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Victory in Miami? Strategies Going Forward in the Anti-FTAA Campaign
rabble , 11.21.2003 10:46
http://ftaaimc.org/en/2003/11/1498.shtml

The FTAA summit came to a close a day early in Miami. Normally when we are protesting outside major summits and they close early it's a major victory. In Cancún they closed at the official time, but it was because the talks had collapsed and they didn't think there was a way of saving things by adding another day.

Everybody saw Miami as a followup to Cancún. Amorin and Zoellick both said as much in their closing press conferences in Miami. Clearly there were many talks and meetings between Brasilia and Washington during the last two months. The outcome is very interesting.

First off it says that there are two powers in the Americas in terms of trade deals. Brazil and the US. The US has NAFTA and closely allied countries of Canada, Mexico, and Chile. Brazil has Mercosur, with it's influence over Venezuela and Argentina. Given the power politics, the only two countries who really matter in the FTAA negotiations are Brazil and the US.

Brazil

Why does Brazil have the power to go up to the US. The answer is three fold, first they don't really have the power.

First, Brazil can not walk away from the FTAA without a Venezuela like domestic power shift which would cut off Lula from his support bases in the middle classes. Lula and the PT are either unwilling or unable to engage in class warfare required to walk away from the neoliberalism game. Because of this, Brazil's hands are tied, they can make a huge stink, but in the end Brazil as it now is governed needs free trade deals.

Secondly, Brazil is a semi-industrial country with heavy manufacturing, cultural, and high-tech industry. This means that Brazil has real exports. Sure Brazil also has a huge agricultural sector, as does the US, but a large portion of the economy is based on producing things like cars and buses. This means that Brazil is not dependent on a single commodity which could collapse on world markets. It also means that Brazil has a reliable source of foreign income, both from selling products to the first world, but also what is called South-South trade.

Thirdly, Brazil has Mercosur, the south american trade block. Mercosur has many problems, but it also means that Brazil has markets for it's goods if there are problems with the FTAA. Mercosur can go and create a free trade block with Europe or East Asia. Recently Venezuela has been moving to join Mercosur which gives it more power and relieves a bit of the debilitating Argentina / Brazil which has held the alliance back. Within Mercosur there is no consensus on trade deals. Uruguay and Paraguay are both very FTAA, although there economic power is almost non-existant. The same goes for Bolivia which is an associated but not a full member of Mercosur. Chile also an associated state is very free trade and is throwing it's lot in with the NAFTA. Leftist governments are likely to take power in Uruguay and Bolivia in the next round of elections making them more integrated parts of the Mercosur Strategy of Brazil. In Argentina, Kitchner turned out be much more progressive than any imagined and has led Argentina to be a willing collaborator in Brazil's regional power games. The last country which is important is Venezuela under Chavez. Venezuela is a country which does not export much which would be affected by FTAA or the WTO for that matter. It's primary exporter earner is oil. Petroleum and related markets aren't even going to be on the free trade agenda until 2010 to 2015. The combination of having an economy based on Oil and the political support base of Chavez means Venezuela has the most freedom of movement of any state of the Americas. Chavez has cut any support ties to the upper classes who benefit from free trade deals, and has an economy which can not be hurt by punitive tariffs, unless the something extreme like UN sanctions get imposed. The Chavistas are pushing Lula to take a more militant stand against the US and FTAA.

Lula made a decision before the elections where the PT (Workers Party) finally took power. The PT would not take a strong leftist stand on many issues. Alliances were made with right wing parties and cut down on anything which could be seen as class war rhetoric. Lula didn't want to, or couldn't, play the very risky game that Chavez played and won in Venezuela. He has ties which make it impossible for him to screw the middle and upper classes (who comprise less than %20 of the population).

The United States

The US on the other hand has the most flexibility. The US has a three pronged approach: the WTO and multilateral global treaties, regional trade agreements such as FTAA, CAFTA, the Asia Pacific Trade Area, and bilateral trade agreements with single countries (Australia, Chile, Singapore, etc...).

The US tried hard to push through a new round at the WTO in Cancun. They were unable to, mostly because of a fight that didn't involve them as primary players. The EU, Japan, and South Korea were demanding that any agricultural concessions be made in exchange for moving forward on Singapore Issues (related to investment rules, government procurement, and trade in services). The deal they were proposing goes against general WTO policy which says you don't trade one large sector for another. On the other hand Brazil, India, and their G21 were also breaking WTO traditions by proposing working document on Agriculture which was seriously at odds with the very pro-Northern document presented by the chair. The US tried to act to bring these two groups together, mostly by trying to breakup the G21 by pealing off countries with side deals. A number of latin american countries left the G21 during and after the Cancun Ministerial.

