Tricks of Free Trade

Remember the tuna boycott? Many Sierra Club members stopped buying tuna in the 1980s to protest fishing methods that killed thousands of dolphins. Congress passed a law to stop the slaughter, but in 1991 an international trade tribunal overruled the U.S. ban, declaring it to be a “barrier to trade.”

The decision helped convince the Sierra Club to take on international commerce issues, opposing harmful agreements and promoting “responsible trade.” Our simple goal is trade rules that strengthen global environmental and democratic standards rather than eviscerate them.

The Club’s campaign gathered steam as more and more people learned the price of “free” trade. Increasing numbers of polluting factories crowded the U.S. border with Mexico, but the cleanup money promised by the North American Free Trade Agreement never materialized. In 1997, 130 Michigan schoolchildren came down with hepatitis A after eating Mexican strawberries that may have been irrigated with raw sewage. Rigorous inspection at the border that might have caught the hazard was forbidden by NAFTA.

In an alliance with organized labor, the Sierra Club and other environmentalists were able to defeat attempts by President Clinton to secure “fast track” trade-negotiating authority to expand NAFTA throughout the Western Hemisphere. Trying to seize the initiative, Clinton kicked off the “Millennium Round” of talks of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in November 1999. Tens of thousands of students, environmentalists, and trade unionists turned out in the cold and rain for peaceful, legal protests. Thousands more sat down in the streets, locked arms, and shut down the summit on its opening day. Amid the tear gas and rubber bullets, the Millennium Round—and Clinton’s trade policy—collapsed in disarray.

Today, the Club’s Responsible Trade Program is fighting “fast track” once again—this time, to block President Bush’s ability to extend NAFTA under the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Nearly a thousand activists have signed up for the Responsible Trade Program’s electronic action-alert listserv. To subscribe, send an e-mail with your name, address, and phone number to dan.seligman@sierraclub.org. To connect with others in your region, find the Responsible Trade coordinators in your state at www.sierraclub.org/trade. The Sierra Student Coalition has its own program, Student Action on the Global Economy, with a presence on some 200 campuses across the country (www.ssc.org). Once we defeat fast track, we can get on the right track—trade agreements that uphold high environmental and labor standards.

Dan Seligman, Sierra Club Responsible Trade Program Director