The Progressive magazine
April 26, 2001
By Matthew Rothschild

For some reason last Friday night, I was home watching "Washington Week" on PBS, perhaps the most insipid political talk show in the country, the one where reporters ask other reporters questions whose answers they already know.

The subject of the Quebec protests over the Free Trade Area of the Americas came up, and Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal weighed in with this chestnut: "We're at this interesting moment in history where there really is no alternative to American-style free-market capitalism."

For balance, the show offered Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, who took the low road: "There are countries around the world that are not practicing the kind of capitalism these protesters are protesting against. They're called, let's see, North Korea, Sudan, Cuba, Burma, Libya. They're countries where people are as poor as they get, basically."

That's when I turned the TV off. On issues of free trade, there is virtually no debate in the mainstream media, especially in The New York Times. The benefits of free trade are taken for granted; the critiques are ridiculed.

The Times reporters covering the FTAA referred to "the raw emotions" (David E. Sanger, April 21) of the protesters, and "the passions that can be inflamed" (Anthony DePalma, April 23) by free trade agreements. It's as if there's no rational, moral grounds for opposing the FTAA.

Another favorite tactic was to belittle the breadth of the protests. Sanger again: "Just as Seattle attracted everyone from anarchists to human rights advocates to environmental groups and labor unions, here in Quebec every kind of protester was on the street today. Some complained that trade accords do not guarantee rights for gays and lesbians..."

The Times editorialists resorted to reciting the catechism: "Contrary to the claims made by the anti-globalization protesters who are out in force in Quebec, trade liberalization and economic globalization offer poor nations the best opportunity for improving their standards of living. There are no models for the notion that less interdependence with the global economy is a recipe for success." But more interdependence hasn't raised the standards of living in Latin America in the last decade or in Africa in the last two. And it has made many countries in East Asia extremely vulnerable to the vicissitudes of trade, investment, and currency speculation. Less interdependence, by contrast, has shielded countries from such destabilizing economic forces. Those countries with capital controls--Chile, China, India, and Malaysia--were able to withstand the economic downturn of the late 1990s far better than those without such controls, like Thailand and Indonesia.

Plus, the "no models" argument is quite convenient, since the U.S. government has done everything in its power to destroy any such models that might arise, be they Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran, Castro in Cuba, Allende in Chile, Lumumba in the Congo, Nkrumah in Ghana, Nasser in Egypt, Manley in Jamaica, Nyerere in Tanzania, Sukarno in Indonesia, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or Aristide in Haiti.

When all else fails, the pundits of the Times are not averse to using ad hominem attacks. So Friedman in his Times column of April 24 writes that except for environmentalists, "this anti-globalization movement is largely the well intentioned but ill informed being led around by the ill intentioned and well informed."

And Friedman's little brother, Paul Krugman, in his Times column of April 22, writes that the anti-globalization forces are all heart and no head. "The anti-globalization movement already has a remarkable track record of hurting the very people and causes it claims to champion," he wrote.

His "most spectacular example"? "People with no heads indulged their idealism by voting for Ralph Nader."

I suppose Nader will serve as the whipping boy for every ill imaginable, but to use Nader voters to demonstrate the weakness of the case against globalization is quite a reach.

That case is not based on foolishness, raw emotion, or inflamed passion. It's based on certain facts.

Fact one: The FTAA does not adequately provide labor or environmental safeguards, and President Bush was careful in Quebec to leave wiggle room here.

Fact two: The FTAA takes key economic decisions out of the hands of the people and establishes procedures that are far from democratically accountable. Government efforts to control the environment, subsidize basic goods like food or fuel, protect public ownership over water rights, or banking, or telecommunications will all be suspect.

Fact Three: The economic model that is being imposed on countries throughout the hemisphere is a model that is good for multinational corporations but not necessarily good for the majority of the people. Multinationals will have a free rein to invest and trade; their patents and intellectual property will be protected. And they will be able to challenge almost any regulation they don't like.

But for peasants, workers, and small businessmen, the increased competition from mostly U.S. corporations could be devastating. Peasants will be forced off their land, as they no longer can sell their corn or rice at a price as low as that offered by U.S. agribusinesses. Workers may find themselves in a race to the bottom as far as wages and conditions go. And small businessmen will go bankrupt in the face of the giant conglomerates from the North.

These are the real issues at stake. And that's why thousands and thousands of people from Seattle to D.C. to Prague and on to Quebec have been protesting the headlong rush into yet another free trade agreement.

It's not a question of "raw emotions" or "passions." It's a question of democracy and justice.