SINCE being established in 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement – better known as NAFTA – has triggered job losses, depressed wages and shifted more power to corporations.
Now, the Trump administration has notified Congress it plans to ‘modernise’ the horrible trade deal, giving working families an historic opportunity to shape a better trade policy with our closest neighbours.
What might a better NAFTA look like?
The nation’s largest labour federation, the AFL-CIO, issued several recommendations last month, urging federal lawmakers to ‘begin constructing a Global New Deal for working families’ in revisiting NAFTA this summer.
The first step, labour leaders say, is to amend NAFTA in public, with broad input from workers and their organisations.
‘This is more than just (about) trade,’ AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told reporters during a media call last month. ‘We’ll fight hard to rewrite these rules so that workers will get a fair shot of getting more of what they produce.’
Other AFL-CIO’s recommendations include enforceable worker-rights guarantees in the US, Mexico and Canada, as well as strong ‘Buy America’ provisions, long a top priority for the United Steelworkers and other industrial unions.
‘Our position is simple: Unless steel is melted and poured in the US, it shouldn’t be covered’ by NAFTA, Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said. ‘Does the country want 25 more years like the last 25 years, with a declining standard of living for workers in all three countries?’
Other union proposals include eliminating extrajudicial courts that give corporations an end around local governments, strengthening environmental protections and adding language that will protect consumers, crack down on corporate tax dodgers and prevent currency manipulation.
While Trump’s interest in renegotiating NAFTA has sparked some optimism for better trade policy, some fair trade activists warned against getting too excited. Already, Trump has ‘walked back’ several of his trade-related promises from the campaign, including a pledge to name China a currency manipulator, Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition director Kaela Berg said.
The Fair Trade Coalition, which brings together labour, environmental, family-farm and other progressive groups, is mobilising volunteers locally to hold Trump accountable during the NAFTA ‘modernisation’ process.
‘He promised American workers … a new kind of trade deal that would put them first, ensure safety on the job site, raise wages and punish countries that manipulated their currency to gain unfair advantages in the marketplace,’ Berg said. ‘President Trump has not kept his promises to working families.’
Corporate lobbyists, according to Berg, are already approaching NAFTA talks as an opportunity to revive the failed Trans-Pacific Partnership.
‘We know that 500 of the corporate advisors responsible for the TPP have been consulted about the NAFTA negotiations, while labour, Congress and the public have once again been kept in the dark,’ she said.
Meanwhile, Trump’s proposal to gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency sums up the likelihood of a new NAFTA that includes enforceable environmental protections.
Still, the debate over NAFTA’s future is too important to sit out, Berg acknowledged.
‘We must hold President Trump accountable for his promise to stop the damage that NAFTA continues to do,’ she said.
‘We must demand that he put people and the planet before profits in the new NAFTA.’
• Community supporters rallied in support of Luciano Mejia Morales, a leader in the Latino community who was arrested on June 10 for a minor traffic violation and is now set to be deported to Guatemala.
Protesters marched in support of the release of Luciano Mejia Morales outside the Hennepin County jail on Tuesday in Minneapolis.
Labour and immigration activists rallied Tuesday at the Hennepin County Public Safety Centre in support of a Twin Cities labour leader who faces deportation to Guatemala.
Luciano Mejia Morales, who was part of a recent campaign to unionise janitors, was detained by immigration authorities right after his release from Hennepin County jail on $3,000 bail following a Richfield traffic stop this month.
His supporters argue his Central American homeland is unsafe for a US deportee, particularly one who has been active in labour organising.
Morales had returned to Minnesota after a previous deportation to Guatemala – a federal felony – telling three brothers that gang members there had pressured him to join.
His supporters rallied on Tuesday in front of the Hennepin County Public Safety Centre to raise awareness about his case and decry the lack of protections for immigrants in a city that has at times billed itself as a sanctuary.
An attorney for Morales is building a case that the US government should grant him asylum.
‘To fight for union and labour rights in Guatemala is practically a death sentence,’ said Gerardo Cajamarca, a speaker at Tuesday’s event and a Colombian refugee who was granted asylum. ‘We are afraid that if Luciano is deported to Guatemala, he may be killed.’
Deportations to countries grappling with political and social unrest are newly in the spotlight as the Trump administration has promised a harder line on illegal immigration.
Local immigration advocates have also voiced alarm in recent months over stepped-up deportations to Somalia, arguing famine and threats from the terror group Al-Shabab have made that country too unsafe for deportees. Administration supporters say the United States can’t indefinitely harbour people without legal status – particularly those who have had run-ins with the law – on the grounds that their homelands are in turmoil.
Poverty and gang violence in Central America have spurred a surge in arrivals at the US border with Mexico. But Morales and his brothers arrived in Minnesota some 14 years ago, according to his older brother Miguel, who spoke at Tuesday’s rally. They came to join an uncle, who has since been deported.
A janitor and activist with the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha, Morales became active in a campaign to organise a retail janitors union in the Twin Cities, making it the first major metro area where such workers are unionised.
Last fall, more than 500 mostly minimum-wage big-box store janitors joined the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 26, which helped organise Tuesday’s rally. In February, janitors won their first labour contract, which resulted in the mostly Latino immigrant workers sharing an additional $4.5 million in wages over three years.
Morales was deported in 2010 before he was able to resolve a pending DWI charge, and a judge issued a warrant for his arrest, immigration attorney Veronica Walther said. It is not clear whether that contributed to his June arrest for disobeying a traffic signal and driving without a license in Richfield. He was booked into Hennepin County jail.
Supporters say his brothers scrambled to come up with his bail – only to see him detained by immigration agents shortly after his release.
He is now in the Carver County jail, pending removal proceedings, ICE said in a statement. Protesters on Tuesday questioned that turn of events and the role of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office.