free trade – Michal Rozworski

The problems with progressive free trade and a divided labour movement

…And we’re back to regularly-scheduled programming. Apologies for the podcasting hiatus to (now really faithful) listeners; I hope to be back to regular episodes once again. I’m restarting the show this week with two great guests. First up, I speak with Angella MacEwen about the on-going NAFTA re-negotiations and whether Trudeau’s much-vaunted “progressive free trade” holds water. Angella has been a guest on the show before and is an economist at the Canadian Labour Congress. Speaking of the Labour Congress, my second guest, David Bush, looks at the turmoil that led up and has resulted from Unifor leaving Canada’s house of labour. Dave is an editor at Rankandfile.ca; he writes frequently and incisively on the Canadian labour movement.

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The media love the TPP, but should you?

Canada’s media have heaped fawning praise on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the biggest free trade and investment deal in years. Rather than raising questions and red flags over a secret deal with mixed impacts, our media has been cheering and patting elites on the back.

Negotiations over the TPP concluded early Monday morning in Atlanta. The deal was signed onto by 12 countries from around the Pacific Rim, including Canada. Details of the deal are murky as the negotiations were secret and the final text has yet to be released.

More to the point, Canada already has existing free trade accords with many of the countries involved in the deal and low tariffs on imports and exports. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, among others, has pointed out these deals are less about the economics of trade and more about the political clout of corporations in today’s already-globalized world.

Rather than pausing for critical reflection and investigation, Canada’s mainstream media and pundit class initiated a TPP love-in. To see just how narrow the range of opinion is, try to spot the difference in the following quotes from the editorial and opinion pages of Canada’s major newspapers and magazines.