Looking at
globalization:
[1-25-02]
BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY reveals how NAFTA's Chapter
Eleven can cost taxpayers millions of dollars when multinational
corporations sue the government over environmental and health laws that
threaten their profits
Premieres February 5 at 10:00 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings)
~~~~~~~
"When the North American Free Trade Agreement became the law of
the land almost a decade ago, the debate we heard was about jobs,"
says Bill Moyers. "One provision was too obscure to stir up
controversy. It was called Chapter Eleven, and it was supposedly written
to protect investors from having their property seized by foreign
governments. But since NAFTA was ratified, corporations have used
Chapter Eleven to challenge the powers of government to protect its
citizens, to undermine environmental and health laws, even attack our
system of justice." How can this be happening? And why do so few
people know about it?
Speaking with legislators, public policy experts, community leaders,
and citizens about the lawsuits filed under NAFTA's Chapter Eleven, Bill
Moyers Reports: Trading Democracy unravels the hidden
repercussions of a treaty that was supposed to promote democracy through
free trade, but now appears to have given deep-pocketed corporations the
means to undermine democracy across international borders.
The program explores the case of Methanex, a Canadian company that is
the world's largest producer of the key ingredient in the gasoline
additive MTBE, which was found to be a carcinogen. In 1995 MTBE began
turning up in wells throughout California, and by 1999 had contaminated
thirty public water systems. The state ordered that the additive be
phased out. Methanex filed suit under NAFTA's Chapter Eleven, seeking
$970 million in compensation for loss of market share and, consequently,
future profits. Environmental attorney Martin Wagner tells Moyers,
"they're saying that California either can't implement this
protection or that they get a billion dollars. People should be outraged
by that."
As Moyers reports, many people who have been affected by MTBE
contamination are indeed outraged. But they are helpless to do anything.
The NAFTA tribunal that will decide the Methanex case -- like all the
tribunals hearing Chapter Eleven-based cases -- is closed to the public.
Yet it is the taxpayers "who will foot the bill if the tribunal
decides in favor of the Canadian company," says Moyers.
But the ramifications for the public go well beyond the loss of
taxpayer dollars, explains journalist William Greider. "If Methanex
wins its billion dollar claim over California environmental law, there
ain't gonna be many states enacting that law, are there?" he says,
adding that the NAFTA provision "hobbles the authority of
government to act in the broader public interest. And, in fact, that was
the idea in the first place."
Moyers also takes his investigation south of the border to the
Mexican state of San Luis Potosíí, where an American company called
Metalclad tried to bulldoze over the protests of both state and local
governments to reopen a toxic waste dump that many citizens feared was
making them sick. When Metalclad was stopped by the local towncouncil
the company invoked Chapter Eleven and was awarded $16 million in
compensation.
Challenges being mounted under Chapter Eleven are directed not only
toward regulatory activity, but also toward overruling jury decisions in
civil courts of law. The documentary explores a case in Mississippi
where a Biloxi funeral home owner was awarded punitive damages by a jury
in a civil suit against a large Canadian corporation called the Loewen
Group. The local funeral home owner alleged that the Loewen Group had
engaged in "fraudulent" and "predatory" trade
practices, and the jury found against the Canadian company. Three years
later, the Loewen Group filed a Chapter Eleven claim against American
taxpayers saying the jury was biased against Canadians, and in a
preliminary ruling, the NAFTA tribunal has declared the Mississippi
trial a legitimate target. The Loewen suit, notes Moyers, "could
conceivably open the U.S. civil justice system to challenge -- including
decisions of the United States Supreme Court."
This startling realization, and the knowledge that corporate giants
are pushing to expand NAFTA to 31 more countries in the Western
Hemisphere, prompts Moyers to ask, "Are we promoting democracy --
as we claim -- or trading it away?"
For more information on TRADING DEMOCRACY: Kristin Fellows TRADING
DEMOCRACY Outreach and Promotion Kelly & Salerno Communications kfellows@mindspring.com
Phone 703-780-4006
========
We received this notice from TIRN Fair Trade Committee <trade@tirn.org>
TIRN is a coalition of labor, community, environmental and religious
groups whose mission is to make economic policies that are fair to
workers and that uplift communities. For more information or to be added
or removed from TIRN's mailing list, contact them at (865) 637-1576 or trade@tirn.org. You can visit their website at
http://www.tirn.org.
