U.S.-Peru trade deal adds insult to NAFTA's injury

[Judi Lynn]

John Buell: U.S.-Peru trade deal adds insult to NAFTA's injury
By BDN Staff
Tuesday, January 08, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

Late last year, in especially untimely action, the U.S. Senate (with Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe voting yes) ratified the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement. Just as its predecessor, the North American "Free" Trade Agreement, has been coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism even from some of its former advocates, Congress has now extended NAFTA’s concepts to one more South American nation. Like NAFTA before it, this deal risks further damage to the economic interests of working-class citizens not only in Maine and the U.S. but in Latin America as well.

It is a violation of truth in advertising to call NAFTA or the current deal free trade. Classic free trade agreements of the sort celebrated in the economics courses of my generation, such as Paul Samuelson’s, talked about the efficiency and win-win gains to two nations when tariffs (taxes on imports) were removed. NAFTA and the current agreement lower tariffs, but NAFTA went beyond classical free trade agreements by extending to a larger international arena strong forms of economic protectionism for particular producers.

Patent and copyright principles developed in the U.S. market are now to be imposed on all signatories to future corporate trade agreements. Indeed, this is one of the major reasons U.S. corporate lobbies push so hard to keep expanding the reach of these treaties. Signatories to these pacts are now obliged to accept monopoly control over the production and distribution of new technologies and drugs. This monopoly protection over certain industries, often justified with claims of "incentives for further research," is a clear violation of the principles of market freedom so often touted by mainstream economists.

Here in the U.S., the vast profits generated by patent and copyright monopolies have done more to fund deceptive and demeaning ads than new wonder drugs. They have proved to be major incentive to withholding valuable information from the public.

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