CALL FOR JUSTICE
IN U.S. TRADE POLICIES
Spring 2004
As a participant in the U.S. Interfaith Trade Justice Campaign, LWR believes that international trade and investment policies and practices present a serious moral challenge because of their profound effect upon the lives of people around the world and upon creation.
On February 24, 2004, U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (OH) introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives calling on the United States to base its trade policies on ethical principles.
Read on for more, or click here to see how you can help.
Background
Trade hits people where they live. It may seem like a distant, esoteric topic, too complicated to understand except by experts, but it impacts the nooks and crannies of people’s lives all over the globe, ours included. In this era of globalization, fluid capital and borderless transnational corporations, it is one of the foremost economic and social justice issues of the day. None of us can escape being entangled in its web, and often we don’t even realize it.
We hunt for bargains on the clothes, shoes and electronic gadgets we buy, dimly aware if at all that low-wage, abused workers - and children - in poor countries produce many of them. They earn pennies on the dollar under harsh conditions for our benefit, while corporations pocket the lion’s share of the profits and domestic laborers lose their jobs. Workers are pitted against workers, whether U.S. and foreign labor or poor country versus poor country - in a competitive low-wage "race to the bottom," where powerful private-sector interests call the shots. This is the dirty underside on which much of our prosperity rests.
The United States, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization back each other in institutionalizing a global economic system built solely to serve the interests of private profit - a system that scorns notions of the common good and public domain. Wealthy economies like the European Union, Australia, Japan, Canada and others are an integral part of the mix. Post-colonial developing countries and regions, on the other hand, find themselves backed against the wall and under tremendous pressure to go along if they want the badly needed investments the dominant economies can provide.
The Interfaith Working Group on Trade and Investment (IWGTI), of which LWR is a member, has worked closely with Rep. Kaptur to introduce H. Res. 532 into the House of Representatives. Rep. Kaptur states in her resolution that "International trade operates according to economic logic but without an ethic," a flaw her measure seeks to address. We will never fashion a just trade system without the principles H. Res. 532 espouses. And we will never see those principles enacted unless we insist that our lawmakers do so.
Please ask your representative to co-sponsor H. Res. 532. Click here to read the full text of H. Res. 532.
Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask them to connect you to your representative's office.
To send an email message, or to find the name of your representative, visit the House of Representatives' website at www.house.gov/writerep.
Information in this action alert courtesy of the Africa Faith and Justice Network.
