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Time To Think Beyond ‘Worthless’ Free Trade Agreements: Economists
(www.readthemaple.com)
“Branch plants closed and jobs went south, first to ‘right to work’ states, and then, after NAFTA was ratified in 1994, on to Mexico.”
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“These were now redundant, as multinational corporations restructured their production footprint. It was a painful, painful process and a profoundly unjust one as there were no additional measures passed to soften the blow on displaced workers.”
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Whereas Canada had previously operated its own national vaccine lab and a strong domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity to produce generic alternatives to name brand medications, free trade agreements brought in long patents and foreign intellectual property rights.
“Canada pays among the highest prices for medications in the world and efforts to restrain those prices have been beaten down by the lobbying power of U.S. and European-based pharmaceutical companies ever since,” said Trew.
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Stanford recalls that the popular fight against free trade in the 1980s was built on a coalition of progressive social forces who recognized that fighting free trade was a big tent cause.
“Not just because of free trade being a bad idea, but because of what free trade would mean for all of our other struggles, for equality and community and the environment and democracy,” said Stanford.
Everything old is new again.