Alliance for Responsible Trade

THE FREE TRADE AGEEEMENT (FTA) which the United States wants to impose on Bolivia is nothing more than the continuation of the annexation project which is called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Because Latin American people were opposed to the FTAA, the country from the north has attempted to divide us by trying to sign FTAs with each of the neo-liberal governments in power in Latin America. But the consciousness of the people is advancing and beginning to understand the perverse commercial plans which the United States has for our region. A detailed study of the FTA should lead us to conclude that it must not be permitted. Here are five reasons why:

1. The FTA is born from a non-democratic process

The majority of the Bolivian population does not know the content of the FTA, even though their lives will be profoundly affected by this plan. The reason for this is that the FTAs have been negotiated in secret, with secret documents between authorities in the U. S. Government and people from neo-liberal Latin American governments who are subordinate to the U. S. power. The negotiations in different Latin American countries began in 1994, (from this point on it was called FTAA) were carried out in secret, and the first draft was only published after six years of negotiations. When the FTAA fell apart, because of opposition from social movements, principally from Brazil and the Andean Countries, the United States decided to sign FTAs with each country. In essence the FTAs maintain the same spirit as the FTAA.

2. The opening of markets will destroy small producers

With the FTAs, ‘barriers' to commerce will be eliminated; for example, the taxes on imported products. In this way, the promoters of FTAs plan to have free competition among all products. The elimination of trade barriers means that the large producers will have significant advantages, reducing the possibility of small producers to sell their products.

3. The poor countries will loose their food sovereignty

What will happen if Bolivian farmers stop producing potatoes, migrate to the cities or out of the country to look for work, or if they start producing products for export, such as in Ecuador, where many farmers have begun planting flowers to export to the United States. As a result, in Ecuador they have stopped growing the things they eat, and are now dependent on importing a portion of their food. Now they are in a treacherous position relative to food sovereignty. If the price of, or demand for the flowers goes down, or if the price of imported products goes up, the population will not be able to buy what they need to eat. With an FTA, we will loose food sovereignty and security.

4. Subordination to the trans-nationals

The FTAs are designed to foment and protect private investment. If a trans-national company claims that because of labor laws, or due to measures in Bolivia to protect the environment its profits are ‘impacted,' it is possible to take the Bolivian government to a tribunal and demand compensation. The government in all likelihood would be obligated to pay. The FTAs, to protect private investment and the profits of trans-national companies, want to do away with laws which protect workers and the environment. The FTAs have jurisdiction above our national laws. In the case of Cochabamba, the mobilizations of the people in the so called "war of water" managed to reverse the sale of the water system to the trans-national company Bechtel, and that was followed by a demand by Bechtel against the Bolivian state for $25 million. According to the FTAs, the government is obligated to pay this sum.

5. Intellectual Property

According to the FTAs, patents may be granted on plants, micro-organisms or drawings. If seeds or traditional medicines are patented, everyone will be required to pay a ‘user fee' for the seeds or the medicine to the ‘owner' of the patent. In this way we will loose the right to use seeds and traditional knowledge, as has happened with certain varieties of quinine.

The FTAs are in conflict with the relationships in the Andean Community of Nations referring to patent monopolies from the entire Hemisphere. This means that countries with patents in one country will have exclusive rights to sell their products in the entire hemisphere with the exception of Cuba. Rules about intellectual property are especially important for the pharmaceutical industry, which uses these regulations to prevent other countries from producing generic versions of medicines at a lower cost. But the majority of the poorest people in the world are not able to purchase medicines made by United States companies because of their high prices. The FTAs will aggravate the crises of epidemics like AIDS and tuberculosis.