FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS?

The tangents of wealth and power in the global corporate structure tends to unravel its latent tendencies for underhanded exploitation and 'unfree' freedoms which tip the scales in favour of a few elite holding the sceptres of brute force and influence.

Free trade agreements are one among the multitudes of selective discriminatory strategies that lobby for trade promotion between partner nations, they are supposed to facilitate seamless exchange of services, information and physical goods by the removal of two barriers: a) Tariffs and b) Import quotas, in a manner that benefits the partner countries that hold contrasting customs and regulations while trading with non member countries. These negotiations impact not just trade in the widely accepted genres but also the finer tunings of intellectual properties, investor rights, government procurement, competition policy and more importantly the common workforce which becomes the bearer of unfair burdens placed by a handful of greedy traders, this being especially true in case of powerful economies entering an FTA pact with an economically vulnerable nation, paving a slippery slope for the mighty to impose its unregulated will upon the weaker section to its own advantage. 

Agreements such as NAFTA (The Northern American Free Trade Agreement) have often been critiqued for one sidedness and are plagued with protests for the way they disregard equitable concessions to favour the United States alone, under the NAAFTA regime of extreme protectionism of the American economic interests, any American organization with a scope of furthering its monetary ambit in a fellow NAAFTA nation, shall under the FTA pact, enjoy the same privileges accorded to the partner nations homegrown companies, the vice versa doesn't apply, for example if an American company decides to take its operations to Mexico (a NAAFTA nation) it reserves every right and privilege accorded to a natural Mexico based company but when a Mexican company wants to enter US soil, it won't enjoy the rights which a US company has, rather it can be sued and removed much like the unregistered Mexican immigrants. To top that are the plethora of unfair trade practices such as the flooding of less developed economies with highly subsidized US food grains, burying local market produce which simply cannot compete at such low prices, indirectly accelerating the immigration fever in search of better livelihoods. 

The awnings of exploitation are witnessed in the fine print of these policies, negotiations of NAAFTA include dubious provisions catering solely to ‘intellectual property rights’ a complicated word for patents in the fields of research, pharmacy, defense or any such potential monetary mine. The enactment of such provisions facilitates the powerful sections of corporate arena to engage without restraint in exorbitant extraction of profits in lieu of intellectual patents.

Despite the deceptive gloss which adorns the oval offices of our policy makers foreign trade negotiations are no cakewalk, it took seven years for Australia to sign a pact with Japan on free trade in 2015, the global community still awaits an end to the long standing negotiations of a Pacific Rim trade deal which involves 12 nations, compounding nearly 40% of the world’s economy. These negotiations are admittedly long and arduous tasks, notoriously hard for even the best policy makers to disentangle and sometimes stretch out for decades before reaching a cohesive agreement.

However the thick shroud of secrecy which blind-sides the general populace only to be rudely awoken by 'leaks' from alternate media sources adds yet another incriminating factor for such agreements. The chronicle of such trade talks since the advent of modern diplomacy reveals careful veiling of crucial details regarding the policies formulated by a select few designers keeping their own interests at heart of the deal while simultaneously excluding the general public who is many a times vehemently opposed but are merely expected to follow like sheep through the laid out norms. It is no surprise then that protests, rallies and disagreements often emerge when the finer points highlighting the unfair terms become public knowledge, on 17th August 2015 about 800 people attended a rally in Gladstone to push for changes to the China Free Trade Agreement. Ros McLennan (Queensland Council of Unions general secretary) said that this trade deal risked local jobs and livelihoods as it reduced restrictions on imported foreign labour, the federal Coalition having negotiated the free trade agreement in secret last year simply cannot expect Australian workers to accede to its negative impacts. 

Such agreements are often marketed as being the gospel beneficiaries of the average citizens as they claim to improve market competition and protect local markets and industries leading to prosperity and wealth for the economy. In theory, increased competition means more products on the shelves and lower prices in a spirit of honest, fair and free trade, however these agreements are often merely paying lip service to benefit foreign policy and not economic prosperity where the smaller economies end up making disproportionately large concessions that harm them in the long run.

In the end it is a question of who reaps the lion's share from these convoluted policies. It seems to be the designers of the policies themselves. In situations where tariffs are already low and changing them is essentially a moot process the resultant policies metastasise to anti-free trade deals. They offer protection to the already wealthy and elite business conglomerates to make exorbitant profits at the cost of the common citizens. These powerful parts of the corporate system are the only ones who favour the making of such agreements, which would be better termed as  dis-agreements considering the majority of common people opposing from both ends. There is a stark need for reform in the policy making process which as it stands now gives corporations sweeping protections in their to bids to amplify profits, no matter what the human costs and unjust provisions that are the legal armour to profiteering predators who can sue a nation if it stands in way of its plans, even if that nation's domestic or environmental interests are compromised along the way. 

The irony is that the agreements do create substantial progress in money making albeit for a select few, derailing true development and clogging equitable trickling down of the earned wealth to benefit society at large. The world astounds at the broken bridge between the haves and the have nots, with barely a thought to acknowledge the rusty foundations. The flaws in the framework of these policies creates millionaires at the same rate it deepens the ridges of poverty excluding a strata of humanity from the cycle of wealth, adding yet another mile to the growing chasms between deep pockets and deprived peasants.

The people must be informed and engaged to check the indiscriminate hands eyeing their lands capabilities.

Madeeha Saman