NAFTA

Three Canadian Solar Panel Companies Sue U.S. Over Tariffs

February 13, 2018 The Canadian Press, Thestar.com Resist! Canada, NAFTA, Solar Energy

The companies state that the International Trade Commission made no recommendation of tariffs on Canadian solar cells, and that the imposition of them goes against rules in NAFTA. Three Canadian solar panel manufacturers have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government over the 30 per cent tariff it set on solar cell imports last month. Ontario-based Silfab Solar Inc., Heliene Inc., and Canadian Solar Solutions Inc., along with U.S.-based distributor Canadian Solar (USA) Inc., filed the challenge at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York on Wednesday. The lawsuit claims that an investigation last year by the International Trade Commission found Canadian products don’t significantly hurt U.S. manufacturers and don’t account for much of the overall imports of solar cells to the country.

Poll Shows Growing Public Opposition To NAFTA

January 12, 2018 Jeff Ferry, Prosperousamerica.org Educate! NAFTA, New Economy, Trade Deal

An independent public opinion poll published late last year shows growing public awareness of US job loss due to imports, as well as growing public support of the view that NAFTA has been bad for the US. The poll was carried out by the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, surveying 2,745 Americans. The report is entitled: Globalization and Trade, A Study of American Attitudes. The researchers conducting the poll compared the results to similar polls in 2016 and in 1999. The results show a clear trend of greater awareness of the negative consequences of unfettered free trade. The pollsters asked the panel if they agreed with the statement “On balance, do you think that more jobs are lost from imports or more jobs are gained from exports?” The panel agreed strongly that more jobs were lost from imports, with a 59% majority agreeing. That’s up from 46% in 1999.

Renegotiating NAFTA Could Make Trade Policy Right

January 11, 2018 By Owen E. Herrnstadt, Epi.org Create! NAFTA, Policy, Trade Deal

The United States, Canada, and Mexico are currently in talks over changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Renegotiating NAFTA offers an opportunity to create a new labor template based on long overdue and urgently needed labor standards that are consistently enforced and upheld. In order to accomplish this, we need to update and strengthen current language (based on the May 10, 2007 template). Among other things, there should be fewer limitations on the kinds of labor violations that are covered, and each signatory must be in compliance with the standards set forth prior to joining the agreement. The following recommendations constitute some of the steps needed to achieve these essential improvements to the labor chapter...

Act Out!: 400+ Reasons To Eat The Rich And More

November 23, 2017 Eleanor Goldfield, www.occupy.com Resistance Report #NoNAFTA2, NAFTA, Trade, wealth inequality

By Eleanor Goldfield for Occupy.com. This week on Act Out!, tempting though it may be to ignore all things real and political for the next few days, hiding behind cranberry sauce and turkey legs won't change the ever-widening and gaping abyss before us. Dive in with us as we survey our grotesquely top-heavy economy and where people like you and me stand today. Next up, some headlines from Scotland to Syria to why the oil and gas industries are racist. And finally, NAFTA renegotiations plus an expert take on what's to come and what we can do about it.

NAFTA Renegotiation More Important Now Than Ever

November 22, 2017 Celeste Drake, aflcio.org Resist! Assassination, Mexico, NAFTA, Trade, Workers

By Celeste Drake for AFL-CIO - The need to fundamentally improve the labor provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement took on a new urgency over the weekend, as a group of armed civilians, calling themselves the “Tonalapa Community Police,” (Policía Comunitaria de Tonalapa) attacked striking workers, killing two, at the Media Luna mine in Guerrero, Mexico. The murders occurred just five hours south of Mexico City, where representatives from the United States, Canada and Mexico are in the midst of their fifth round of talks about rewriting NAFTA. The aggressors, meanwhile, were released after being briefly detained by an army squadron. The striking workers, who want to be represented by the National Union of Mine, Metal, Steel and Related Workers of the Mexican Republic (Los Mineros) and are demanding the removal of the employer-dominated "labor" federation CTM (Confederación de Trabajadores de México), identified local CTM leaders as among those responsible for the attack. The practice of false unions siding with the employer over workers is a common feature of Mexico’s failed labor relations model. Employer-dominated "labor" federations are antithetical to the idea of democratic worker-led unions whose goal is to help workers build better lives.

