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TITLE: Haitian Economist Denounces Free Trade Initiatives |
AUTHOR: Brian Stevens |
PUB: Haitian Times |
DATE: April 18, 2001 |
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As Western Hemispheric leaders gather in Quebec for this week's Summit of the Americas, a Port-au-Prince economist is barnstorming across the United States, denouncing dramatic new free trade initiatives American and European leaders are promoting as potentially devastating to Haiti. "Eight million people will be dominated by a project that favors US and European interests," Camille Chalmers, a State University of Haiti economics professor, said of the trade liberalization efforts that heads of state from 34 countries will discuss at the three-day Canada meeting. "We must have a critical reflection process that includes the reality of the people," said Chalmers, who serves as executive secretary of PAPDA - the Platform for the Advocacy of Alternative Development in Haiti. As director of the Port-au-Prince based non-profit economic justice group, Chalmers is heading up a fight to stop - or at least alter - the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, the principle point of the Summit of the Americas that begins on April 20. An expansion of the sweeping trade and tariff liberalization effort of the early 90s known as NAFTA - the North American Free Trade Agreement - FTAA will knock down further barriers to imports and exports for virtually every country in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the exception of Cuba."This will not be good for Haiti's already extremely fragile economy," Chalmers said simply of the push among first-world powerhouses like the United States toward a more global economy.The debate over FTAA, in many ways, has been playing out in countries like Haiti for more than a decade, as progressive economists and peasant organizers like Chalmers struggle against the implementation of outsider-imposed trade rules that they believe will crush local production."What's bad will become worse," said Chalmers, noting that already reduced tariffs like the three percent fee that is levied against foreign grown rice pouring into Haiti would be eliminated completely. In 2000, Haiti imported almost 220 million metric tons of rice - a move that many local farmers and their advocates say only serves to further destroy Haiti's ability to produce food for itself.For the past three years, representatives from the governments of more than 30 Western Hemisphere democracies have met regularly to devise how to gradually remove the last vestiges of trade and tariff restrictions in an effort they said will benefit the region as a whole.Despite an FTAA structure including rotating negotiating chairmanships that vary every 18 months and a promise of "transparency" in all meetings and decision making, advocates like Chalmers are not convinced that the voices of the poor are being heard in the debate."This will have great consequences, yet the people - those who it will impact the most - aren't being consulted in Haiti or in the United States," said Chalmers, who is not alone in his criticisms. The San Francisco-based Global Exchange - a non-profit social and economic justice lobbying outfit - is sponsoring Chalmers in his tour across the Untied States, hoping his populist approach will rally support for the anti-FTAA movement here, much like the massive anti-WTO protests of 1999 in Seattle.Moira Feeney, Haiti program coordinator for Global Exchange sees Chalmers' talks as contributing a critical element to the FTAA debate - putting a face on those who are most likely to impacted by the trade pact."He makes the global-local link that is so important in educating people about the FTAA," Feeney said. Besides being a threat to Haitian workers, FTAA could also cost American workers jobs, both Feeney and Chalmers said.The economist believes the US recession - in which nearly 100,000 workers have been laid off - could cost even more Americans their jobs as companies head south in search of lower wages and fewer worker safety standards.For their part, FTAA officials have sought to reassure critics by stressing the humanitarian concerns of their efforts, most recently in an early April statement released at a Buenos Aires meeting of trade ministers from all 34 participating countries."We reiterate that the ...FTAA will continue to take into account the broad social and economic agenda ...with a view to contributing to raising living standards, improving the working conditions of all the people in the Americans and better protecting the environment," the statement declared. But in a more telling line of that same statement, the ministers seemed to hedge on the question of any potential negative economic impact on countries like Haiti, promising only to avoid "to the extent possible, adopting any policies or measures that may adversely affect regional trade and investment." And that may be the root of the fear among those fighting against FTAA, that whatever final agreement emerges from the group, it will give priority to multinational projects at the expense of the economies of developing countries like Haiti .As such, many anti-FTAA advocates believe the pact will lead to the privatization of social services and force governments like Haiti to follow internationally determined development strategies that do not address the needs of the poor. Instead of adapting to FTAA, Chalmers and others are calling for a social pact for the development of the Americas. The pact advocates a vision, Chalmers said, that would not limit the discussion to commerce and investment, but rather include topics like the environment, health care, education and literacy."We want to open a global debate by taking this occasion to propose different ideas - ideas we believe are in the interest of all people in the Americas," Chalmers said from Washington D.C., the second stop on his five-city US tour that includes Orlando, Boston, Chicago and Seattle.But Chalmers may find opposition to the socially progressive economic approach he is trekking across the US to promote in his very own backyard, at home in Haiti. The Aristide administration seems to be signaling a move in the opposite direction, with the President's decision last week to request the return of a United Nations special representative in Haiti.The post was eliminated when the mandate of the previous representative - Alfredo Lopes Cabral - expired in February and the just-inaugurated President Aristide did not ask the UN for an extension of its long-standing role in Haiti.The move to do so now, observers believe, suggests an acknowledgment on Aristide's part that he must work more closely with international organizations like the UN and the Organization of American States - two of the major players in the FTAA talks - if he is to see any success in Haiti.Chalmers and other argue though that any talks between the Haitian government and international actors that fail to include voices from Haiti's poor will ultimately fail to serve the country's greatest needs."We must articulate society's needs in the context of commerce and industry. To not to do so would be to betray our own people and our chance to lift ourselves up and out of poverty," he said. END |