Trade pact good—for corporations

The love of money is the root of all evil.

--First Timothy 6:10

“The Soul of Capitalism,” written by William Greider in 2003, is a fine book except for the title. Capitalism has no soul.

This truism is proved once again by the proposed Colombia Free Trade Agreement. “Free trade” is not free.

Jonathan Tasini, in his online “Front Page Posts,” tears down the façade erected by treaty backers.

“Foreign investor rights--a typical pro-corporate measure--would tighten the grip that large corporations have on Colombia’s natural resources and launch a large-scale plundering of timber and minerals,” he writes. “Without a government willing to nationalize such resources…you can be sure that huge riches will flow to a handful of people while most of the population will remain penniless.

“The underlying dynamic for so-called free trade is corrosive: driving down wages and seeking the lowest cost and most compliant labor pool.” (The lowest rate is Vietnam at $50 a month. The Thailand rate is a magnificent $70 a month.)

Every so-called agreement starting with the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 has been proclaimed as a wonder of the economic world. Yet that “wonder” has been nothing of the kind.

The Colombia pact is being pushed by President Bush just as he recently lauded NAFTA. But if Bush is for “free trade” it is bad for everyone but Big Business.

Free trade is unfair trade. It means job losses in the United States. It means sweatshops abroad. It means exploitation--and murder in Colombia.

Nearly 2,600 union members have been killed in Colombia since 1991. The government lets paramilitaries do the killing. Some of the vigilantes are even paid by U.S.-based multinational corporations.

Unfortunately, such crimes against humanity, condemned globally, are OK in America just as torture is.

No wonder AFL-CIO president John Sweeney says: “Congress must reject this agreement until workers in Colombia can exercise their fundamental human rights without fear.”

Another reason Bush gives for adopting the treaty is a bad reason: Colombia is one of the few allies the United States has left in Latin America. Bush’s reasoning is that Colombia is a foe of Venezuela and other leftist governments escaping U.S. tutelage.

Another reason Bush promulgates is equally bogus: national security. Many sins are committed in the name of national security. It is used by governments to hide embarrassment or, in the trade case, to cloak corporate bias.

It recalls an illustrative story. When under intense fire during Watergate, President Nixon asked an aide: “Gee, what’ll we do, what’ll we say?”

“Say it’s national security,” the aide replied. Et voilà!

Now the Establishment press is rallying behind the pact with its Big Business mindset. The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, liberal on social issues, urge treaty ratification. The Times argues fatuously that the union murder rate has “improved,” dropping to 39 last year from 197 in 2001. Some “improvement”!

More and more American companies are outsourcing. They are what The Nation calls free riders. “They enjoy all the benefits of being ‘American,’ getting government services and subsidies, protection of the U.S. military while discarding reciprocal obligations to the host country, jobs, economic investment and paying a fair share of the tax burden.”

NAFTA started the trade deceit. It was ratified by so-called Democrats joining the money-hungry Republicans in Congress. The Central American Free Trade Argreement followed, passing because of GOP chicanery that included, in effect, bribery.

Before the 2005 CAFTA vote, President Bush visited the Capitol to twist the arms of reluctant GOP lawmakers from textile-producing and sugar-growing states. Then Speaker Dennis Hastert kept the vote open for nearly two hours to cajole opponents, getting them to switch sides with promises to do whatever necessary to restrict imports into their districts.

Now the lobbyists for the Colombia pact have brought the siege guns to batter Congress. More than 50 members got all-expense-paid trips to Colombia, including dinners at posh restaurants. Meanwhile, Clintonites are applying pressure on behalf of ratification.

Tocqueville, that acute observer of America in the 19^th century, noted that nothing is greater in America than commerce. It’s still true. It’s also true as Marx wrote in “The Communist Manifesto”: capitalism leaves “no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest and callous ‘cash payment.’ ”

Gorbachev showed the world that socialism has a human face. It is impossible for capitalism to have a human face.