HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ 1/HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ.iso/chibacity/ralph.arj/RALPH

Text File | 1993-11-14 | 37.8 KB | 620 lines

=======================NAFTA undermines sovereignty=======================
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 Today's Date: 11/9/93

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[Paul Weyrich, Coalitions for America Chairman, and Ralph Nader, consumer
advocate, speak before the National Press Club on Thursday, November 4th:]

[Announcer] Hi, my name is Elizabeth Carden, and on behalf of Coalitions
for America I would like to thank you all for coming. I'd like to introduce
Paul Weyrich, who is Chairman of Coalitions for America, and Ralph Nader,
consumer advocate. They'll both be giving brief statements this morning,
and then will be followed by some Q & A, and they'd be happy to answer
any questions you might have. Now here's Mr. Weyrich.

[Paul Weyrich] Good Morning. We decided to revive this act, which hasn't
played since the pay-raise battle. I guess one hesitates when one is going
to go against what seems to be the majority sentiment in the leadership of
one's party and movement. But that was solved for me when I saw the smiling
picture of Henry Kissinger and Jim Baker sitting with President Clinton. It
reminded me what this is all about -- this is really a battle about elites
versus ordinary people; and I will tell you as somebody who travels
constantly, and is out around the country, that ordinary people do not
support this agreement, don't think it's a good idea for the country, have
the kinds of reservations that I have about it.

Let me tell you where I'm coming from, because although Ralph and I have
come to the same conclusion, we don't necessarily come about it the same
way, although on this we actually do think a lot alike about this
particular piece of work. I agree with Ross Perot when he says that anybody
ought to pick it up and read it, because if this is free trade then
everything that I learned about that subject goes down the drain. This
isn't free trade. This is an amalgamation of special interests that are
increasing by the day.

One of the big problems that I have with this arrangement is the cost of
it. We have special banks, we have special projects, we have special
arrangements now for sugar people, for orange juice people, for, you know,
you name it. Everyday uncovers a new one of these special arrangements to
try to get this passed; and sooner or later, you have to ask yourself how
much is this worth?

The real central issue is ... the issue of sovereignty. I think we are
giving away [too much] to ratify this treaty. Now that issue has been
ridiculed, and those of us that have come to that conclusion have been
called every kind of name in the book. It's very interesting because I
respect those people who have come to the opposite conclusion that I have
on this issue. They have certain arguments that are plausible, and it's
certainly their privilege, but those of us that oppose this are pictured
as know-nothing Neanderthals, people who are trying to ignore reality, and
so on. I think it's just the opposite. I think that the people who support
this are ignoring the reality of what's being set up here.

We are going to rue the day if this treaty is ratified, because we are
setting up a mechanism which is going to allow some extra-national
organization to interfere in the operation of domestic companies; and,
having spent a lot of time in Europe, and having seen now what a lot of the
free-marketeers think of the EEC for example, and their bureaucracy in
Brussels, and how they rail against this. I mean we are setting up
something which is going to be just as bad; and we're going to have the
laws of states, we're going to have federal laws, we're going to have any
kind of rules and regulations that we have constructed in this country
through the democratic process abrogated by some kind of unelected body
that gets to preside over the final outcome of various disputes. I don't
like it.

Furthermore, I have a big problem with side agreements. Of course we don't
know from day to day whether the side agreements are serious or they're not
serious. It's sort of interesting, because one day we're told, Oh, forget
these side agreements -- one of the members of the Republican leadership
told me the side agreements would wither away. Sounds like good Marxist
philosophy. But then on the other hand we're told the side agreements are
absolutely critical, because they are of course the mechanism by which we
are bringing in various votes that are needed to pass this.

I have a problem as well with the tax increase. You know, I just wonder
what it is that some of the Republicans stand for on this, because we've
just seen an election in which it's quite clear what the public thinks of
tax increases, and yet the devotion to passing this NAFTA agreement seems
to be such, that even some of those now who signed the letter telling the
President that if he was going to use higher taxes as part of the
arrangement to pay for this, they couldn't support it. Now they've backed
off and the latest rationale as of yesterday noon was that, well, because
tariffs are being lowered with the NAFTA agreement, and taxes are being
raised, since tariffs are being lowered more than taxes are being raised,
the ultimate outcome of this is some sort of lower tariffs. That is a very
interesting theory, and I guess one could rationalize the passage of almost
anything with that.

