OUR AGENDA

INVESTMENT

Governments should have the power to require investors to:

• include national, regional or local content;

• buy goods and services locally;

• hire local people;

• transfer appropriate technology;

• regulate speculators and fly-by-night investments.

 THEIR AGENDAINVESTMENT

•Those pushing the Multilateral Agreement on Investment MAI) want to pull the MAI into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the FTAA.

• Business wants national governments to have little power over how investors perform.

•They want international agreements to limit what governments can and can’t do.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
(Making Ideas Private Property)Before granting companies legal protection for their inventions and discoveries, governments should:• exclude all life forms from eligibility for patents;•help the transfer of appropriate technology to less developed countries;• require the owners of drug patents to grant licenses to producers of cheaper generic medicines.		 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
(Making Ideas Private Property)
Private corporations want trade agreements to give them more control over inventions and discoveries. They want to:• strengthen the enforcement of patent and copyright laws through trade sanctions;• limit cheaper, generic copies of patent medicines – the ones that cost consumers less.
STANDARDS• Trade agreements need to work towards common standards for all countries on worker health and safety, the quality of goods and use of toxic chemicals.

• FTAA negotiations must aim to harmonize these standards upwards. We want to stop the ‘race to the bottom’ and improve standards for everyone.

 STANDARDS• Transnational corporations use trade agreements, and the threat of shut-downs, to force countries to lower their environmental, labour and health and safety standards.

• To attract foreign investment, governments lower these standards in a competitive “race to the bottom”.
DEBT AND FINANCE• Renegotiate or write off the parts of the foreign debt which developing countries are unable to pay. (The debt grew because of high interest rates set here in the north).

• Development loans must be available over long terms at low interest rates.

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank should be fundamentally restructured or replaced.

 DEBT AND FINANCE• Banks want the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to continue to impose Structural Adjustment Programs (or SAPs) on debtor countries keep up payments on loans that they never can pay off.

• SAPs force countries to cut economic and social programs so they can make interest payments on their debt to foreign creditors!

• Corporations want to stop national governments from regulating flows of hot money into and out of their countries.
AGRICULTURE• Countries should have the right to exclude basic foods, like corn or milk, from international trade agreements.

• Land reform is needed to get property rights for small producers, including women and landless workers.

 AGRICULTURE• Large agricultural corporations want wider markets not only for traditional crops but also for bio-engineered foods and seeds made dependent on fertilizers and pesticides. (This hurts small peasant farmers around the world)
• Governments should adopt special policies for small producers in areas such as soil conservation, appropriate technologies, access to credit and to subsidies. • They want domestic marketing boards like the Canadian Dairy, Poultry and Wheat Boards dismantled. (This would take away the only control Canadian farmers have over prices and marketing for their products.)