AFL-CIO retreats from WTO confrontation

[/ dave /]

Carl Remick wrote:

> So, the only significant voice against free trade remains
> Buchanan.

Speaking of free trade and presidential candidacy, Warren Beatty was on
the radio the other night, speaking at the ADA's Eleanor Roosevelt
Awards Dinner or somesuch and relayed on the local NPR station.

There's a transcript at http://adaction.org/beatty1999.html - here's a
small excerpt on trade:


"...But our government is susceptible to a corporate economic
globalization that is not free trade but corporate managed trade. And
the global economy is not working yet for most people. But Pat Buchanan
is wrong. We can't build a wall or turn our back on it. We have to work
with it. 

The problem in this new economy is the undue influence these
institutions and corporations have over government actions. They set the
rules. Others aren't invited to the table. What we are in danger of
experiencing is a slow motion coup d'etat of big money's interests over
the public interest. So the global rules, written into trade agreements
like NAFTA and enforced by institutions like the World Trade
Organization, protect things like patents and intellectual property
rights but not labor rights, profits but not people, investments but not
the environment. We know the results -- growth, increasing trade, some
development, some people making lots of money. 

But 475 billionaires have as much wealth as half the people on earth. We
have the sweatshop again. Child labor. Slave labor. Destruction of
forests, fish, water and air. And so far we haven't heard a word of
requirements on labor and environment and product safety in the
agreement being negotiated over Chinese admission to the World Trade
Organization.

Of course our stocks have gone up. But we're making the world safe for
globalization rather than making globalization safe for the world.

If we don't act to do something about this and make the world economy
work for everybody, we're going to see a reaction that will make Pat
Buchanan look like a choir boy. Which I'm told he once was. 

Why aren't the Democratic candidates addressing this? They offer their
devotion to globalization as if these markets were made by God rather
than investors.

Why? Could it possibly be the leading candidates in both parties are, by
definition, those who have raised the most money from these same
sources? We don't need a third party. We need a second party. 

And what has happened to the labor movement? What would Walter Reuther
say today? Is there no protest anymore?"

--

/  dave  /