In any case, I thought long and hard about coming out against this, because
as I say, it is the prevailing attitude, the passage of NAFTA is the
prevailing attitude in the party in which I've been active and in the
movement in which I've been active and while I'm a bit of a maverick, I
don't particularly enjoy going against a lot of my colleagues; but I really
have taken a hard look at this, I've read about it, I've reflected on it,
and I just think it's wrong for America. I decided that we ought to say
that, and since Ralph and I come from opposite ends of the political
perspective, and since we have come to the same conclusion on this, we
thought it would be interesting to get both points of view. So Ralph, I'll
turn it over to you.

[Ralph Nader] One of rarest sights in Washington D.C. is to find anybody
who's both pro-NAFTA and who has read the two giant volumes that represent
the North American Free Trade Agreement, so-called. Of 150 economists who
were called after they endorsed NAFTA, only 19 even admitted to reading the
volumes. The same holds true for people on Capitol Hill, in the Executive
Branch, and in the media. If they are going to make NAFTA a major area of
their concern, it's incumbent upon them to read the agreement.

Our group has read the agreement, and has gone into its legalities in a
variety of minute ways. And our conclusion is quite simple: NAFTA and the
forthcoming GATT revisions impose an unacceptable, international,
autocratic regime on our democratic processes in the United States. And in
so doing, they expose our local, state, and federal health and safety
standards for consumers, environment, for workers; and other national,
state and local policies to attack by foreign countries who can charge that
our stronger meat and poultry inspection laws, our motor vehicle safety
laws, our fuel efficiency laws, or laws relating to conservation,
recycling, that all these basically are disguised barriers to imports, that
they are non-tariff trade barriers.

And the decision as to whether the foreign country challenges of our higher
standards of living are valid under NAFTA will be made by secretive
international tribunals, where all submissions before the tribunals are
confidential, where only governments can initiate the workings of the
tribunals, and where citizens in this country are completely shut out.
These tribunals can decide that if we don't weaken our health-safety and
living standards in the prescribed ways, we will be subjected under NAFTA
to penalties and sanctions until we either repeal these laws, or weaken
them to the accepted level by the secret tribunal's decision. And this is
essentially the sovereignty argument that Paul Weyrich raised.

The sovereignty argument is one that has gotten very little public
discussion. Every trade agreement that countries sign onto, involves some
relinquishment of some sovereignties, such as the freedom to set tariffs
unilaterally. But this trade agreement represents a subordination of
internal sovereign decisions in the United States to external commercial
trade imperatives, and makes the decision as to which of our standards will
be overridden, one conducted by these secret tribunals.

We can not challenge these secret tribunals in our open courts. We can not
have access to them as parties or interveners, and we can not appeal to our
courts to overturn these tribunals' decisions. And so the North American
so-called free trade agreement is not a trade agreement in any traditional
sense, restricted to tariffs and reducing investment barrier between
nations. It is an international, autocratic, governance agreement that
deeply invades the internal democratic sovereignty of the United States to
preserve and advance its own living standards, its own health and safety
standards. Everything NAFTA touches becomes more autocratic and less
democratic: more remote from the public's right to know, participate, and
decide, and more concentrating of power in the hands of multinational
bureaucrats and corporations.

From its morbidly secret conception by corporate lobbyists and their
government allies, to the secretive, exclusive, and essentially
unreviewable decisions by international tribunals, that are wholly alien to
our country's judicial and administrative law practices, NAFTA diminishes
U.S. democracy, diminishes the authority of individual citizens to shape
the future of their country.

The trade agreement subordinates consumer, environmental, worker health and
safety considerations, to its commercial dictates, largely designed by
global corporations. The repeated drumbeat of hundreds of pages of NAFTA
and the forthcoming GATT revisions, is that commercial trade imperatives --
you can read that, corporate mercantilism -- are what noncommercial values
such as health, safety, and conservation, must bend beneath.

Already in recent years, under trade agreements such as the U.S.-Canadian
Trade Agreement and GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,
nations provoked by their dominant companies have been challenging internal
health, safety, and domestic standards in various countries, not just our
own, as non-tariff trade barriers -- and they better be changed, or
penalties will be imposed. Examples relate to asbestos, acid rain, drug
prices, policies on raw log exports for conservation purposes, the
tuna-dolphin conflict, milk safety, controls on tobacco advertising,
recycling, food labelling, and auto insurance are some of the recent
pending or tentative forays pushing existing trade agreement envelopes in
anticipation of the forthcoming giant go-signals invoked by NAFTA and the
GATT revisions.

