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Promoting democracy by challenging corporate globalization
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Fair Trade Archive: GTW E-Newsletters, Action Alerts, and Updates 
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About Global Trade WatchWho are we? Click here to visit our Staff Directory. Interested in working with us? Click here for Internship Opportunities. [Update as of April 2008: sorry, our summer 2008 internship positions are filled. Please check back this summer for fall internship opportunities!] What is Global Trade Watch? Global Trade Watch (GTW) is a division of Public Citizen, the national consumer and environmental group founded in 1971. Public Citizen has about 90,000 due-paying members mainly in the U.S. GTW was created in 1995 to promote government and corporate accountability in the globalization and trade arena. Having built unique substantive capacity and diverse contacts with other public interest organizations, the press and policy-makers, GTW's work makes Public Citizen one of the few progressive U.S. organizations focused full-time on globalization issues. Our work seeks to make the measurable outcomes of this model accessible to the public, press, and policy-makers, while emphasizing that if the results are not acceptable, then the model can and must be changed or replaced. We have become a leader in promoting a public interest perspective on an array of globalization issues, including implications for our food, health and safety, environmental protection, economic justice, and democratic, accountable governance. Representatives of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch serve on the Executive Board of the Citizens Trade Campaign, a coalition of labor, environmental, religious, family farm and consumer organizations united in the pursuit of socially and environmentally just trade policy. GTW also represents Public Citizen as a member of the Our World Is Not For Sale (OWINFS) network, a loose grouping of organizations, activists and social movements worldwide fighting against the current model of corporate globalization embodied in global trading systems. OWINFS is committed to a sustainable, socially just, democratic and accountable multilateral trading system. How does GTW affect public policy? GTW combines substantive and analytical capacity with extensive grassroots, press, and policy-maker relationships to develop public policy debates on vital trade and globalization issues. We design multi-faceted national and international campaigns which focus on the current mechanisms of globalization, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the procedures by which such policies are designed and implemented. We conduct research; publish diverse educational materials; educate the public through an extensive grassroots program; maintain relations with press and policy-makers; and coordinate closely with an array of domestic and international allies and partners. We have been part of building a diverse, nationwide U.S. grassroots coalition with labor, religious, family farm, environmental, and community groups called the Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC) and have been part of building an international network called Our World is not for Sale (OWINFS). What is GTW’s philosophical approach? Animating many facets of our work is the concept of the “public citizen” - a person who, once empowered with information and tools to affect change, makes being an activist part of her or his daily life. Thus, a GTW goal is clarifying for people that the current globalization model is neither a random inevitability nor “free trade.” We have worked in many venues to demonstrate for the public, press, and policy-makers that our current system is merely one version of rules, which includes a “corporate-managed trade” system, removal of government safeguards policies on investment and finance, commodification of environmental commons and public services, deregulation and international harmonization of domestic regulatory standards and new protections and rights for investors and foreign corporations. All of our work seeks to make the measurable outcomes of this model accessible to people, while reiterating that if the results are not acceptable, then the model can and must be changed or replaced. What are GTW's major issues? The World Trade Organization (WTO): GTW was the backbone of the organizing, educational programming, and peaceful protests at the 1999 Seattle WTO Ministerial and served as U.S. coordinator for the year-long international WTO “No New Round: Turnaround” campaign which contributed to stopping the proposed expansion of the WTO. Our year-long domestic “Road to Seattle” campaign focused on building U.S. public awareness about the WTO, in part using our book “Whose Trade Organization: Corporate Globalization and the Erosion of Democracy,” the first comprehensive review of the WTO’s five-year record. We prioritize the WTO because we view it as a primary engine of the current globalization model. Public Citizen is part of the broad-based Our World is Not For Sale (OWINFS) network, which includes social movements and organizations from dozen of countries. OWINFS developed the “WTO: Shrink or Sink!” campaign, with demands for specific transformational changes to the WTO (go to www.canadians.org to view the statement). A main focus for OWINFS is drawing links between CAFTA/FTAA and the WTO, which are based on the same ideology and contain many similar provisions. International Investment Rules Which Erode Governments’ Authority: GTW was a global leader in exposing the dangers of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) proposal, and currently is heavily involved in raising awareness about a proposed NAFTA expansion via CAFTA and the FTAA. CAFTA, a proposed trade agreement between the U.S. and five Central American countries, is likely to come up for a vote in Congress this year. CAFTA and FTAA, a proposed hemispheric trade agreement, both seek to expand the failed NAFTA/MAI model to 31 more countries in the Americas. NAFTA’s Chapter 11 “investor-to-state” investor protections grant new privileges and rights to foreign investors. These include the right to secure compensation and a “regulatory takings” protection for domestic regulatory policies. Under these rules, foreign corporations are empowered to sue governments in closed NAFTA tribunals outside of domestic courts directly for cash compensation. Almost any government action, including non-discriminatory regulatory measures, can be challenged before trade tribunals bereft of due process guarantees or sovereign immunity shields. There has been several challenges to environmental and health regulations. A study by Taxpayers for Common Sense estimates that if the NAFTA “Chapter 11” provisions are expanded via the FTAA, U.S. taxpayers can expect to be hit with anywhere from $10 billion to $32 billion in claims annually! The EU is also pushing to revive the MAI by having investment rules negotiated in the WTO – a move strongly opposed by civil society and most developing countries. Public Services and Privatization: More and more, the so-called “trade” agreements have shifted focus onto investment. These new international commercial agreements encompass “everything that you cannot drop on your foot,” and include services such as banking, telecommunications, postal services, tourism, transportation, waste disposal, oil and gas production and electricity. They also cover those services universally considered to be essential to human health and development, like healthcare, education and drinking water. Services make up about 70% of the U.S. economy and more than 60% of the global economy. Health care and education represent a combined $5.5 trillion market worldwide The service sector industry is pushing simultaneously for the expansion of NAFTA’s service sector terms via the FTAA and for multilateral negotiations in the WTO through the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). GTW is working with allies in the U.S. and abroad to shed light on these new services and investment agreements. Liberalization and privatization of essential services would dramatically affect everyone’s day-to-day lives. This attempt to convert public resources into new opportunities for multinational corporations’ profits, will make many more people aware of the threat these pacts pose to democratic equitable governance. In 1999 GTW launched a major project on international harmonization of standards that unites GTW and Public Citizen’s medical, legal, energy/environmental, and product/auto safety divisions. NAFTA and the WTO include requirements to either globally standardize regulatory policies or declare other nations’ standards as “equivalent.” We work with local, state, and federal policy-makers, scholars and NGOs to make them aware of these issues and facilitate their input and participation. We also are promoting federal agencies’ compliance with U.S. procedural rules requiring openness, public comment, and accountability in policymaking. We continue our work regarding domestic trade advisory committees and the operations of the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) office, which included a series of lawsuits in the 1990s that forced public access to WTO briefs and sought to achieve some balance on U.S. trade advisory committees. What are some of GTW’s publications? GTW serves as researcher and translator of an array of globalization issues for other NGOs, the press, policy-makers and the public. We continually create, update, and distribute materials ranging from lengthy, footnoted books and reports to fact sheets and talking points on a multiplicity of topics. GTW publishes the bi-monthly "Harmonization Alert" which provides notice and background on a diversity of international standardization issues to enable potentially-interested parties to participate. "The WTO: Five Years of Reasons to Resist Corporate Globalization," a Seven Stories Press booklet version of our lengthy WTO book, rose to No. 8 on the Boston Globe best seller list. GTW now has a new book called Whose Trade Organization: The Comprehensive Guide To the WTO. GTW has also published numerous reports on NAFTA effects on food safety, jobs, farmers, the environment, on congressional deal-making to pass NAFTA, and on the comprehensive record of NAFTA cases under Chapter 11. We have produced a pamphlet in Spanish, Portuguese and English that shows the links between the WTO and the FTAA, and we have new public education and campaign materials on the services issue. Finally, our website was named by Dow Jones as one of the top five worldwide on globalization issues. Click here for our Featured Publications.
Because Public Citizen does not accept funds from corporations, professional associations or government agencies, we can remain independent and follow the truth wherever it may lead. But that means we depend on the generosity of concerned citizens like you for the resources to fight on behalf of the public interest. If you would like to help us in our fight, click here. |
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