Renegotiate NAFTA!

In the fifteen years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was established, the flow of goods across national borders has increased and the profits of multinational corporations have been augmented. However, the social and economic costs to the majority of North Americans have been considerable. The level of economic inequality has soared in all three countries, and NAFTA's side agreements to protect labor and environmental standards proved weak and unenforceable.

NAFTA's provisions for protecting the rights of foreign investors, on the other hand, have been successfully used in all three countries to challenge local and state regulations protecting public health and the environment.

The United States has lost millions of industrial jobs that paid decent wages and benefits, and corporations have used the threat of exporting jobs to reduce wages and benefits even for the unionized factories that remain in the USA and Canada.

The industrial jobs created in Mexico were primarily poorly paid and insecure, and, in recent years, many of those jobs were relocated to China.

Many small subsistence farmers in Mexico lost their ability to earn a living, forcing many of them to cross the border in a desperate search for work.

At the beginning of 2008, the provisions of NAFTA required that the few remaining protections for basic foodstuffs had to be dismantled in Mexico, and hundreds of thousands of peasants took to the streets demanding that NAFTA be renegotiated.

A strong citizens' movement in Canada is also demanding that NAFTA be renegotiated.

"Free trade" agreements like NAFTA are increasingly unpopular with many working Americans, particularly union members and families.

The issue played a pivotal role in electing several proponents of "fair trade" in the 2006 congressional elections.

In the key primary states of Ohio and Texas, fair trade advocates secured written statements by both Senators Clinton and Obama that, if elected, they would renegotiate NAFTA.

Both promised to include enforceable labor and environmental standards, and both promised, albeit more vaguely, to reexamine clauses that excessively favored investor interests.

Although neither candidate has in the past been a strong critic of "free trade," they had to respond to the evident demands of a wide spectrum of the electorate. Thus far, however, the trade debate between the Obama and Clinton campaigns has been more about smearing the other candidate's record as a tactical approach to winning specific states rather than a broad strategy designed to win the general election or build political support for a new "fair trade" policy.

None the less, the 2008 general election campaign will feature an ongoing debate on "free" versus "fair" trade, particularly in those states that have suffered trade-related job losses. Senator McCain wholeheartedly supports NAFTA and other "free trade" agreements that primarily benefit the multinational corporations and economic elites. Whether it be Obama or Clinton, the Democratic candidate will have to advocate substantial reforms in U.S. trade policies.

However, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns are financially supported by business interests that favor "free trade," and both candidates are advised by economic policy analysts who are "free traders"-raising a substantial question about the willingness and ability of any elected Democratic president to fulfill the electoral promise to renegotiate NAFTA.

So campaign rhetoric does not guarantee a major change in policy. What will help make a difference is a strong citizen's movement for fair trade after Election Day. We must take steps now to build grassroots support for renegotiating NAFTA that will make it more difficult for the new administration to avoid or backburner the issue of fair trade and NAFTA.

This petition is intended to help build broad public support for renegotiating NAFTA between now and the first months after the inauguration of the new administration. It provides a vehicle to register the support of individual American citizens for making renegotiating NAFTA not a mere tactical slogan for a political campaign but, in fact, a genuine grassroots demand for fair trade policies that encourage the creation of decent jobs at decent wages.