While all trade agreements involve some relinquishment of sovereignty, this
one goes too far. It makes decisions that affect voters, consumers,
workers, and taxpayers in the United States of America that are completely
beyond the reach of those same voters, consumers, taxpayers, and workers to
affect -- read that, anti-democratic; read that, autocratic.

What's really at work in all of these proposed agreements is the drive by
multinational companies, and their international bureaucrats to be freed
from the constraints of national sovereignty. They want global commerce,
but without democratic, global, legal accountability. Therefore NAFTA can
be described as a pull-down trade agreement -- pulling down our standards
to lower country common denominators abroad. This is in contrast to other
trade agreements, which have required less developed countries to achieve
certain levels of parliamentary democracy and worker safety nets, such as
was applied to Greece, Portugal, and Spain in the European Common Market.
MIT economist Lester Thurow said that Mexico would not qualify for entry
into the European Economic Community for these reasons, namely that we are
entering into an economic union drive with [a country that has been ruled]
by a dictatorial regime and a single party for 64 years, that has stolen
elections, prevented independent judiciaries from operating, crushed the
rights of workers to form trade unions, and in general, crushed the rights
of citizens in Mexico to protest, to oppose, and to elevate their country
into the realm of modest democratic activity.

I don't think Americans are ready to have their hard-fought standards for
motor-vehicle safety, food safety, fuel efficiency, pollution control,
recycling and other conservation measures, to mention a few standards, to
have these vulnerable to challenge by foreign governments as non-tariff
trade barriers to be decided before secret, unreviewable international
tribunals that exclude citizens from any participation. Moreover, neither
do Americans want to be restrained by these tribunals, from advancing and
strengthening these living standards in the future. Imagine citizens in
California, New York, Florida, who are trying to reduce cancer-causing
conditions, who are trying to improve the quality of their living
standards. Not only do they have to deal with Albany, Tallahassee,
Sacramento, and Washington; under these trade agreements they're going to
have to deal with Geneva, Rome, and Mexico City, without having any rights
to participate in those tribunals. You can see the chilling effect it will
have when citizen activists, whatever their goals, not only have to deal
with their local, state, and federal government, but they have to deal with
the State Department telling them that what they're trying to do violates
NAFTA or the GATT revisions.

Harmonization of Mexican and U.S. truck safety standards are a perfect
example. NAFTA is a giant Mexican truck in your rear view mirror as you're
driving down the road. In a totally unpublicized decision, in late 1991,
the U.S. Department of Transportation arrived at a memorandum of
understanding with the Mexican Department of Transportation, essentially
recognizing each others' driver licensing standards. And under this
memorandum, which was not available for public notice or public comment or
public appeal under the Department of Transportation's procedures, Mexican
truck drivers can go into the United States without knowing a word of
English, without knowing or proving that they can drive the type of truck
such as the tanker truck, through a proper display of a license to do so,
and without knowing about their cargo and whether it's shifting and how
they can make sure it's being safely transported.

Now U.S. truck drivers should not be allowed in Mexico if they don't know
any Spanish, because when there are roadside emergencies, it's a pretty
good idea to have a modest knowledge of the language in the country in
which you are transporting these goods.

Under NAFTA, the weaker truck safety standards in Mexico -- for example
they allow a maximum weight of 170,000 pounds; our country allows a maximum
weight of 80,000 pounds. The weaker truck safety standards in Mexico will
be harmonized with the truck safety standards in the U.S.. Now it doesn't
take a rocket scientist, as the cliche goes, to know that if our standards
are stronger than Mexican standards, that any harmonization is going to be
downward from our point of view, especially when the truck industry in this
country wants the weaker type of truck standards that Mexico has.

And of course, in a matter of reality, the corruption in Mexico of getting
truck licenses is a regular scandal, in terms of how these licenses can be
bought and traded. In a recent border check of Mexican trucks, 19 percent
of the truck drivers did not have commercial truck licenses, and about 80
percent did not have commercial registration documentation. And that is
just the beginning.

