NAFTA

NAFTA

Looking at globalization:

[1-25-02]

BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY reveals how NAFTA's Chapter Eleven can cost taxpayers millions of dollars when multinational corporations sue the government over environmental and health laws that threaten their profits

Premieres February 5 at 10:00 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings)

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"When the North American Free Trade Agreement became the law of the land almost a decade ago, the debate we heard was about jobs," says Bill Moyers. "One provision was too obscure to stir up controversy. It was called Chapter Eleven, and it was supposedly written to protect investors from having their property seized by foreign governments. But since NAFTA was ratified, corporations have used Chapter Eleven to challenge the powers of government to protect its citizens, to undermine environmental and health laws, even attack our system of justice." How can this be happening? And why do so few people know about it?

Speaking with legislators, public policy experts, community leaders, and citizens about the lawsuits filed under NAFTA's Chapter Eleven, Bill Moyers Reports: Trading Democracy unravels the hidden repercussions of a treaty that was supposed to promote democracy through free trade, but now appears to have given deep-pocketed corporations the means to undermine democracy across international borders.

The program explores the case of Methanex, a Canadian company that is the world's largest producer of the key ingredient in the gasoline additive MTBE, which was found to be a carcinogen. In 1995 MTBE began turning up in wells throughout California, and by 1999 had contaminated thirty public water systems. The state ordered that the additive be phased out. Methanex filed suit under NAFTA's Chapter Eleven, seeking $970 million in compensation for loss of market share and, consequently, future profits. Environmental attorney Martin Wagner tells Moyers, "they're saying that California either can't implement this protection or that they get a billion dollars. People should be outraged by that."

As Moyers reports, many people who have been affected by MTBE contamination are indeed outraged. But they are helpless to do anything. The NAFTA tribunal that will decide the Methanex case -- like all the tribunals hearing Chapter Eleven-based cases -- is closed to the public. Yet it is the taxpayers "who will foot the bill if the tribunal decides in favor of the Canadian company," says Moyers.

But the ramifications for the public go well beyond the loss of taxpayer dollars, explains journalist William Greider. "If Methanex wins its billion dollar claim over California environmental law, there ain't gonna be many states enacting that law, are there?" he says, adding that the NAFTA provision "hobbles the authority of government to act in the broader public interest. And, in fact, that was the idea in the first place."

Moyers also takes his investigation south of the border to the Mexican state of San Luis Potosíí, where an American company called Metalclad tried to bulldoze over the protests of both state and local governments to reopen a toxic waste dump that many citizens feared was making them sick. When Metalclad was stopped by the local towncouncil the company invoked Chapter Eleven and was awarded $16 million in compensation.

Challenges being mounted under Chapter Eleven are directed not only toward regulatory activity, but also toward overruling jury decisions in civil courts of law. The documentary explores a case in Mississippi where a Biloxi funeral home owner was awarded punitive damages by a jury in a civil suit against a large Canadian corporation called the Loewen Group. The local funeral home owner alleged that the Loewen Group had engaged in "fraudulent" and "predatory" trade practices, and the jury found against the Canadian company. Three years later, the Loewen Group filed a Chapter Eleven claim against American taxpayers saying the jury was biased against Canadians, and in a preliminary ruling, the NAFTA tribunal has declared the Mississippi trial a legitimate target. The Loewen suit, notes Moyers, "could conceivably open the U.S. civil justice system to challenge -- including decisions of the United States Supreme Court."

This startling realization, and the knowledge that corporate giants are pushing to expand NAFTA to 31 more countries in the Western Hemisphere, prompts Moyers to ask, "Are we promoting democracy -- as we claim -- or trading it away?"

For more information on TRADING DEMOCRACY: Kristin Fellows TRADING DEMOCRACY Outreach and Promotion Kelly & Salerno Communications kfellows@mindspring.com
Phone 703-780-4006

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