How "free trade" agreements screw over local communities

I've been mightily skeptical of so-called free-trade deals since the Mulroney era.

NAFTA was going to be a panacea for the North American economy.

Mexican labor.

Canadian resources.

Yankee ingenuity.

There's a combo that can take on the world! Jobs jobs jobs was the Mulroney mantra.

What could possibly go wrong?

I wrote extensively at the time that the jobs claim was bogus. Jobs for Canada and the US were seriously at risk under NAFTA, because the only way to claim there would be a net increase in jobs north of the Rio Grande is by making the overtly racist assumption that our stupid brown-skinned brothers south of the Rio Grande were only capable of doing the dreariest manual labor.

Hollowed out former manufacturing communities all over the "rust belt" and southern Ontario prove that I was right and Brian Mulroney was not only wrong, but lying.

But the free trade religion motors on regardless.

Just this week the Harper gang was thrilled to inform the people of Canada that they had secured an invitation to negotiations for the latest iteration of a trans-Pacific free trade agreement. That will allow workers in Sandusky and Saint Thomas to compete head to head with workers in Phnom Penh.

Don't know much about the workers in Phnom Penh other than they can undercut the wages of workers in both Mexico and China, which leads me to conclude that participation in the TPP isn't likely to be an engine of job creation in Ohio or Ontario.

What's integral to all these so-called free trade agreements is that they give corporate entities the right to sue governments that impede their profit maximizing agendas.

To see this in action you need look no further than Peru.

Google "Peru mining controversies" and you'll see that even left-leaning politicians are scared shitless of facing down international mining conglomerates. Both Canada and the US have free trade agreements with Peru, and when conglomerates like Newmont or Barrick don't get their way, they can use the fine print in these free trade agreements to sue the government of Peru.

This results in government decisions that favor foreign corporations over local interests, and the struggle in Peru has already claimed many lives.

Free trade?

No thanks.

Let's try fair trade instead.