including talking points, handouts and role-play exercises. The video and other materials were rolled out in 2002 at a time when the future trade agreement worry focused on the developing FTAA. Since then the FTAA has been sidetracked and agreements like CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, have taken center stage. Whatever the particular agreement, the video is an extremely relevant , well-presented outline of the dangers inherent in the neo-liberal corporate agenda for international trade and development.

Trade Secrets: The Hidden Costs of the FTAA, a film by Jeremy Blasi and Casey Peek, may be ordered for $19 for the video only...