Faith in Big Trade Deals Keeps Crumbling
Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of globalization?
At the height of the battle over the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement in the 1980s, full page ads promised the deal would bring "more jobs, better jobs."
The ads were expensive, but easily afforded by Canada's 160 largest public corporations, who paid for them as the Business Council on National Issues.
The ad blitz was intended counter the effective campaign by opponents who warned Canadians that tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs would be lost.
Opponents won the battle for hearts and minds but lost the 1988 election on the issue, thus making Canada and the US "free trade" guinea pigs.
Hundreds of such deals have been signed since, in spite of the fact that the critics were right. Canada lost some 334,000 jobs between 1988 and 1994 as a direct result. Still, since 1988, the promoters of these investment protection agreements have held sway in large part because of massive support by corporate media.
Now, three decades later, citizens around the world are waking up and asking: just whom do governments govern for?
Thanks Ivan
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