[NYTr] URGENT: NAFTA Expansion Sneak Attack Vote Tue 12/4 Tell your Senators to VOTE NO

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Global Trade Watch - Dec 3, 2007

Global Trade Watch 
Action Alert - December 3, 2007

URGENT: NAFTA Expansion Sneak Attack Tuesday: 
Tell your Senators to VOTE NO

In Short: Senate leadership announced late Friday that debate on Bush's
Peru NAFTA Expansion would occur Monday, with a vote expected Tuesday.
Please call your Senators today to make sure they vote NO!

Click here to take action:
http://action.citizen.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11355

Dear Fair Trade Supporter,

Last month, a majority of House Democrats stood up to big corporate
lobbyists, the Bush Administration and even some of its own Democratic
leaders to send a clear message that further NAFTA expansions were
unacceptable. Despite this opposition to the "Peru Free Trade
Agreement," the Senate is expected to consider Bush's Peru NAFTA
expansion starting today, with a vote expected Tuesday. 

With your help, the House vote sounded a death knell for President
Bush's expansion of NAFTA as the basis for future trade agreements.
However, the Senate hasn't gotten the message. The vote was not
supposed to occur so soon, yet now is expected tomorrow! The Senate
needs to listen to what you helped a majority of House Democrats
declare with their votes: We can't afford any more NAFTAs.

Can you take action TODAY to make sure your Senators vote NO on the
Peru NAFTA Expansion?

****

TAKE ACTION: CALL NOW!

1) Call the U.S. Capitol at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to
your Senator (or just tell them what state you live in and they will
connect you). 2) Ask for the staffer in charge of trade 
3) Tell the staffer you urge your Senator to OPPOSE the Peru NAFTA
Expansion. Use a personal story or the talking points below for
emphasis. 

After you've called, please, tell us what they said by clicking this
link: http://action.citizen.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11355
This is critical to our ability to hold Congress accountable.

Then spread the word! Please URGENTLY forward this email to your
friends, family and fellow activists!

****

Let's stop the NAFTA model once and for all -call your Senators TODAY. 

Thanks for all that you do,

David Edeli
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch

****

Talking Points: Threats Posed by Bush's Peru NAFTA Expansion:

*We can't afford any more NAFTA. With the highest U.S. trade deficit
ever, and more than 3 million high-paying manufacturing jobs lost
during the NAFTA era, we can't afford any more NAFTA-like trade deals.
If Congress allows the Peru or Panama FTAs, big corporations will use
these deals to ship more U.S. jobs away and push down the wages of jobs
staying here. More family farmers and small businesses will go bankrupt.

* The Peru NAFTA expansion will fuel the drug war. Decades of U.S.
efforts to get poor Peruvian farmers to grow food crops instead of coca
could be undone as tons of imported U.S. food crops flood into Peru.
The Peru NAFTA expansion will undermine years (and billions of tax
dollars worth) of our drug-eradication efforts by forcing the same
NAFTA-style farm and food rules onto Peruvian farmers that resulted in
1.3 million Mexican campesinos losing their livelihoods. It is not only
a moral outrage to so threaten so many of Peru's poorest citizens - the
results will boomerang back on the Unites States with more coca
production and more desperate people making the dangerous attempt to
migrate here when their livelihoods at home are destroyed. 

*The Peru NAFTA expansion gives corporations too much power over Social
Security. The Peru NAFTA expansion could allow Citibank or other U.S.
investors providing "private retirement accounts" to sue Peruvian
taxpayers in foreign tribunals demanding million in compensation if
Peru tries to reverse its failed Social Security privatization.
Americans don't want our own Social Security system privatized, so how
can we use trade agreements to go around locking in other countries
privatized systems that have resulted in the very damage we sought to
avoid for ourselves? That is a terrible precedent.

*The Peru NAFTA expansion will tie Congress' hands when it comes to
food safety. The Peru NAFTA expansion agreement would replicate the
NAFTA-WTO limits on Congress' ability to protect our food safety --
while increasing the amount of unsafe food imports. Some of the very
policies Congress is now considering to tackle the imported food safety
crisis would be threatened to challenge as 'illegal trade barriers.' We
need to enhance our food safety system, not continue to weaken it!

*The Peru NAFTA expansion threatens the upper Amazon basin, the most
biodiverse area on earth. The current Peruvian president is opening up
new, extremely sensitive tracts of pristine Amazon jungle to oil and
gas exploration by the same multinationals that have caused mass
environmental devastation in the region in the past. The trade deal's
investment rules would lock in the rights to rip up the Amazon, even if
future Peruvian governments reversed this terrible policy - allowing
foreign investors to challenge desperately needed environmental laws
and chilling future efforts to protect the environment.  

****

Please call TODAY to urge your Senators to vote NO on the Peru NAFTA
Expansion: http://action.citizen.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11355

For more info about the Peru NAFTA Expansion, visit our website:
http://www.citizen.org/trade/afta/