[Ip-health] Church World Service op-ed on failure of SACU FTA talks

[mpalmedo@cptech.org]

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0503-29.htm

Is the US Trade Agenda Coming Apart at the Seams?

Published on Wednesday, May 3, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
by Kathy McNeely
Church World Service

U.S. Activists for trade justice dubbed the week of April 16 as the week
of action. By the end of the week, thanks to key events revealing an
unraveling of the Bush administration's free trade agenda, trade activists
campaigning for a more just global trade system celebrated victory.

Globally, the U.S. has been aggressively parading a model of free trade
touted to catalyze development and lift countries out of poverty. A closer
look at the details of particular free trade agreements (FTAs) reveals
this assertion to be ridiculous. Not unlike the climax of Hans Christian
Andersen's tale,"The Emperor's New Clothes," last week the countries that
make up the Southern African Custom's Union (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia,
Swaziland, and South Africa) refused to join the U.S. free trade parade -
citing flaws in the fabric - a or one-size-fits-all template the U.S.
offered.

Since free trade negotiations are in total secret, the exact contents and
points of contention around the U.S.-SACU agreement are not yet known.
What is known is that since June 2003 the talks have been
on-again-off-again and were nowhere near meeting the aggressive agenda of
being completed before President Bush's "fast track" authority expired in
July 2007. It is also understood that measures involving intellectual
property rights included in other U.S. free trade agreements with the
Central American region (CAFTA) and with Peru, was an extremely
contentious issue for the SACU countries.

According to UNAIDS, Southern Africa is the epicenter of the global AIDS
pandemic. The Bush administration's free trade template includes excessive
protection of drug company intellectual property rights so as to
discourage the generic production of important, live saving drugs. Though
there are many barriers to accessing AIDS medicines in any one of the five
SACU countries, it is deplorable that the U.S. would add yet another
barrier to treatment regimes in a region that is so ravaged by this and
other treatable diseases.

Through a number of programs, people living with HIV and AIDS in the five
SACU countries are receiving generic first line AIDS medications. With a
U.S. free trade agreement, assuming it is similar in style to other FTAs,
these treatments will not go away, but at a certain point people who take
these medications will need second generation HIV drugs; and these are
seven to twenty times more expensive than the first line medications now
available in generic form. Provisions included in 2006 FTA negotiations
would most likely prevent the manufacture of future necessary generic
drugs.

South Africa's first peek at the naked self interest of the U.S. was in
2000 when 39 pharmaceutical firms threatened to sue the South African
Government for establishing a law that would allow South Africa to use
flexibilities in World Trade Organization intellectual property rules to
access needed medicines. After much public debate and a lot of bad press
for the pharmaceutical firms involved, President Clinton issued an
Executive Order (reaffirmed by President Bush in his first term) which
states that the U.S. cannot pursue policy on Intellectual Property Rights
in sub Saharan Africa that interfere with access to medicines used by
people living with HIV/AIDS.

If the U.S.-SACU FTA is indeed cut from the same fabric as other recent
free trade agreements, the Bush Administration would be "parading its
naked self interest by violating this Executive Order in the pursuit of
more stringent intellectual property rights for the region.

Again, since the free trade agreement negotiations are not shared with the
public, it is impossible to know all the elements that led to the U.S. and
SACU nations to turn away from negotiating a comprehensive FTA in favor of
establishing a "Trade Investment Cooperation Agreement" (TICA) - the first
of its kind. The TICA steps away from the all or nothing agenda and sets
up a mechanism for developing work programs in areas that could lead to
memoranda of understanding around certain areas typically included in an
FTA like customs, trade facilitation and even intellectual property. The
main objective seems to be to lead SACU governments back to the FTA
negotiating table once the areas of greatest difficulty have been worked
out.

The establishment of the TICA symbolizes the U.S. Trade Representative's
admission that US-SACU FTA negotiations would not finish before "fast
track" expired. Rather than admit defeat, the U.S. Trade Representative's
office is developing a new strategy for keeping the negotiations going. If
fast track is not renewed, TICA allows USTR to continue negotiations with
Southern African countries to incrementally liberalize the markets and
perhaps without congressional approval. If, on the other hand, fast track
is renewed, TICA would allow USTR to continue negotiating the
comprehensive FTA desired on a slower timeline.

On the same day that the U.S.-SACU FTA was demoted to a "TICA", Ambassador
Robert Portman was asked to leave his post as the U.S. Trade
Representative (USTR) and head the White House budget office. Perhaps
indicating a shift in political priorities, possibly relegating trade to a
back burner, Bush then named Deputy USTR Susan C. Schwab to be the new
USTR. Schwab has considerable international trade experience but not
Portman's political clout - without which it is hard to imagine that she
will have what it takes to "sell" the free trade agenda and pass FTAs like
those with Peru and Colombia before fast track expires in July 2007.

In other parts of the world it seems there others willing to speak up
about the empty promises of these free trade agreements. The week of April
14, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, Joan Eva Morales, launched
a "people's trade agreement" as an alternative free trade agreement that
essentially rejects the framework of the U.S. recently negotiated with
Peru and Colombia as well as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) -
a hemispheric trade agreement that has been stalled for the past 3 years.

That week also sealed the failure of the World Trade Organization to meet
its deadline to conclude negotiations with a mini ministerial at the end
of April. Yes, it was a big week for trade justice. As the free trade
model begins to unravel, it's important to mark the challenges out there
that pull at the threads and expose the empty promise of development
hidden in the rhetoric clad around free trade.

Kathy McNeely is a Policy Analyst/Advocate for Church World Service and
member of the U.S. Interfaith Working Group on Trade and Investment, has
worked in Washington DC educating and advocating on issues of economic
justice, human rights, peace, and ecology for eight years. Though much of
her Washington work has been Africa-specific, Kathy lived and worked in
Central America for over six years. Email to:
kmcneely@churchworldservice.org.