At the closing press conference Robert Zoellick said that if agreements couldn't be reached within the WTO then the US would look to the FTAA and bilateral agreements with individual countries. The US has enough regional and bilateral agreements that it could walk away from the WTO entirely and cause the WTO's collapse. They would only do that if they thought they could get a much better deal with regional and bilateral agreements as it would cause a serious disruption in the international trade world. The US said it would try and pickup what couldn't be done at Cancun and move it forward on a hemispheric level in the FTAA.

Amorin said that Brazil had wished an agreement was possible during the WTO and they looked forward to making an agreement in Miami. The Brazilian strategy has been to try and minimize the FTAA's impact while getting an agreement.

Clearly the Brazilians won. They got the agreement they wanted with all of the parts cut which they demanded to be cut. The FTAA will become a very limited trade treaty with all of the parts that made it the WTO + MAI + NAFTA removed.

Agriculture was not touched and there were public statements saying that Agriculture would be dealt with on a WTO level. This makes me think that in the weeks leading up to Miami the US and Brazil have made a deal. They will work together to expand the WTO through the creation of a negotiating pact on Agricultural issues. It will be interesting to see if this pact survives through the 6th WTO ministerial next year in Hong Kong.

The rumors are that the next FTAA ministerial meeting will be in Sao Paulo, Brazil in November 2004. For the left this is great news. Unlike Miami where we had practically no support based of social movements there is a very active and well organized left in Sao Paulo. The PT will be pushing for the FTAA so the majority of them will not take part in the protests. Indymedia in Sao Paulo is very well organized among the student and anarchist community. CUT the Brazilian federation of trade unions has continued the anti-ftaa campaign even though PT pulled out. CUT has also held a series of very bitter strikes against cuts in wages and social spending by Lula. MST, the Landless Peasants Movement, has also maintained a confrontational position to the FTAA and the PT government. Although MST is mostly rural, they have a urban squatters movement counterpart which is large and active in Sao Paulo. Brazil is much more accessible than Miami and there will probably be small delegations of protesters from Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. If past anti-ftaa protests in Sao Paulo are any example, there will be plenty of police repression. It will be a good chance to show the world that even if the governments are negotiating the ftaa, the people and social movements are still against it.

Future of the Anti-FTAA Movement

We are now faced with another major juncture in the road. The FTAA as the evil all nasty beast has been slain. We now have FTAA-lite, a very much reduced version of the FTAA. It's still bad, but many of the points we were using for why it was truly evil have been removed. This will cause many of the less radical elements of the movement to drop or soften their campaigns. They have some reason to do so. The most damaging aspects of the FTAA have been removed and there are now potentially more important campaigns. We still have the WTO, Plan Colombia, the perpetual war on terrorism, IMF structural adjustment, World Bank projects, Privatization, etc...

Is it the most important thing to continue with the FTAA campaign or pickup the other parts of the campaign against neo-liberalism?

That's a tough question. One advantage of the FTAA campaigns has been it helped forge cross border ties and alliances. We needed to work together because they only way to fight the FTAA was in every country of the Americas at once. I suspect the biggest crisis and search for new direction will come from groups like the Hemispheric Social Alliance which have been very influential in organizing a pan americas movement of NGO's, Church groups, and Unions. I hope they are able to build on this partial victory and include other issues in their cross-border organizing campaigns while realizing that the FTAA is only battle among many which we must fight together.

For radicals I think it's important first to realize this is a partial victory. The FTAA will not be the WTO + MAI + NAFTA. The US and neoliberals across the Americas have been dealt with a major setback. We've won something. It's a reform, but one which opens the way for more reforms and a wider anti-capitalist movement. We need to realize that it's victory also for the reformists, and we wouldn't have been able to kill the worse parts of the FTAA without them.

The advantage of organizing around the FTAA is that it was an easy target. Four short letters, a specific project with specific negative effects. It's much harder to say organize a campaign around neo-liberalism or capitalism in general. We now need to be looking at other concrete campaigns which we can build which can include an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist perspective. We also need to be reaching out to make sure our less radical fellow travelers don't leave the movement thinking that we've won.

The US Trade Office doesn't see this as the end of profound neo-liberal and free trade reforms. They are going to keep going forward advancing their agenda. We need to keep after them. There will be no final victory, only steps along the path of collective struggle for mutual liberation.

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