Colombia NAFTA Expansion:

Economic and Human Rights Nightmare

The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) required the U.S., Canada,

and Mexico to adopt numerous policies giving corporations new rights that were used to

export good jobs, jack up drug prices, attack food safety and environmental laws, and

squeeze farmers and consumers alike. Seventeen years later, we’re living the damage caused

under the NAFTA model: wages stagnating as prices rise, 5.2 million U.S. manufacturing

jobs killed, and a $776 billion trade deficit that threatens global economic stability. Mexico also lost factory jobs, as cor-

porations traded Mexico’s $1/hour wages for China’s $0.40/hour wages. Some 1.3 million Mexican campesinos lost their

against the deal.

Plus, Colombia has one of the world’s worst human-rights records. More labor unionists are assassinated here each year

than in the rest of the world combined. There is systematic violence against Afro-Colombians, indigenous people and

campesino farmers. The perpetrators, who have often included the country’s military, remain free and unprosecuted. Ac-

tivists here and there have demanded that this behavior END before ANY trade agreement is considered.

Despite clear statements from then-candidate Obama opposing the FTA, including his famous presidential de-

bate statement on Colombian labor abuses, his administration announced a plan on April 6, 2011 to move forward with

the FTA without requiring Colombia to eliminate union murders. This is a serious political and policy mistake: after

Call the U.S. Capitol Today 202-224-3121 to be connected

to your House Representative. Then ask to get transferred to your

Senators.

Just give your zip code to be connected to your House Representative if you

are not sure who he or she is! When you are connected, ask for the “trade

staffer”. Tell him or her that you oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Ask for your Representative and Senators’ to communicate their positions in

writing by email or regular mail. After you've called, share with us what you

were told. This is key to our holding Congress accountable.

fenders are not subjected to violence for a sustained period of

time, a significant portion of lands illegally-seized from Afro-

Colombian, indigenous and other communities are returned

and the backlog of impunity cases are acted upon, it is simply

inappropriate to consider any deal with Colombia.

It’s impossible to imagine Congress agreeing to a trade pact with hu-

man rights violators Burma or Sudan. We have to make clear a deal

with Colombia is just as outrageous. Nearly 2,860 unionists have

been killed since 1986 – more than the rest of the world combined.

and up from the 39 when the FTA was signed in 2007. This, when the Colombian government is under maximum scru-

tiny. The pact’s corporate boosters argue that it is critical to U.S. national security – saying it bolsters Colombia against

populist governments in the region. This is idiotic: it is precisely the damage caused by NAFTA-style policies that turns

people against the U.S. and leads to the economic instability on which populism feeds. Moreover, once we allow brutal

regimes permanent access to our market, we lose whatever leverage we might have had to improve human rights.

The Colombia FTA is a threat to regional and international security: The FTA’s agricultural rules will devastate

small Colombian farmers, just as NAFTA’s did in Mexico. Displaced campesinos would add to the over 3 million Colom-

bians already uprooted by that country’s half-century long civil war. As the Colombian government’s own agriculture

ministry concluded, the FTA will eliminate 35 percent of the jobs in crucial agriculture sectors like corn, rice, beans and

vestor privileges in the FTA empowers corporations to pillage the area for timber, mineral and energy resources, and

would chill direly needed efforts to protect the Amazon basin. Deals like the Colombia FTA gut environmental protections.

These NAFTA-style investor rights also encourage corporations to ship U.S. jobs away and push down the

wages of jobs staying here.

The Colombia FTA limits financial regulation. The Colombia FTA was written before the recession & Wall Street

crisis, so it contains many provisions that restrict the ability of the government to regulate the financial sector. The pact

commits its signatory countries to refrain from limiting the size of financial institutions, banning toxic derivatives, or

controlling destabilizing capital flights and floods. This interference with re-regulation of the financial sector could leave

the United States vulnerable to yet another financial crisis caused by risky Wall Street gambling.

“The United States is spending bil-

lions trying to eradicate the cocaine

trade and here we are giving them an incen-

tive to grow more coca.”

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel

Laureate and former World Bank Chief Economist

on threat of the Colombia FTA.

“With an FTA without agricultural protec-