Have Rejectionist Forces Taken Over Civil Society?

  
A growing wave of anti-globalization seeks to derail the FTAA negotiations. At the People's Summit during the Quebec City Summit of the Americas, one of the largest and most influential civil society coalitions, the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA), said no to FTAA. "While it's hard not to sympathize with some of the peaceful demonstrators' concerns," wrote Andr�s Oppenheimer in an April 22 commentary in the Miami Herald, "I was baffled by their leaders' refusal to accept an invitation by the Canadian government to meet with the official summit dignitaries. And I find it ludicrous for them to claim that they, and not the presidents, are the true representatives of the people."

But, one may ask, what is there to talk about? Since the Davos conference three years ago-when Kofi Annon, Secretary General of the United Nations, warned against the "global backlash"-little has been done to open multilateral processes such as the FTAA and the WTO to demands that they incorporate a "social dimension." The HSA's decision not to enter the Quebec security perimeter was made long before the Canadians extended their last-minute invitation to dialogue. Soon after the Canc�n Davos protests were brutally broken up by Mexican state police, the HSA's steering committee decided not to go anywhere near the "wall of shame" in Quebec. Much to the HSA's credit, despite the pressures of more radical groups, its column of peaceful marchers veered away from the Old City, taking the great majority of protesters with it. A meeting with the official Summit emissaries would have been inconsistent with this statement.

What would civil society have gained through such a meeting, anyway? A series of encounters since 1995 have promoted an exchange of views. One of the most significant took place at the Toronto Trade Ministerial in 1999. A representative group of ministers sat stone-faced through the meeting and even made some rather supercilious remarks. They received a set of well-crafted documents containing detailed, item-by-item explanations of the HSA's positions on the FTAA and the Summit. Yet, the ministers' final declaration at Toronto mentioned only the Americas Business Forum, without even a nod to the meeting with civil society.

A desire to link environmental and labor issues to trade is a point of view that carries great weight in regional public opinion. Many governments, including the new Fox administration in Mexico as well as the USTR, are making that link ever more clear. Several new studies indicate that labor and environmental conditionality are not factors that would inhibit trade from developing countries. In other words, we are not talking about a world minimum salary of $5.15 an hour, but more general rules adapted to local conditions. To brand this as protectionism is as great a misnomer as to call the FTAA a free trade agreement. All the parties involved are seeking their own brand of managed trade through rules that open markets to their advantage.

Most press coverage underscores Brazil's intransigence or the pro-free trade stance of Chile's "socialist" president, Ricardo Lagos. These factors supposedly will bolster the Bush administration's efforts to play down the labor and environmental issues as Congress takes up the debate on fast track-or trade promotion authority-and the Chile and Jordan FTAs. In fact, however, a growing movement throughout the Americas is calling for more popular consideration of trade agreements. An example is the call for a plebiscite to approve the FTAA in Brazil, Argentina and other nations that counts on the support of such leading figures as Bernard Cassen, director of Le Monde Diplomatique, who proposed the idea during the conclusion of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre last January.

Efforts will likely continue to discredit the groups related to the Hemispheric Social Alliance. However, the success of the Quebec People's Summit has made the HSA an even greater force, and its US network is expanding. The People's Summit received a lot of good press, especially in South Florida's Sun-Sentinel newspaper, which featured several articles on the event, including a front-page story in the Sunday edition.

The next big rallying point for civil society will be the campaign against President Bush's trade promotion authority. Much depends on the administration's approach to the negotiation guidelines that must accompany this legislation. There is still time to put labor and the environment into the mix as direct negotiation objectives, but the wording will have to be convincing. If the experiences of NAFTA and the normalization of trade relations with China are any indication, the battle will be a rough one.

Reform or rejection of the FTAA should not be viewed in terms of black and white. It is still too early to tell which direction will prevail within the civil society movement. From the way the main column of protesters veered away from the Summit's "wall of shame," it appears that there is hope for real reform of trade policy and not just blindness on both sides of the question. The cry of "NO FTAA" should not be confused with the desire to promote integration and reform. We'll see more Seattle-like confrontations before the question is settled.