Colombia Campesino Farmers Popular Strike – A Challenge to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)
Colombia Campesino Farmers Popular Strike – A Challenge to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)
October 7, 2013 ·
By Andy Higginbottom
Andy Higginbotham is Secretary of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign and Principal Lecturer at Kingston University, London
in the diasporaEditor’s Note: This is an adapted version of an essay that was carried on the 1804 Caribvoices blog (http://1804caribvoices.org) Caribbean economist Norman Girvan reflects on the importance and relevance of this popular strike for the Caribbean: “The struggle of Colombian small farmers against cheap agricultural imports from the USA resulting from a FTA has lessons for the Caribbean. In the 2001 film Life and Debt, we saw how Jamaican dairy farmers were forced to dump fresh milk because of cheap subsidised milk powder from the European Union after imports were liberalised. Banana exports have been undercut by World Trade Organization rulings driven by the same Free Trade philosophy. Now Caricom is negotiating an FTA with Canada and it is expected that an FTA with the US will follow. Caricom agriculturalists need to watch these developments very closely and be prepared to act to defend their interests in any future FTAs, as the Colombian farmers are doing.”
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Colombia’s FTAs – a disaster foretold
Colombia’s President Santos says ‘there will be winners and losers with free trade’. The reality of his country’s shifting trade pattern with the NAFTA countries (US, Canada, Mexico) indicates how much is being lost, and how little won. The Colombia US FTA came into force on 15 May 2012. Amongst the few winners are businesses exporting garments into the US market who saw their trade increase by around 12 per cent between the first half of 2012 and 2013. Over the same period agriculture exports to the US increased marginally, from $46 million to $48 million, but agricultural imports from the US more than doubled, from $177million to $352 million.
Some business sectors want more supportive industrial policies, such as Colombia’s vehicle manufacturers whose domestic market and position as supplier to its Andean neighbours is threatened by a huge increase in imports from Mexico and Korea. Other businesses that are in favour of free trade in principle believe the problem lies with the negligent manner that the Colombia’s previous Uribe government carried out the FTA negotiations. This is especially argued by the pharmaceutical industry who will confront US dictated intellectual property and patent laws.
Agriculture has been the hardest hit by the increase of imports, not only from the US but from competing exporters in other Andean countries and in Mercosur. There will be even more competition, as the FTA with the EU only came into effect on 1 August 2013. The politician most consistently opposed to the FTAs, Senator Jorge Robledo of the opposition Polo Democrático, observed that “it’s better to be a cow in the EU than a peasant in Colombia, they get more state subsidies”.
More:
http://www.stabroeknews.com/2013/features/in-the-diaspora/10/07/colombia-campesino-farmers-popular-strike-a-challenge-to-free-trade-agreements-ftas/
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including his early friend, Pablo Escobar, in Colombia.
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