insurgent49

June 10, 2005
Special Interest Trade Agreements
by Kevin Morford, insurgent49

     On any given day, your daily newspaper is likely to use the expression “free trade” in describing NAFTA , GATT, CAFTA, or some of the other international trade treaties which have been springing up like zombies in a George Romero movie. While these treaties often do have the words “free trade” included in their titles, neither the newspaper descriptions nor the titles are accurate. Instead, these trade treaties are collections of laws favoring special interest groups, who have assembled behind closed doors and then enshrined themselves in treaties that are much harder to challenge than ordinary statutes. These treaties do make some types of economic activities easier, but they make other types of economic activities much more difficult.

     Consider copyright protections as an example. A copyright is a legal monopoly that gives the holder of the copyright the ability to restrict or completely prevent others from engaging in economic activities involving the protected work. Copyrights can give an economic benefit to the holder of the copyright, but constitute an economic detriment for everyone else because they make it more expensive and more difficult to use and enjoy the protected work. Different nations have different laws regarding copyrights, with differing levels of protection and durations of protection for the copyright holder. This is because different nations strike different balances between the interests of the copyright holder and the interests of everybody else. The copyright protections in the United States are very long in duration (the life of the author plus seventy years), and very protective of the copyright holder, compared with the protections in many other countries.

     The recent spate of international trade treaties has tended to extend and strengthen monopolistic copyright protections in countries that previously were less protective. This is not an example of free trade. It is an example of an influential group of special interests extending its monopoly power in a way that restricts economic activity for everyone else.

     The same analysis applies to patents. Here also, monopoly powers to exclude economic activities involving patented inventions have been strengthened and extended by the new international trade treaties. As a result, everyone pays more money, and for a longer period of time, in order to obtain access to drugs, technology, and other modern inventions. These trade treaties certainly benefit the patent holders, but they are not properly described as free trade treaties.

     While the new trade treaties do make it easier for goods and money to cross international borders in some circumstances, they continue to allow signatory nations to restrict the movement of people across borders. If you want to exchange your labor for money in some other country, you may only do so at the discretion of the other country. In other words, corporations and capitalists are freer to engage in international trade under these trade treaties, but workers are not. Their right to engage in international trade of their labor remains restricted.

     These trade treaties run to many hundreds of pages in length, because they deal individually with many different types of trade. Often there are detailed restrictions on a particular type of trade that are included within these treaties. These details are hammered out in negotiations in which a tariff or restriction on one type of trade may be allowed, in exchange for a tariff or restriction on another type of trade being dropped.

     There are real winners and losers in these trade treaties. Some economic interests benefit greatly from them, while other interests are harmed. Some forms of economic activity are made easier, while others are made more difficult. But they are not “free trade” treaties. Under a truth in labeling law, they would more properly be called special interest trade treaties. But truth in labeling would make these treaties much less attractive to the general public. The special interests that benefit from these treaties see truth in labeling as an unwarranted restriction on their ability to sell these treaties to the public.

Kevin Morford is a political activist and an attorney in private practice in the Anchorage area. He can be reached at kmorford@insurgent49.com.

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