Ralph Nader on Free Trade 2008 Independent for for President; 2004 Reform nominee; 2000 Green nominee

Sub-sections under Free Trade:
• Globalization
• Other issues under Free Trade

In anti-globalization book, �The Case Against Free Trade�

A: Ralph Nader was present at the creation of the movement against corporate globalization and created Global Trade Watch, which mobilized global justice demonstrations, including the �Battle in Seattle� in 1999. Nader has written extensively on the subject, including in �The Case Against Free Trade: GATT, NAFTA and the Globalization of Corporate Power�.

WTO makes trade supreme over labor, environment & consumers

A: Nader says, �NAFTA and the WTO makes commercial trade supreme over environmental, labor, and consumer standards and need to be replaced with open agreements that pull-up rather than pull down these standards. While global trade is a fact of life, trade policies must be open, democratic & not strip-mine environmental, social and labor standards. These latter standards should have their own international pull up treaties.�

Free trade isn�t win-win: we�re exporting jobs

Someday the pollyanna belief that the US economy always replaces the jobs it loses overseas with new jobs here, as we keep racing ahead of other countries with modern technology, may run into a contrary riptide that no set of spurious statistics can obscure.

High-tech jobs lost to foreign countries

NAFTA and GATT supersede national and state laws

Restrict IMF power, or abolish it

When individuals are unable to pay their debts, the debtor and the creditor share the pain, through bankruptcy or otherwise. No such thing happens in international financial markets. When countries are unable to meet their payment obligations, the IMF rushes in, and provides money to the borrower. This money is used to repay creditors, letting them off the hook. The pain is borne exclusively by the borrowing country, which must accept recessionary austerity conditions from the IMF.

Working out a sensible system of international financial regulation, which avoids Wall Street bailouts & unfairly punishing debtor countries, is a complicated matter. It is clear, however, that the IMF has to be reined in. Even some Wall Street conservatives suggest that the IMF�s power should be restricted or the IMF abolished altogether.

End export assistance; it�s corporate welfare

As regular beneficiaries of double standards, big business executives and lobbyists, it seems, are without a sense of irony. How do the corporate proponents of international trade agreements designed to promote misnamed �free trade� explain their simultaneous support for marketing subsidies? If it is only on the grounds that �other countries do the same thing.� Perhaps they should turn their multinational lobbying prowess to eliminating other countries� export assistance programs.

The most disturbing feature of many of these programs may be that the assisted companies export troublesome products or technologies-weapons, or environmentally hazardous equipment, for example. Such programs, especially arms exports initiatives, should be ended.

Renegotiate NAFTA & WTO �as if human beings mattered�

Subordinate the commercial to human rights, enviro, & labor

It�s not free trade; it�s corporate-managed trade

NAFTA failures: $50B Mexico bailout; 400,000 exported jobs

A: NAFTA has turned out worse than we predicted.
1. Nobody predicted that the US government would have to have a package of $ 50 billion to bail out the crooked Mexican government regime and its billionaire oligarchs.
2. NAFTA promised us more jobs. We�ve lost almost 400,000 jobs because we now have moved from a trade surplus in Mexico to probably a $ 10 billion trade deficit. And we have a deficit. We�re exporting jobs -- probably about 350,000 to 400,000 jobs.
3. It�s turned out badly for most of the Mexican people; they�re poorer, they�re more unemployed and they are ravaged by a vicious inflation.
4. The borders are a nightmare; more smuggling, more pollution, more infectious diseases. The environmental commissions are toothless.

China & other dictatorships have no real free trade

Corporate globalism causes autocratic governance

Globalization is a betrayal of workers and environment

Seattle sparked movement to question corporate globalization

�Battle of Seattle� convinced president to reconsider WTO

Global trade concentrates power & homogenizes the globe

Far better for countries to focus on building domestic markets through land reform, microcredit for small businesses, use of local materials for housing and renewable energy solar-style. For developing countries, it is far better for bottom-up capital formation to encourage activities that are more job intensive -- generating purchasing power -- than adopting highly capitalized and chemical plantation type agribusiness with destructive technologies.

WTO�s �trade uber alles� hurts environment, health, & safety

A growing movement: international labor rights

Multinational corporations challenge democracy

A: With the collapse of communism and with the absence of any alternative way of ordering private property and using public assets, we�re entering into a generation of global power of the multi-national corporations. There�s no society that�s able to withstand commercial western culture. Perhaps fundamentalism and Islam is trying to do it.... But that�s going to be the challenge now, whether democracy is going to be up to it. Whether these giant corporations are going to be able to respect instead of erode and control democratic processes and these new trade agreements like GATT and the World Trade Organization are not encouraging.