NAFTA’s Neoliberal Foundations Need To Be Dismantled From The Left

October 25, 2017 Jeff Schuhrke, www.inthesetimes.com Strategize! NAFTA, Neoliberalism, Workers

By Jeff Schuhrke for In These Times - Rejecting both economic nationalism and free-market fundamentalism, workers across North America are building transnational solidarity and demanding labor rights for all. Last week, nearly 60 representatives of unions and civil society organizations from Mexico, Canada and the United States gathered in Chicago for a two-day meeting to discuss strategies for collaboration as their governments renegotiate the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The meeting was coordinated by the United Electrical Workers (UE), UCLA Labor Center and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, an international civic education institution affiliated with Germany’s Left Party. While many Mexican unions are dominated by the government, only the country’s more independent and democratically run labor organizations attended. “We’re discussing what kinds of relationships can be built, either bi-nationally or tri-nationally,” Benedicto Martínez, a national co-coordinator of Mexico’s Frente Auténtico del Trabajo, or Authentic Labor Front (FAT), told In These Times. “At the forefront of our vision would be the rights of people, including better wages, better education, better healthcare and immigration rights.” Critics argue that NAFTA has accelerated the global “race to the bottom,” where governments dismantle workplace and environmental protections in order to attract capital investment.

The Third Track: Trade That Builds Our Economy Anew

October 24, 2017 Staff, www.iatp.org Create! Economics, NAFTA, TPP, Trade

By Staff of IATP - President Trump is playing high stakes poker in the NAFTA talks, with his US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, at the helm. Laura Dawson, director of the Wilson Centre’s Canada Centre published an op-ed on 11 October in which she suggests there are two tracks to the NAFTA talks – one is moving ahead with the “easy consensus” (i.e. tracking new issues that gained prominence in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations), while the other, driven by Trump’s tweets and America First Agenda, is putting the whole enterprise at risk with incendiary statements and impossible demands. The agenda moving ahead for NAFTA reform seeks regulatory harmonization (to the lowest standard), longer monopolies on technology through tighter patent controls, and an extension of foreign investor rights over domestic legislation. It is an agenda much of the U.S. business community is squarely behind, and Canada’s and Mexico’s business communities, too. That agenda was moving along, its path likely smoothed by the fact that many of the negotiators knew one another from the TPP talks. NAFTA empowers an economics many civil society organizations have resisted for decades, whether trade unions, farm organizations, environmentalists, women’s organizations or church groups.

Online Censorship, Learned Patriarchy & No NAFTA 2

October 19, 2017 Eleanor Goldfield, www.occupy.com Resistance Report NAFTA, Patriarchy

By Eleanor Goldfield for Occupy - This week on Act Out!, can you see me from your digital filter bubble? The scary thing is you probably don't even realize that everything you see online is, in fact, filtered. We dive into the various kinds of online censorship that are shaping our ever-more-narrowed world view. Up next, what women learn from the patriarchy's ills. And finally, No NAFTA – a ghost from trade deals past is back, and so is the fight for fair trade over free trade.

NAFTA Talks Falter, Time To Increase Pressure

October 17, 2017 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Fair Trade, Free Trade Agreements, NAFTA, Replace NAFTA

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. The NAFTA-2 negotiations seem to be faltering after the fourth round of talks recently held in the United States. The Trump administration is pushing Mexico and Canada aggressively to include provisions from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in order to renegotiate NAFTA in a way that benefits US corporations. Mexico and the US are under particularly high pressure to complete the talks successfully as each country has major elections in 2018. News reports of the highly secretive talks describe the negotiations as hitting roadblocks.

NAFTA Renegotiation: What’s At Stake For Food, Farmers And The Land?

