Social Policy in Ontario

Re: Say no to more trade deals

Posted on June 13, 2016 in Debates

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Readers’ Letters – Say no to more trade deals, Opinion June 3
June 13, 2016.   Ali Orang / Andrew van Velzen

Free trades are at the centre of the massive socio-economic transformations that have taken place in the world since the late 1980s and the ideology behind them is the neoliberalism.

At the its core, neoliberalism promotes free market activities and discourages the hurdles to the flow of goods, services and capital. It advocates economic growth by minimizing the role of governments, maximizing free trade agreements, and highlighting the superiority of individual responsibilities over societal ones.

Since 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan made neoliberalism a reality by cutting taxes for the rich, undermining trade unions, selling public assets, outsourcing, and launching free trade deals. They made competition the centre of all activities and paved the way for the market forces to run the economy and, ultimately, the society.

Where the policies of neoliberalism couldn’t deliver domestically they were imposed internationally through trade treaties. Disputes between the corporations and elected national governments were resolved in offshore courts. Often, corporations imposed their will on sovereign states, which were protecting their citizens and environments from corporations’ profit-making activities.

However, things didn’t turn out according to the promises of the neoliberal advocates. Even, neoliberalism’s former supporters question its effectiveness. The IMF and the OECD have found that the neoliberal policies not only didn’t deliver economic growth but they deepened inequality due to the same policies that were supposed to bring prosperity – i.e. tax deductions, privatizations, deregulations, trade union busting and rising rents.

One would be hard pressed not to find neoliberalism and its main pillar, free trade, at the root of all major social and economic ills in the 21st century: from the 2008 financial meltdown to environmental breakdowns, unemployment, inequality and political unrest in Europe and the U.S. (e.g. the Donald Trump movement).

Yes Canada should seriously re-evaluate its stance on the recent free trade agreements with Europe and the Pacific region and come up with a more progressive trade deals with them.

Ali Orang, Richmond Hill

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Rick Salutin tries so hard to be the philosopher king at the Star, but his Friday columns are often incoherent blather and rarely profound. His recent one on trade is a case in point.

Salutin repeats the same old Trump/Sanders mantra on trade agreements – basically, that they’re all bad and most people don’t benefit. Well, of course that’s nonsense. No question many Canadian and American workers have been left behind in some of these deals. But these negatives could be easily be rectified with more comprehensive retraining programs and much more generous severance packages.

The simple truth is that we need trade and we need trade deals. Canada’s economy depends on exports more so than most. The nutty trade debate going on south of the border is laughable given the fact that according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, the United States has benefited greatly from every trade deal it has signed. Studies show that NAFTA certainly helped the U.S. economy if not so much Canada’s.

And let’s face it some of the opposition to these deals is racist and xenophobic. And lastly there’s a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to the conversation on trade. Americans and Canadians love their cheap consumer goods. Imagine what the true cost of a smart phone would be if it wasn’t made in Asia or a coffee machine which I recently picked up at Canadian Tire for 20 bucks.

Obviously I would like to see better working conditions and much higher wages in less developed countries. And I certainly would be willing to pay more for imported goods if these conditions were included in future trade agreements.

Andrew van Velzen, Toronto

< https://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2016/06/13/two-takes-on-free-trade-deals.html >

Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living

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