NAFTA and GATT revisions would give foreign countries and their powerful
corporations a field day in dragging down or blocking higher standards of
living, health, and safety in the United States, to lower country common
denominators. NAFTA and GATT revisions are intended to subordinate our
democracy and our higher standards to international, autocratic regimes.
By pulling these standards down, they help keep lower standards down in
less developed and poorer nations, such as Mexico. These trade agreements
should be defeated in Congress later this month, and they will be, given
the aroused and informed determination of citizens throughout The United
States to make their positions known by calling the local office of their
member of Congress, the House of Representatives, which number is in the
phone book, or by contacting by phone or letter, or meeting their
representative in Washington. All citizens who wish these trade agreements
to be defeated and replaced with renegotiated pull-up agreements that don't
invade our sovereignty, should be contacting their representatives before
the November 17th scheduled vote in the House of Representatives, and as
soon as possible, the better.

I want to show for perhaps the first time on television the two NAFTA
volumes. These cost your government four dollars to print, and three-and-a-
half dollars to mail. They are charging you forty-one dollars for these two
sets, You couldn't get them from the government printing office until
January, five months after President Bush announced the agreement for
NAFTA. I think you get the idea, that public debate and discussion on
what's in these volumes are not being encouraged by Mickey Kantor, Bill
Clinton, the State Department, and other lobbies, who want to ram this
through the Congress without any amendments, with only 20 hours of debate,
and have it ram through before Thanksgiving. Reminds me, Paul, of the pay
grab, which was the push through Congress in 1989, in the House of
Representatives that is, just before Thanksgiving. Congress has a bizarre
view of Thanksgiving Day festivities.

Now let me just give you some important vignettes here. When I spoke with
Mickey Kantor earlier this year -- he is the U.S. Trade Representative for
Bill Clinton -- I asked him why he is for NAFTA. He said, well, it'll
increase exports; companies are going south anyway. And then he made a
startling declaration. He said, quote, "We have to assure that President
Salinas can pick his successor", end quote. What business is it of the
United States Government to take sides and back what has been a multi-
decade, dictatorial regime, police state, that has brutalized its own
citizens, whether they're peasants, peaceful citizen protestors, or people
who want an alternative party to win an election in Mexico. But I think
that illustrates the signal purpose of NAFTA, which is to support a regime,
however dictatorial, that will do what we want it to do when it comes to
U.S. capital in Mexico.

The second point I would like to make is that if any of you are interested
in the history of labor suppression in Mexico today, this book called "Mask
of Democracy", by South End Press in Boston, has very good documentation.

Thirdly, NAFTA now has a surprising new tax for the American public. If you
look at all the costs of NAFTA, which run into billions of dollars --
estimates of NAFTA's implementation costs over ten years was put at 13
billion by business and pro-NAFTA forces, but put at 30 billion dollars by
House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt. And the question is, who's going
to pay for this, and how is it going to be paid for?

The horse-trading that Bill Clinton is engaging with members of Congress
like promising Congressman Esteban Torres in exchange for his pro-NAFTA
vote, a development bank. How is that development bank going to be funded?
The U.S. government is in arrears in its contributions to other development
banks, and as Congressman David Obey put it, "How do they expect to fund
it?" Well they don't care right now, because what they're doing is
bartering with members of Congress, saying to one member we'll give you
some protection on sugar imports from Mexico for your votes in Louisiana,
and saying to others, we'll give you this favorite bill that you've been
pushing for a number of months. And so Bill Clinton is utilizing a lot of
his shrinking political capital, which he's going to need for his health
bill on capitol hill next year, by going all out to establish this
international, autocratic regime over our democratic processes.

In order to make sure that the word comes out, one of the coalition members
against NAFTA is putting out a daily newspaper -- a daily newspaper with
details such as the joint economic committee study that NAFTA means lower
wages in the United States -- that's a nonpartisan, scholarly committee in
Congress -- and they got virtually no coverage in the national press when
it came out a few days ago. Or, NAFTA is a threat to highway safety,
reflecting less safe standards in Mexico dealing with trucks and truck-
driver certification. Or a section of the U.S. Code which says, no part of
the money appropriated by any enactment of Congress shall, in the absence
of expressed authorization by Congress, be used to lobby members of
Congress; and what the White House war room is now doing is perilously
coming close to violating this federal statute, by utilizing taxpayer-
funded government facilities, taxpayer money, to generate grassroot
lobbying against members of Congress who've declared opposition to NAFTA.
This is a violation of federal law, if it can be shown that the White House
and other departments of government are using federal money and federal
facilities. And I think some of the newspapers have already documented that
use, and I think it's an area of inquiry for the press to pursue.

