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CounterPunch
September
21, 2002
Beware
of GATS
Greed Without
Limits
by
RALPH NADER
The ultimate downfall of the corporate globalizers
may be that they know no limits.
Not satisfied with imposing pull-down
agreements on the trade in goods, Big Business is looking to
do the same thing for services through the General Agreement
on Trade in Services (GATS). Services includes such economic
sectors as finance (banking, insurance, pensions), healthcare,
telecommunications, construction, travel and tourism, the professions,
education and training, express delivery, energy and environmental
services. GATS is part of the World Trade Organization (WTO),
and now undergoing renegotiation to become more encompassing.
The Wall Street banks and the other service
multinationals first want to ensure that countries do not discriminate
against foreign service providers. The United States does not
let foreign airlines service domestic routes, for example. Such
restrictions to protect domestic firms are prevalent in developing
countries, and an impediment to the expansionary dreams of the
rich country multinationals.
But the multinationals want much more
than non-discrimination. Their real goal is to use the language
of non-discrimination (they talk about  "market access" and "national
treatment" for foreign companies) in order to force deregulation
and privatization.
A key priority for the service companies
is to place a burden on all countries to show that their regulations
are the "least trade restrictive" means to achieve
a legitimate purpose.
What does this mean? In case after case,
the European Union has suggested that the U.S. federalist system
-- with overlapping regulatory powers between the states and
federal government -- is an impediment to trade. The argument
goes like this: American companies with a bigger presence in
the United States can more easily manage to deal with separate
regulatory agencies in each state. Foreign companies with a smaller
presence cannot negotiate this terrain as easily. Thus, goes
the EU argument, regulation should be done at the federal level.
Do we really want to sacrifice important
state-level consumer and civil rights protections -- for example,
interest rate caps, limits on corporate discriminatory practices
like redlining, restrictions on predatory lending -- because
they are inconvenient for European companies? Of course, the
real point is not that they are inconvenient for Europeans, but
for business. The U.S. companies hope to use GATS to eliminate
U.S. regulations -- just like the European corporations want
to get rid of rules in the EU.
There are relatively weak GATS rules
in place now, but ongoing negotiations between nations under
corporate influence to tighten them and apply them to more and
more services raise serious concerns.
What might a strengthened GATS mean for
the United States? It's too early to say with certainty, but
based on a careful analysis of existing proposals, Professor
Patricia Arnold of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has
raised a set of disturbing questions:
Will GATS weaken efforts to regulate
financial markets in the aftermath of the financial and accounting
scandals? Already foreign companies are complaining about the
reach of the modest Sarbanes-Oxley accounting reform bill, which
would require foreign, as well as U.S. CEOs, if they sell stock
on the New York Stock Exchange, to attest personally to the validity
of their companies' financial statements. If Wall Street gets
its way and achieves a partial privatization of Social Security,
will GATS make it impossible ever to bring the program back fully
into the public sector? GATS requires countries to pay compensatory
damage if they grant new public rights over the supply of a service,
she notes, making privatization a one-way street. Would GATS
limit efforts to regulate the health insurance sector? The insurance
industry argues that service agreements should prohibit restrictions
on the types of insurance products allowed on the market. Might
this mean a ban on legal requirements that health insurance policies
must cover certain medical conditions?
Some will argue these are Chicken Little
sky-is-falling concerns. But if the NAFTA-WTO experience shows
anything, it is that corporate lawyers will grab onto any crevice
in trade rules to hoist corporate interests above the public
interest.
Consider the "Chapter 11" investment
protections in NAFTA. In a case closely paralleling what might
occur in other countries with a GATS agreement, UPS is suing
the Canadian postal service for offering express delivery service.
The postal service is subsidized for mail delivery, and that
subsidy unfairly advantages Canada Post over UPS in the express
delivery market, UPS claims.
If Canada Post want to compete in the
market, they should set up drop-off boxes separate from mail
boxes, employ delivery and sorting staff separate from the people
who handle the mail, and handle delivery packages at separate
facilities from the mail, UPS argues. Since Canada Post had the
temerity not to pursue this economic irrationality, UPS is asking
for hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.
This is actually happening, and other
companies are filing lawsuits in each others' countries against
safety regulations, court verdicts and other expressions of domestic
sovereignty.
Enough cases like this -- and a more
dominant GATS will make sure there are many more -- may eventually
produce a backlash that will bring down the whole WTO-NAFTA edifice.
But the damage inflicted in the meantime is too severe. Better
instead to prevent new agreements that diminish our living standards
and roll back existing ones. For more information on how to stop
the GATS, contact Global
Trade Watch.
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September
20, 2002
Joan Hoff
Debating
War:
the Forgotten Tradition
Norman Madarasz
Lessons from a Cyncial Master
Jean Chretien's New York
State of Mind
Mitchel Cohen
Toxic Wastes
and
the New World Order
Peter Lee
Why Bush
Wants This War
Bruce Jackson
20 Questions
About Bush's
War Against Arabs
Krystal Kyer
Greenwashing the Marketplace
September
19, 2002
Ron Jacobs
Cheney's
Vermont Breakfast
Ilija Trojanow
/ Ranjit Hoskote
Who Cares
for Human Rights?
It's a "Just" War
Jordy Cummings
How
to Silence
Pro-Palestinian Voices
Salam Rahal
The Rape
of a Nation
Richard Falk
& David Krieger
War with
Iraq:
It's Not Bush's Decision
Ralph Nader
How Congress
Can Fight Corporate Crime
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Senior:
Hating Saddam, Selling Him Weapons
September
18, 2002
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun
of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
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