October 17, 2017 Staff, www.iatp.org Educate! Farming, Food and Agriculture, Land, NAFTA

By Staff of IATP - The re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Mexico and Canada begins on August 16, and there is much at stake for farmers and rural communities in all three countries. Despite promised gains for farmers, NAFTA’s benefits over the last 23 years have gone primarily to multinational agribusiness firms. NAFTA is about much more than trade. It set rules on investment, farm exports, food safety, access to seeds, and markets. NAFTA, combined with the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the 1996 Farm Bill, led the charge to greater consolidation among agribusiness firms, the loss of many small and mid-sized farms and independent ranchers, the rapid growth of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and further corporate control of animal production through often unfair, restrictive contracts with producers. The Trump administration’s negotiating objectives reflect relatively small tweaks to NAFTA, while adopting deregulatory elements of the defeated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Family farm groups have called for the existing NAFTA to be scrapped and propose a fundamentally new agreement with a goal of improving the lives of family farmers and rural communities in all three countries.

Protesters Demand End To Corporate Courts, Transparency In NAFTA

October 12, 2017 Daniel Cooper Bermudez, www.tradeforpeopleandplanet.org Resist! Globalization, NAFTA, TPP, Trade

By Daniel Cooper Bermudez for Trade for People and Planet. Arlington, VA - Official negotiators were met by protesters demanding that the deal do away with the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), a system of tribunals through which multi-national corporations have sued governments for millions of dollars for implementing stronger labor and environmental standards, and to implement transparent and participatory practices in the deal’s remaking. Activists stood in front of the Sheraton in Arlington, Virginia – where negotiations are taking place from October 11-15 – with a giant Trump puppet and signs that read “Democracy not Corporatocracy” and “Transparency: Release the Text!”

Left And Right Have Nothing In Common On NAFTA

October 11, 2017 Stephanie Basile, www.popularresistance.org Strategize! Capitalism, NAFTA, Trade, Unions, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Stephanie Basile for Popular Resistance. Washington, DC - Today, the fourth round of renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are taking place in Washington, DC. Protests are planned at multiple locations around DC, including a petition delivery of over 360,000 signatures to Congress demanding the elimination of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). United under the threat from continually expanding corporate power, the fight against NAFTA has brought together a cross-section of social movements, including unions, community groups, land reform movements, environmentalists, food safety groups, and internet rights organizations.

Canceling NAFTA Could Be The Best Way Forward

September 29, 2017 Lois Ross, www.rabble.ca Educate! Farmers, Food and Agriculture, NAFTA, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Lois Ross for Rabble. Have you ever wondered what would happen if you called the bully's bluff? As Liberal members of Parliament return to their seats in the House of Commons, they need to consider the sometimes-veiled opportunities that political bullying provides. Are you listening, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland? More than 20 years ago, I was someone who campaigned and organized against the passage of both the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). I was devastated, like many others, when both passed, first the FTA and then later NAFTA, enabled by the Liberals, and supported over the years by various shades of Conservatives.

Secret NAFTA Negotiations Threaten Climate Regulation

September 28, 2017 Staff, www.foe.org Educate! Climate Change, NAFTA, Regulation

By Staff of Friends of the Earth - Prime Minister Trudeau seeks to preserve a “reformed” but still environmentally dangerous investment chapter in NAFTA. Canada has faced 38 NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Dispute Settlement cases – from an early challenge to Canada’s right to regulate environmentally harmful additives to gasoline through to a current challenge by a U.S. affiliate of Lone Star, a Canadian fossil fuel company suing Canada for $250 million because Quebec imposed a moratorium on fracking under the St. Lawrence River. Trudeau is also seeking a new “regulatory reform” chapter in NAFTA, which would hobble climate and other environmental regulations. This would encourage the fossil fuel industry to continue to file NAFTA investment suits for billions of dollars if climate regulations interfere with their expected future profits. These investor-state provisions must be removed. Together, Friends of the Earth Canada and Friends of the Earth U.S. demand that Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau and Enrique Peña Nieto change course.

This Saturday: #NoNAFTA2 Twitter Storm

September 21, 2017 Trade for People and Planet Resist! Economic Justice, NAFTA, Trade, Trade Justice, Twitter

Trade For People and Planet and Popular Resistance are launching Twitter Storms during every round of NAFTA negotiations! To see all the tweets, check this article out. Join us to say #NoNAFTA2, because we have no confidence in a racist Trump administration to care for all working people and the environment! Because no trade deal should pass that divides and disempowers our communities! Round 3 is starting in Ottawa this September 23rd, join us in letting negotiators know that we will NOT accept any trade deals that put profits and corporate sovereignty over people, the environment, and democracy.

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