And finally, I'd like to point out that the NAFTA side agreements which
were promised by Bill Clinton, to fix the Bush NAFTA, in a speech on
October, 1992, where he made a speech in North Carolina saying that NAFTA
needed 12 fixes and if they weren't fixed he wouldn't support NAFTA. In the
side agreements, 11 of these fixes never reached the negotiating table:
food safety, democratic procedures, truck safety, etc.. They never reached
the negotiating table.

And now we learn from the U.S. trade office that these NAFTA side
agreements are not really at the legal status of the NAFTA trade agreement.
That is, that Mexico could violate these side agreements and still be a
good standing member of NAFTA. In short, these side agreements are nothing
more than exhortations, worth little more than the paper they're written
on.

As far as Bill Clinton is concerned, I think he has turned his back and
broken his word to the American voters by not implementing his October 1992
assurances, of fixing NAFTA in the best interest of the American people.
And he has done it in a manner that illustrates the cynical lobbying that's
going on behind closed doors to push this NAFTA agreement through Congress.

Whether or not NAFTA is defeated, and I think it will be if enough
Americans contact their member of Congress, we will see a long tail to
NAFTA, as the restrictions on local, state, and federal democracy, sink
into the minds of the American people in the coming months. NAFTA will
clearly be a major issue in the 1994 elections.

Thank-you.

[Questions and Answers]

Q: Two Questions: One, how do you expect the White House to respond to your
charges on NAFTA?, and the second question is, if, as you say, a fraction
of the American people in the form of 19 economists have actually bothered
to read this multi-thousand-page double-volume set, how do you expect the
American people to make an intelligent decision on whether or not they
should listen to you in terms of lobbying their members of Congress for or
against NAFTA?

A: [Ralph Nader] Well, first of all, I would like them to ask some
important questions of their members of Congress when they go back for the
Veterans' Day holiday. Most members of Congress are going back to their
home districts, and there's a broad coalition of church, labor, consumer,
environmental, citizen, taxpayer groups who are opposed to NAFTA and who
have a good many materials, which I believe to be quite accurate,
circulating throughout the country, available to citizens, and indeed they
should ask their members about these issues that we have raised.

I think secondly, anything that comes out of a secret cabal of big business
and big government should be inherently suspect. And the burden of proof
should be on the promoters of NAFTA to explain just what this agreement
does to our internal sovereignty.

[Paul Weyrich] You ask how we think the White House will respond. I don't
expect that the White House will respond, anymore than the proponents of
this measure have responded previously. There has not been, in my opinion,
a genuine debate, in the sense of the issues that are raised here, but
rather, name-calling. So what I would expect to see out of the White House
and other proponents of this is more name-calling. Uh, well, uh, you know,
here are people from the fringes of politics coming in and opposing this,
what would you expect; or, you know, they are raising issues which are not
serious and so on. They never want to debate these kind of topics that we
have raised here, because frankly if they did debate them, in my opinion
they would come out on the losing end, so they are really not interested
in engaging in that kind of debate.

As to why anybody ought to listen to us, we've taken on a variety of
issues, and we've taken on a variety of issues against each other over the
years. That alone, it seems to me, ought to give people cause. Why would
two people who battle each other on a wide variety of issues, combine if
there weren't a serious problem? I think it ought to cause some people to
take a look at it, and they ought to look at it seriously, because what
issues are raised here are matters that ought to have a full national
debate. Now if at the end of that debate and if everything is clear, people
support it, so be it. My view is they won't, and where we've had an
opportunity to talk to people about it. I think this is very similar to a
referendum. You don't have to convince everybody of every point, and
indeed we don't agree on every point on this, but if you raise doubt, which
is what we're trying to do, then a lot of people will say, wait a minute,
let's hold on here. What's the rush to approve this?

