FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
November 3, 1999
BUCHANAN SEES PERILS IN WTO, CBI, NAFTA EXPANSION
"The House and Senate are slouching toward passage of the so-called Caribbean Basin Initiative and African Growth and Opportunity Act which would give immediate duty-free access to the U.S. to the products of 28 Caribbean and Central American nations and 48 African countries. The bill is an assault weapon, pointed at American textile workers-who have already lost 430,000 jobs since NAFTA took effect. It's fashionable to pretend that "retraining" will solve the problems of the people whose jobs are about to be destroyed, and some even talk condescendingly of their lack of ambition. John McCain recently scorned a man in Littleton, South Carolina, saying, "Frankly I didn't know that your ambitions for your children were to work in a textile mill."
"But textile jobs are good jobs for thousands of decent Americans-often held by women and minorities. They pay considerably better than many comparable jobs in the retail and service sectors. The plight of those workers needs to be considered at least as much as the profits of the transnational corporations which seek to shift their factories to countries where workers have no benefits, no holidays, no health care, no living wage.
"Meanwhile, President Clinton and the leaders of both Beltway parties are pushing hard for China's entry into the World Trade Organization despite China's enormous trade surpluses amassed at the expense of the United States. Bringing China into the WTO is a death sentence for countless American small businesses. Despite its growing military might and talented technical center, China is essentially a Third World nation as a trading partner, able to mass produce for the American market with workers who earn Third World wages and perform often in desperate conditions. A country where human rights are nonexistent and conscript labor is prevalent cannot trade on a level field with American producers.
"America's business elites have a huge gleam in their eye about the China market. Western merchants have fantasized about it for centuries. But China has never allowed its markets to be open except under extreme duress. If China were to join the WTO, all U.S. trade disputes would be arbitrated not by Congress, not by the executive branch, but by foreign judges in global organizations in which the United States would have no veto power and no greater clout than Bangladesh or Burundi.
"Pat Choate and I plan to go to Seattle this month to talk about the WTO and what it means for American sovereignty, for the living standards of American workers, and for the American environment. The elites of both parties think these battles are over and done-that the nation-state is finished, that giant corporations with no national allegiances have the whip hand in the new world economy. I am here to say that the battle has just begun."
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