Fwd: CAFTA and the Drug Industry

[Guest guest]

>

>

> Free Trade, Drug-Free Gifts to the pharmaceutical

> industry and other lovely features of CAFTA.

>

> By Harold Meyerson

> Web Exclusive: 03.31.05

>

> ttp://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?

> section=root & name=ViewWeb & articleId=9420

>

> Spreading democracy is one thing. But do we really want

> America to be known for spreading the pricing practices

> of our drug companies?

>

> In Guatemala, the United States has become the sales

> rep for the pharmaceutical industry. Citing urgent

> public health concerns, the Guatemalan legislature

> enacted a law last year that permitted the marketing of

> generic drugs alongside their brand-name equivalents.

> Citing the Central America Free Trade Agreement

> (CAFTA), whose ratification congressional committees

> will begin to consider next week, the U.S. trade

> representative then told the Guatemalans that any such

> drug legislation would stop CAFTA dead in its tracks.

> If the five Central American nations (plus the

> Dominican Republic) that had signed CAFTA wanted it

> ratified, Guatemala would have to repeal the new law.

> Reluctantly, Guatemala obliged.

>

> Though the rules laid down by the World Trade

> Organization permit generic competition, CAFTA imposes

> a five- to10-year waiting period on generic

> competitors, unless they conduct their own

> time-and-money-consuming clinical trials for the very

> same drugs that have already passed such trials. CAFTA

> thus effectively ensures the drug companies an

> extension of their monopoly on high-priced medications.

> It also ensures that thousands of Central Americans in

> need of such medications will have to go without.

>

> This is just one of a number of cautionary tales

> illustrating the fundamental reality of most of our

> trade accords: They are designed to maximize corporate

> profits no matter the cost to the peoples of the

> signatory nations. Consider our experience with NAFTA,

> after which CAFTA is modeled. In the 12 years since

> NAFTA was ratified, the yearly U.S. trade deficit with

> Mexico and Canada has grown from $9.1 billion to $110.8

> billion. Yet, while close to a million jobs have been

> lost in the United States, it's not as if that money is

> flowing into Mexicans' pockets. Since NAFTA was

> enacted, real wages for Mexicans have declined, the

> nation's poverty rate has increased, and illegal

> immigration to the United States has soared. For both

> Mexican and American workers, NAFTA has been a

> lose-lose proposition. For the U.S corporations that

> have outsourced their work to Mexico, though, NAFTA has

> been a clear profit center.

>

> Now comes CAFTA, which promises Central American

> workers the same kind of raw deal. CAFTA would actually

> weaken the not very formidable labor standards that

> currently exist in the Central American nations. Under

> the current Generalized System of Preferences, those

> nations are required to take steps " to afford

> internationally recognized worker rights. " Should CAFTA

> pass, the nations will be required only to enforce

> their own worker-protection laws, which they'd be

> perfectly free to repeal. That's the primary reason why

> the major union federations in Central America have

> joined the AFL-CIO in opposing CAFTA's ratification.

>

> Labor is not alone in its opposition to CAFTA. For

> years, the issue of trade has divided the Democratic

> Party. But the experience with NAFTA and now the

> concentration of global manufacturing in China seem to

> have awakened virtually every Democrat in the House to

> the perils of a new economic order based on the

> protection and promotion of cheap labor. In 2002, 21

> House Democrats supported the administration's

> fast-track legislation. This year the estimate of the

> number of Democratic congressmen who will back CAFTA is

> no higher than 10. That's partly because Republicans

> have defeated such Democratic free trade champions as

> Stenholm, who lost his seat in Tom DeLay's

> great Texas Demo-cidal district redrawing. But it's

> also because Democrats have finally realized the

> futility of supporting labor and environmental

> protections domestically, only to see them threatened,

> and American jobs eliminated, by trade accords that

> eviscerate such standards internationally.

>

> That means that Republicans will have to be unified in

> order to pass CAFTA, and by all indications, they're

> anything but. As was not the case with previous trade

> accords, agricultural interests are lining up against

> CAFTA, a change that Republicans from rural districts

> have duly noted.

>

> Trade debates, finally, are concerned with the emerging

> global order; our trade policies are as clear an

> expression of our global vision as our foreign policy.

> For those who see America's mission as enforcing the

> drug companies' profit margins, CAFTA is the treaty for

> you.

>

> Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of The American

> Prospect. This column originally appeared in The

> Washignton Post. Copyright © 2005 by The American

> Prospect, Inc.

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