You know, it's very interesting. I mean we're being told that this has to
be approved by the Thanksgiving recess. Why? I mean what's the deadline?
What says that we can't have several months of debate and discussion over
this where people in fact do look at some of the questions that are raised.
Now you mention Mexico. One of the fascinating things that I've asked my
free-trade friends is how is it that this agreement prohibits the United
States from selling used cars in Mexico for 25 years? This is free trade?
Now it seems to me that if we could do anything, given the state of the
Mexican economy, it would be to sell used cars. I mean, I don't think that
they're in a position to purchase much of the goods that we have to offer
at the present time, but used cars, yes. I would say there'd be quite a
market for used cars. But that is prohibited for 25 years under this
agreement. I mean it's things like that that cause you to wonder, what on
earth is happening with this kind of arrangement?

Q: Let me ask you something. Both of you come from different points of
view. One of the things that strikes me is that Ralph is saying ... a lot
of health and safety standards, probably union organizing, so on and so
forth, that's in danger. You on the other hand, and I noticed in your press
release, say the problem is that our standards may very well be locked in.
Both of you seem to be saying contradictory things about what the impact of
this international bureaucracy will be.

A: [Paul Weyrich] Well, but we're both saying one thing, that we absolutely
agree on, and that is that it is a question of American sovereignty, that
whatever comes of this, we are concerned that decisions will not be made in
this country. Now he and I would disagree on what decisions ought to be
made, and in some of the positions, although I'm concerned with health and
safety standards, particularly truck standards, and I have been all my
political life, but there are areas where I think we're over-regulated
where Ralph thinks we're under-regulated. The point is not that -- the
point is who decides. Is it going to be some multinational, multilateral
commission that abrogates local laws? I mean, I think it's perfectly
appropriate for the citizens of Massachussetts or Texas or wherever, to
make those judgements themselves. If I disagree, I could always vote those
people out of office if I live there. But I don't want some international
commission over which we have no control, where we can't elect people
making those decisions. So yes, we have different concerns, but the central
issue is the sovereignty question, which has not been, in my opinion,
appropriately debated.

Q: You expressed concern that corporations will lose their sovereignty, and
yet, they seem to be the people most actively lobbying for NAFTA. Can you
explain that, and also if you know a figure, do you know approximately how
much money they've spent in their effort?

A: [Paul Weyrich] Well, they understandably, in many cases, would like to
see this ratified, because they look upon it as a way around the political
process which from their point of view hasn't served them well. And, you
know, the problem with American corporations, and the reason that I
frequently clash with American corporations is because of their view of
immediacy. Whatever helps us this minute -- never mind the consequences
down the road; never mind the long-term effect -- whatever helps us this
moment. They look upon this agreement as something that would help them
this moment and particularly with this administration.

I don't have any idea what they've spent, but I know it's been a lot of
money. There have been big bucks spent; by Mexico, I know the figure is in
the millions of dollars; but by the corporations that would benefit by
this, given the number of ads that have appeared, given the kind of
sophisticated lobbying that's going on, the number of retainers that I've
noticed, it's got to be in the millions of dollars.

The opponents of NAFTA don't have those kinds of resources. We are rather
grassroots oriented, and have to depend upon people calling their member of
Congress when they question these kinds of deals.

Q: Mr. Nader, you implied that the side agreements really don't have much
teeth to them, and that they're not as important as the agreement itself.
Yet the trinational tribunals that you two are concerned about are really
included in the side agreements. So how do you explain the difference there?

A: [Ralph Nader] Well, because the corporations and the governments will
invoke those side agreements. They're not going to abrogate them when it
relates to the tribunals, because it's the tribunals that allow them to
escape the domestic sovereignties and power of the people in the signing
countries. So even though the tribunals are part of the side agreements,
in part by the way, not in whole, they're not going to abrogate those.
There's a strong lobby to make sure those tribunals make the decisions in
secret and make them stick. What will be much more wobbly and less
effective are side agreements that might raise the question if the Mexican
government or our government were violating pollution control laws, and
those kinds of side agreements are not going to be subject to powerful,
affirming lobbies. See the difference? In other words, the side agreements
are not as legally significant as the trade agreement as a whole. But the
areas where the side agreements meet the vested interests of the lobbies,
they're going to go ahead, the tribunals. The areas where they're supposed
to defend the little people, they can be violated with impunity by any
signatory country, and this statement put out by the Economic Policy
Institute just yesterday, quoting Mickey Kantor in the U.S, Trade Rep.'s
interpretation of the side agreements, confirms that view.

