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Free trade can be transformed into responsible trade, protecting our rich natural heritage and our children's future.
Program Overview
Trade agreements are not just about cutting tariffs and quotas anymore. Instead, they affect ever-increasing areas of our lives, and have far-reaching implications for our environment.
Global warming is in large part the result of the current international trade and globalization model and the unsustainable patterns of production, consumption, and development it encourages. Bad trade rules have allowed companies to move operations to wherever labor and environmental standards are the weakest, abandoning communities and workers in the U.S. and wreaking havoc on those abroad.
Rebalancing our trade and globalization policies to create and retain good jobs here at home, protect our air, water, and land, and foster sustainable and equitable development worldwide, has long been an urgent need, but it is made all the more timely in light of the severe global recession.
Trade agreements should promote a higher quality of life for all, not simply serve as vehicles to increase corporate profits. Trade rules should be seen as a tool to achieve multiple goals, from economic prosperity to environmental protection. We must learn our lessons from the failed trade agreements of the past and stake out a different course for the future, where peoples' lives and livelihoods are protected.
The current trade model contributes to climate change? You bet!
Instead of helping the nations of the world curb global warming, our current trade rules have institutionalized unsustainable production and consumption patterns world-wide. These rules have allowed companies to move operations to wherever labor and environmental standards are the weakest, abandoning communities and workers in the U.S. and wreaking havoc on those abroad.
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