|
| |
Making Trade Fair
A Sermon Given
by Dr. Jo Marie Griesgraber
on June 9, 2002
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Thank you. It is a privilege for me to be with you here today. I must
forewarn you. I come from a thoroughly Catholic upbringing with all but
3 years of 20 years of education taking place within Catholic schools.
So let me apologize ahead of time for any gaffes I may make in terms of
Unitarian Universalists’ values. From the readings of your basic
principles, and as Roger just concluded, I feel enormously at ease here.
Roger also informed you that I was a Catholic Sister for several years;
I am now married with 3 children. However, my training and commitment to
Catholic Social Teaching, so similar to your statement of principles, is
unchanged.
I am invited today to share with you an overview of Oxfam’s "Make
Trade Fair" campaign, and to do this in a prayerful, religious context.
Specifically, Roger invited me to share a bit of my personal spiritual
journey, and how it is that I can mix a religious-based commitment to
social justice with working trade rules.
It is indeed a challenge. In earlier careers, the links were more
obvious. I worked for many years in the Washington Office on Latin
America, an office supported by a wide range of mainstream religious
groups, to work on U.S. policy to halt the horrible human rights abuses
occurring in Latin America in the mid to late 1970s and early 1980s. The
value of each human being, as a creation and reflection of God, was
clearly and heinously violated through torture, disappearance, and
summary executions.
To work on protecting and promoting basic rights of the integrity of
the person was one with my passion for justice, the Kingdom of Gods’
Justice. And for some reason, unfathomable for reason, God prefers the
poor. God’s special love is for the poor. Isaiah describes the Kingdom
of Gods’ Justice:
The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for Yahweh has
anointed me.
God has sent me to bring good news to the poor,
To bind up hearts that are broken;
To proclaim liberty to captives,
Freedom to those in prison;
To proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.
Jesus uses these words of Isaiah to describe his own mission and
ministry. Indeed, these words also describe the year of Jubilee, the
year of God’s favor.
This statement of ministry links directly with a second phase in my
work: to cancel the unpayable debts of the poorest countries. Many
groups, particularly religious groups had been working since 1982 to
cancel the debts of the poorest countries. Little progress was evident
despite years of work. I started working on debt in 1989. It was not
until 1997 however, that the "jubilee 2000" vision emerged—here was a
vision that Christians everywhere—united by many non-Christians of great
hearts—could embrace. In celebration of the year 2000, a great jubilee
act was appropriate. Deuteronomy describes the "year of Jubilee", the
Year of the Lord as one in which debts are forgiven and right relations
are restored within the community. By the end of 2000, with tremendous
efforts of many people, from the Pope to Bono and Senator Helms, we did
manage to remove about $1 billion in debt from the shoulders of the
poorest countries. Much remains to be done. (You are invited to contact
your Congressional representatives and ask that they support a bill
establishing that Heavily Indebted Poor Countries not pay more than 10%
of government revenues on debt service payments; and those with severe
public health situations, should pay no more than 5% of government
revenues.)
Again, with the Jubilee 2000 Cancel the Debt campaign, as with
lobbying against torture and disappearances—the connections with
religious symbols and motives of working for justice for the poorest
were self-evident.
Now I work on trade. Let me address 2 questions: What does
international trade rules have to do with building up the Kingdom of
God’s Justice? And, why is an international development agency working
on trade? The two questions are related.
In working on trade or other issues of economic policy the principal
religious underpinning for linking such issues with social justice is
pretty simple: There is only 1 God, 1 reality. God is not "god" of just
religion, or families, or direct charity. God is God of absolutely
everything—including all the disciplines or ways human beings organize
knowledge. God is as must "lord" of poetry as of economics. And
economics itself is a quest to understand reality; it has become a set
of rules governing human decisions, pretending to be "pure science." But
as physics learned through Einstein, no rule is absolute, not even
gravity.
Given the tentative nature of our knowledge of economics, and the
supremacy of God’s domain, I conclude that any economic policy must
conform to the basics of God’s priorities—especially the preferential
love of the poor. So, if any law or economic policy hurts the poor, that
law or policy needs to be revised. Human laws cannot be allowed to
violate fundamental values, such as the intrinsic value of every human
person. In secular language these values are described in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights—integrity of the person, civil, and
political rights; social, economic, and cultural rights.
The Oxfam trade campaign is about the trade rules; hence Roger’s
readings this morning from the Old Testament. God, through the
traditions and writers of the Old Testament, insists that rules and
measures and rule-makers be fair. In Oxfam’s approach to fair trade
rules, we propose fair rules which may differ from country to country.
To have identical rules for all is not necessarily fair—to conduct a
race that includes someone just released from an extended hospital stay
for coronary bypass surgery and someone who just won the Boston
marathon—that is not a fair race. Such basic inequalities are recognized
in golf, where every golfer plays with a different handicap reflecting
differing skills. Oxfam is proposing something no more radical than
rules that apply to golf—they are call "special and differential
treatment" in the language of the World Trade Organization. (In my
mind’s eye, I like to imagine that God is not blind justice holding the
scales, but God would put his/her finger on the scale to tip it in favor
of the poor.)
All that may provide a religious approach to working on trade from a
social justice perspective, but why Oxfam? Oxfam was founded in 1942 by
a groups of Oxford dons, Episcopal priests, and Quakers in response to a
famine in Greece. The Nazis’ scorched earth policy and the on-set of
winter were threatening thousands. So this small group invited all of
war time England to contribute food and clothing for the Greeks; with
supplies to fill a couple of ships, the group then had to lobby the
Allied forces who had a blockade around Greece.
Thus was born a development agency that would supply basic goods in
times of war and disaster. Oxfam also provides small grants to
grassroots groups in over 100 countries. But Oxfam’s mission is to fight
poverty and social injustice. These measures are inadequate to eliminate
poverty. Oxfam supported the Jubilee 2000 debt work, by financing and
its own lobbying work. But eliminating the debt—which still is not
accomplished—will not eliminate poverty. Oxfam has worked for 5 years in
a global campaign to secure funding so that all children everywhere can
receive a basic education. Major steps have been taken in terms of
pledges by the World Bank and rich country governments. But, basic
education for all, even when achieved, will not eliminate poverty.
In studying countries that have managed to overcome poverty, a common
lesson is that all used trade to grow economically. And, none of them
managed this success following the current trade rules that restrict the
options of the developing countries today. When developing they used
what Dani Rodrik of Harvard calls their own national genius to adapt the
rules of the day to their particular circumstances. Japan, Korea,
Taiwan, Europe, the United States, China, India, Botswana, Mauritius—all
relied on trade, but all did it somewhat differently. Most opened their
markets gradually, exported more than importing, required certain
portions of domestic products in any export, violated patent laws, or
restricted imports.
Now comes the tough part: what are the trade policies or positions
Oxfam is opposing or supporting? Again, recall Roger’s readings from the
Old Testament and its call for fair weights and measures. The Trade
Report for the Make Trade Fair Campaign is called, "Rigged Rules and
Double Standards." In the Campaign we describe 3 examples of Double
Standards—where the wealthy countries who make the rules, play by a
different set of rules when it comes to their own behavior.
Liberalized Markets: developing countries are required to open
their markets to foreign products and investments. This is
required of them when they apply from a loan from the World Bank
or the International Monetary Fund. (The United States controls
abut 17% of the shares of the World Bank and IMF; together with
the European Union countries, the wealthy countries control over
50% of the shares—and are able to control the policies and
conditions for loans.) Oxfam calls for the IMF, World Bank, and
the wealthy countries that are their shareholders to stop
insisting on unilateral liberalization by the developing
countries, and allow developing countries to employ "Special and
Differential Treatment" options, including but not limited to
opening markets more slowly. Developing countries may need to roll
back some of those liberalizations to protect agricultural
production to ensure food security.
Market Access: instead of opening their own markets, as they
required developing countries to do, the rich industrialized
countries close their markets through quotas, escalating tariffs,
and specialized standards (sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards)
to many of the imports from developing countries. Oxfam calls on
the wealthy industrialized countries to open their markets to all
products from the poorest countries.
Dumping: Through a series of policies, the EU and the US
provide financial support to agricultural producers that result in
the concentration of power in a few giant agribusinesses, in over
production, and in disposing of surplus products in developing
country markets at prices that are below the cost of production.
Dumping is harmful to local producers who go out of business,
causing more poor agricultural workers to flee to the city. The
same agribusinesses tend to control much of the plantation
agriculture in developing countries, using capital intensive
instead of labor intensive measures. These giant corporations
enjoy vertical and horizontal integration, crowd out competition,
and squeeze out small farmers. Such unfair trade practices must be
stopped—although the prognosis is not good. The US Farm Bill just
approved $190 billion in subsidies over the next 6 years, with the
largest share going to the biggest farms. This is money out of our
pockets, that you and I are paying to Cargill and ADM. But, as a
country we cannot afford $1 billion for the UN HIV/AIDS Fund, nor
for debt relief, nor for basic education.
And what does Oxfam propose? In addition to reversing the above 3
sets of rigged rules, we also want to ensure that the International
Labor Organization’s Core Labor Standards are applied everywhere for all
workers. We want to call global attention to the continuing collapse of
commodity prices. We want to enable developing countries to protect
local agricultural production and thereby ensure food security. We
insist on good governance on the part of all governments, and we support
the right of all people to have a voice and participate in the policies
of their own governments. We insist that the poor must have access to
assets to secure sustainable livelihoods. In short, we are insist that
the social and economic rights articulated in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights be operationalized--Now.
Specifically within the U.S., we are working to stop Fast Track, to
stop the Free Trade Area of the Americas trade agreement, and to promote
the sale of fair trade coffee. We oppose Fast Trade—or Presidential
Trade Authority—because the process is anti-democratic. A friend told me
that the Senate is not an ideal place to debate policy given all the
special interests. While the Senate is not ideal, at least we and others
with concerns for poor people have some access, and the deal making is
reality open. Once the trade decisions are relegated to the US Trade
Representative, the special interests have increased access to
negotiators, deals are cut in secret, we and others with concerns for
people have no access.
If Fast Track does go through, Oxfam is working to ensure that the
Kennedy Amendment on intellectual property rights is retained. The Trade
Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) provision of the WTO was
modified last November at the Ministerial meeting in Doha. Developing
Countries were free to import or produce generic drugs, in violation of
existing patents, when public health required it. This modification in
the interpretation of the TRIPS rules would enable African countries to
secure cheap medicines for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB. Now, the costs of
antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS are so high that in Malawi, of the
1,000,000 people infected with AIDS, only 30 people can pay for the
medicine. 30 people will live; the rest will die—for lack of money for
medicines. Since Doha, the USTR and the pharmaceutical industry has been
backsliding. The Fast Track legislation would reverse Doha, forbidding
countries from producing or importing life-saving medicines. Clearly the
profits of patent holders are more important in this arrangement than
the 5000 African lives lost each day for lack of HIV/AIDS medicines.
This is wrong.
So, the rules are rigged against the poor. It’s time to reverse the
use of unfair measures. Whether we appeal to basic human decency or the
image of God’s Kingdom of Justice and God’s preferential love of the
poor, if we want to eradicate poverty, changing trade rules is
essential.
To read more, go to:
http://www.maketradefair.com.
Office@CedarLane.org
|