Anybody else? If there's no more questions, let me just end by making this
appeal. During the Veteran's Day long weekend, your members of Congress
will be going back home. This is your last chance before the vote. If NAFTA
were voted on today in the House of Representatives, it would be defeated.
So the anti-NAFTA grassroot forces are on top now. But with Clinton and the
big corporations lobbying for NAFTA, we can not have any sense of
complacency that the final vote on November 17th or perhaps November 22nd,
will be against NAFTA. We have to, each one of us as citizens, contact our
members of Congress. Let them know what we feel about this in no uncertain
terms.

And by the way, since you as taxpayers have already payed for these giant
volumes, why don't you ask your member of Congress to send you a pair free?
-- just the two-volume set of NAFTA. Anybody who wants more information
about it can contact Congressman David Bonior's office in the House of
Representatives. They will send you information about NAFTA that you may
not be reading about in your newspapers.

Thank-you.

[Paul Weyrich] I see here, yesterday, there was a 10 million dollar center
for Texas that surfaced that nobody knew about -- an associated Press piece
on this -- that's being pushed by Jake Pickle, who just happens to have the
district where the center would be located, it happens to be his alma
mater, and so on. Every day -- today it was orange juice and sugar -- every
day a new little special agreement surfaces in this contest. It is the kind
of politics that Americans are so angry about. This agreement is the sort
of thing that really sends voters into a state of revulsion. If they
understood everything that was in here; if you read this and understand all
the little deals that have been made to get this vote here and that vote
there, and when things that aren't in here are in the side agreements, or
new agreements now that the President is promising people that aren't even
negotiated, and where the Mexicans are saying, wait a minute -- we don't
know anything about that; but he's got to try to do that to get votes. This
is absolutely the wrong way to legislate. Let's have a free and open
debate. Let's decide whether this is free trade or it is some sort of
hybrid agreement that protects certain interests while shafting other
interests in this country. Let's have that debate. Let's have it open and
free. Let's stop the name-calling, and talk about these issues, and if they
get thoroughly debated, then I think the will of the people will be felt.

What I fear are the secret agreements that are being made every day by the
administration and members of Congress. Here I have the Republican vote
count: undecided, 43. Why do you think there are 43 members undecided?
Because there are 43 people with agendas that they hope to get acted on by
going to the administration saying, well, you know, I could vote for this
if I get something or other. We have an equal number on the Democratic side
if not larger, probably larger, that are holding out because they can get
something from this. This sort of thing is what the Perot voter was
protesting in my opinion, in the last election. This sort of thing is what
most Americans despise about the current system.

[Ralph Nader] Could you tell them what your vote count is ... ?

[Paul Weyrich] We have in favor of NAFTA, 67 among the Republicans; we have
leaning in favor, 28; undecided, 43; and 25 committed against; and 15
leaning against. Now obviously, they're going to have to pick up a majority
of these Republicans that are undecided in order to pass this, because of
the number of Democrats who have now committed against it, although some of
those are being turned around by the special deals. So it's really a matter
of ordinary citizens versus these elites. Every day, a new set of elites
gets paraded into Washington to tell us how wonderful this agreement is,
and when I see these people, and I know who is paying them, and I know what
their specific interests are, you have to ask yourself the question, is
this in the interest of the ordinary American, and my conclusion is no.

Thank-you very much.

[Ralph Nader] Let me just give you two quick examples. NAFTA and the GATT
revisions require 17-year drug monopoly patent laws, and Canada's already
repealed its compulsory licensing law for drugs, which had given Canada the
lowest drug prices in the western world. The reason why they repealed it is
they said they had to harmonize under NAFTA/GATT with the patent monopoly
laws. So, and just recently, computer software specialists have discovered
that NAFTA requires the assigning countries to provide computer patent
monopolies for software, and they are opposed to it. They think that
restricts competition, restricts creativity, and they've just discovered
this. And on the Internet, they're mobilizing to protest NAFTA in this
regard.

I think what Paul is saying is right. The more you look at this NAFTA and
the forthcoming GATT revisions -- you have to look at them as a composite,
the more you find that there are a lot of anti-competitive features in it
designed to satisfy the profit maximization of corporations, under the
rubric of an alleged free trade agreement.

Thank-you very much.
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