Union wages war on TPP. Corcoran,
Hot on the heels of the signing ceremony for the Canada- EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade deal, Canada’s biggest private- sector union has launched a major campaign to take down much bigger trade game. With full- page newspaper ads, a commercial blitz and an active website, the union is waging war on the Trans- Pacific Partnership. “Worst Trade Deal Ever,” says the headline on the Unifor print ad, echoing the rhetoric of U. S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and obviously aiming to capitalize on the Trump-created anti-trade atmosphere now poisoning the ideological climate in North America and abroad.
With union membership in steady decline, Big Labour seems to see opportunity for growth in the emerging business of bashing international trade deals. It’s a dangerous game. The Trans- Pacific Partnership may well be a flawed agreement, but using its flaws to foster mass opposition to international trade agreements risks adding to an expanding populist movement that sees trade as a job-killing process that only benefits the rich and corporations.
The union is playing to a Trump constituency in Canada — a collection of interests that includes a wide range of unions, activists and NGOs such as the Council of Canadians — people who believe free trade is a loser’s game. Trump’s language and policies are their language and policies. Like Trump, they rail against NAFTA and share the view that it killed jobs and allowed corporations to flee to Mexico while delivering few benefits to Canadians.
The union’s claim that the TPP — a 12- nation trade/ investment pact signed but not yet ratified by Canada — is the “worst trade deal ever” is attributed to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, although there is no immediate evidence he actually used those words.
Not that it matters. The objective is to echo Trump, who has described NAFTA as the “worst trade deal ever.” Both Stiglitz and Trump — along with Unifor and its associated organizations — are on the same page on both TPP and NAFTA.
Unifor and Trump are united against NAFTA. “There is hardly a manufacturing facility in all of Canada that has not witnessed ( or been threatened by) the off- shoring of jobs to lowerwage facilities in the United States or Mexico — in part, a consequence of the North American Free Trade Agreement,” writes Unifor in one of its trade commentaries. Trump and Unifor want the same thing: fair trade. Says Trump: “We need fair trade. Not free trade. We need fair trade. It’s got to be fair.” Says Unifor in a paper titled Imagining a Fair Trade Future: “We have to work hard to build and articulate our vision for a fair trade future.”
Unifor sees the TPP deal as a threat to Canadian tech and telecom companies, dairy industries, auto production, health care, pharmaceutical companies and other sectors. The campaign also rests heavily on attacking the TPP’s investor- state dispute- settlement ( ISDS) regime, a structure that has divided experts around the world. The claim is that corporations will be able to take governments before outside arbitrators to seek compensation for environmental and other regulations that are of benefit to Canadians.
As Canadian trade lawyer Barry Appleton points out elsewhere in FP Comment, there may be other ways to resolve the investor- protection issue. Canada’s new trade deal with Europe incorporates a new investment court to settle government- corporate legal battles, although such structures appear to need more work. Getting something like an internationalcourt regime into the TPP would take a massive effort and would still not satisfy Unifor or aggressive antifree-traders such as Stiglitz.
It is also far from clear that there is any urgent need to get into a panic over the ratification of the 12-nation TPP. Prime Minister Trudeau appears to favour the agreement in principle but has implied that Canada would ratify the deal only after it has been approved by its major trading partners, including the United States. In the current political atmosphere, U. S. approval is at best a long shot.
If the TPP is currently years away from coming into force, and since Canada does not appear to be preparing for early ratification, why would Unifor launch a campaign against the deal? The only explanation is that the union and its cohorts are deliberately capitalizing on the Trump phenomenon, riding the wave of anti- free- trade sentiment and expanding its force and range.
It’s a dangerous game that adds to the destabilizing momentum already in place against trade and against globalization. This is not to suggest that Canada should rush to approve TPP, a complicated deal that few really understand. TPP needs a careful and objective review, its flaws repaired if possible.
But the constant and extreme bashing of free trade through sensational overstatement, as practiced by Trump and Unifor, is a risky business Canadians should reject.
THE UNION PLAYS A DANGEROUS GAME THAT AMPLIFIES THE DESTABILIZING POLITICS OF TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN.