Canada is Trying to Save the American Labor Movement

In NAFTA (re)negotiations, Canada is demanding extensive labor protections:

The Canadian government is meeting with some of the country’s biggest labor groups to discuss Nafta as talks on the deal are set to resume.

Labor Minister Patricia Hajdu will meet union leaders Friday in a round-table discussion near Toronto to get input on the North American Free Trade Agreement. It’s the latest sign that labor has the Trudeau government’s ear in talks that could hinge, in part, on Canada’s push to raise working standards in both the U.S. and Mexico.

“That’s an indication of how much we value our labor movement, and we want to make sure as we go into negotiations that the rights of Canadian workers are protected,” Hajdu said in an interview with Bloomberg. “We’ll do everything in our power to make sure of that.”

Nafta talks resume Monday with a partial round in Washington, without political leaders at the table. Canada wants the U.S. to undo so-called “right to work” provisions in some states, while also calling on Mexico to raise labor standards. One of Canada’s top union leaders, Jerry Dias, has met often with the Canadian negotiating team and regularly predicts Nafta talks will fail.

Trudeau has been pushing to add “progressive” elements like labor, gender and the environment into all trade negotiations -- a move derided by political opponents as “virtue signaling” that could make it tougher to get a deal. That strategy was a driving factor in the surprise false start this week of trade talks with China, a country that typically shuns the bells and whistles Canada wants in any trade deal.

Those added elements are among Nafta’s sticking points. Canada wants its two North American partners to ratify eight core conventions, including the right to organize, laid out by the International Labour Organization to make Nafta work. “We did put forward a very ambitious proposal on labor,” chief negotiator Steve Verheul told lawmakers this week. While Canada has adopted all eight and Mexico has nearly done so, the U.S. has adopted only two, Verheul said. “The U.S. is resisting that proposal.”

Canada’s call to claw back U.S. “right-to-work” laws, which ban unions from requiring workers to pay dues, is another obstacle. “The U.S. is also resisting that,” Verheul said.

As Yves Smith pithily observes, "Sounds like the Canadians are doing better by labor than our own Democrats."

The history of the modern Democratic Party does not show meaningful support for organized labor.

When Republicans pass so-called "right-to-work " laws, Democrats never repeal them, and the Obama administration dropped its support for the Employee Free Choice Act (Card Check) before the last states were called in 2008.

The positions pushed by Trudeau benefit workers in all three of the signatories of NAFTA, so I expect Democrats, or at least the current Democratic Party establishment to vociferously oppose labor justice, because they have sold their souls to big donors.

Tweet of the Day

Trump is seeking small changes to NAFTA to make it more like the proposed TPP. Now that's how you break a promise! https://t.co/QkSeU7VU4E

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 30, 2017

H/t Ian Welsh.

Please Don't Throw Me into the Briar Patch*

A Mexican senator is proposing that they should pull out of their treaties with the United States if Donald Trump is elected.

This is arguably the best argument I've heard this far for voting for the Republican Nominee, though I would still never vote for him:

A Mexican senator is proposing legislation to empower the government to retaliate if a U.S. administration led by Donald Trump inflicts expropriations or economic losses on his country to make it pay for a border wall.

Republican presidential nominee Trump has vowed to have Mexico fund the planned wall to keep out illegal immigrants if he is elected, and threatened to fund it by blocking remittances sent home by Mexicans living in the United States.

Armando Rios Piter, an opposition senator for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), will next week present the initiative he hopes will protect Mexicans, and highlight the risks of targeting them economically.

The plan offers a taste of the kind of tit-for-tat measures that could gain traction between the two heavily-integrated economies if Trump wins the presidency at the Nov. 8 election.

In a preliminary summary of the proposal, which also foresees giving the Senate the power to disavow international treaties when the interests of Mexico or its companies are threatened by other signatories, it states:

"In cases where the property/assets of (our) fellow citizens or companies are affected by a foreign government, as Donald Trump has threatened, the Mexican government should proportionally expropriate assets and properties of foreigners from that country on our territory."

The only way for this law to work is if Mexico pulls out of NAFTA.

I consider this a win for everyone, except perhaps for the abusive maquiladoras, big pharma, Wall Street, and subsidized US corn.

I can live with that.

^*By this, I mean, please do this.  This is a reference to the story of how the trickster Brer Rabbit got out of a sticky situation by convincing Brer Fox that he was afraid of being thrown the place where he would be safe.  See also Tar Baby. 

And this is Mild Compared to the Trans-Pacific Partnership

The WTO has just ruled that requiring the labeling of dolphin safe tuna is an unacceptable restraint of trade:

International trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) need to be carefully examined piece by piece because they can take precedence over a country’s own laws.

Case in point: the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday ruled that dolphin-safe tuna labeling rules — required by U.S. law, in an effort to protect intelligent mammals from slaughter — violate the rights of Mexican fishers.

As a result, the U.S. will have to either alter the law or face sanctions from Mexico.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how the “investor-state dispute settlement system” baked into trade agreements can force countries to compensate corporations when regulations cut into their profits.

The long-running quarrel over tuna reveals another way that domestic laws can be overturned by trade agreements: when countries can file trade challenges on behalf of domestic industries.

“This should serve as a warning against expansive trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership that would replicate rules that undermine safeguards for wildlife, clean air, and clean water,” said the Sierra Club’s Ilana Solomon in a statement.

This short of crap is a feature of trade deals, not a bug.

They Will Be Back

Small farmers in Mexico have managed to block a law to legalize Monsanto's seed monopolies:

Progressive small farmer organizations in Mexico scored a victory over transnational corporations that seek to monopolize seed and food patents. When the corporations pushed their bill to modify the Federal Law on Plant Varieties through the Committee on Agriculture and Livestock of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies on March 14, organizations of farmers from across the country sounded the alarm. By organizing quickly, they joined together to pressure legislators and achieved an agreement with the legislative committee to remove the bill from the floor.

What’s at stake is free and open access to plant biodiversity in agriculture. The proposed modifications promote a privatizing model that uses patents and “Plant Breeders’ Rights” (PBR) to deprive farmers of the labor of centuries in developing seed. The small farmers who worked to create this foundation of modern agriculture never charged royalties for its use.

Although the current law, in effect since 1996, pays little heed to the rights of small farmers, the new law would be far worse. Present law tends to benefit private-sector plant breeders, allowing monopolies to obtain exclusive profits from the sale of seeds and other plant material for up to 15 years, or 18 in the case of perennial ornamental, forest, or orchard plants–even when the plants they used to develop the new varieties are in the public domain.

The legislative reform would extend exclusive rights from the sale of reproductive material to 25 years. Further, it seeks to restrict the rights of farmers to store or use for their own consumption any part of the harvest obtained from seeds or breeding material purchased from holders of PBRs.

The bill wasn't defeated, it just didn't pass, so this is a temporary victory.

Monsanto and its ilk will come back again … and again … and again until they get their bill.

Mexico City Marriage Equality

Same Sex marriage is now legal in Mexico City, but the bigoted "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) still stands in the US Senate.

Swine Flu Update

The caveat here is that the only country with enough cases for any real data is Mexico, and their public health system is awful, so the numbers are suspect, and there are a lot of untreated TB, asthma, and HIV, but it appears that most of the deaths so far have been young adults.

This may just be an artifact of the fact that Mexico is missing cases, etc., but it could point to an immune system response known as a Cytokine storm it was the reason that Spanish Influenza in 1918, and SARS more recently, disproportionately effected young adults.

Mexican Oil Industry Legislation Update

I think that it's fairly clear that the right wing PAN is attempting a back door privatization of Pemex, the state own oil producer, while the PRD sees any change as an theft from the Mexican people, and the PRI falls somewhere in between.

The problem is that Pemex has not been run well, and it is lacking resources as a result, so some sort of reform is necessary.

I still believe that purchasing the necessary expertise, as opposed to "risk sharing partnerships" that are a back door way of privatizing the system, are the way to go.

Mexican State Oil Company Threatens to Drill Outside of Mexico

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive: "Pemex May Drill Outside Mexico for First Time If Reforms Fail"

Pemex needs foreign help because it doesn't have the technology to drill in water deeper than 500 meters (1,640 feet), he said.

Pemex may need foreign help, but it does not need a partner.

It can buy that expertise without a foreign partner. Oil field services companies like Slumberger (disclosure) can do this on a fee for service basis.

And it turns out that their "threat" is to do a partnership with Petroleo Brasileiro, which has more deep water experience.

They are trying to get through with a bill that will allow "partnerships" that are ownership in everything but name, because someone gets the fat "commissions" for brokering the deals.

Mexico Revamps Justice System

Mexico has completely revamped its justice system, the high points are:

• The presumption of innocence (I guess they must have continued the Code Napoléon from their brief time as a French posession).
• Public trials.
• Allowing lawyers to argue orally before judges (it was all written briefs before).
• Improvements to the public defender system.
• Gives state and local police departments the power to investigate their own corruption, which had previously been an exclusively federal purview.

All in all, it looks like major improvements, though considering the starting point, this is not difficult.

I agree with the civil libertarians who are concerned about the 80 days detention without charge though.

This is Not About Oil Production, It Is About Privitization

I was wondering how long it would take, but the PAN and its ilk have been salivating at the possibility of privatizing Mexico's state owned oil industry for decades, and now they are trying to make public theft of state assets a reality.

State ownership of the oil industry is a core value of the Mexcan body politic, so much so that there is a national holiday to commemorate the nationalization of the industry. It is considered to be a pillar of national sovreignty.

The reason that PAN loves the idea of privatization is because it will provide the opportunity to generate huge salaries and consulting commissions to the pale skinned Mexican elites who went to university at places like Harvard and Brown.

The facts are simple:

• Mexican oil production is dropping.
• Mexican oil revenues are at an all time high because of high oil prices.
• It cost nothing to leave unexplored oil where it is right now.
• There is no need to rely on big oil for the technical expertise to get at that oil.

When the Oil industry downsized and consolidated in the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of petroleum engineers and the like were without jobs, and many of them found positions with the oil services industry, which now arguably more technically capable than the big oil.

If they want these fields developed, the Mexican government could contract with companies with Halliburton and Slumberger^*, and get the job done without signing over future earnings. What's more they would get more local employment out of it, because big oil tends to employ lots of expats to get the job done.

The claims that Pemex "lacks the money and expertise" to get this done are driven by a desire among Mexican conservatives to sell $100 of oil for $1 today, because them and theirs will get an additional 50¢ in sweetheart deals.

Pemex does have problems, but these can be fixed.

^*Full disclosure, one of my step mom's life long friends is one of those Slumbergers.