Re: MAI
Seth David Schoen (schoen@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU)
16 Mar 1998 06:46:23 GMT
Daniel C. Burton writes:
>> If they don't print this, or even if they do, maybe we can engage in some
>> MAI events. I have heard almost nothing positive about MAI, and plenty
>of
>> negatives...
>
>Interestingly enough, I saw our "Why We Should Say No to the IMF" poster
>pinned up with one of the anti-MAI posters in Dwinelle Hall....
That's _very_ ironic.
>I'm not exactly familiar with the MAI. What does it do anyway?
I have learned a lot about the MAI by reading complaints about it written by
its opponents -- very little by people who support it. :-)
(But none of the objections in the MAI criticisms were persuasive to me;
instead, they made me support it.)
Pretty much, the MAI creates a global capitalist framework of extremely free
trade (or relatively unrestricted operation of multinational business) among
OECD members. It does this by forbidding governments to discriminate against
foreign companies in most areas like market access and regulation; it also
allows the companies to sue foreign governments (!) for discriminating against
them.
It's pretty much a monster free-trade treaty which could clear the way for
eliminating most tariffs and market entry barriers (at least among OECD
members). As critics have pointed out, it will make regulations like
minimum wage much harder to enforce because labor, materials, and money
flows are expected to be much more liberalized under MAI.
All MAI signatories automatically get MFN status with one another and keep
it permanently.
In general, if anything is permitted in any MAI signatory, a company in any
other MAI signatory will be able to do it by exporting the relevant portion
of its operations to that country. It would become extraordinarily
difficult for governments to attempt to forbid this, because under MAI they
would in some circumstances be liable to the affected companies.
At least in the eyes of the critics, MAI pretty much turns the law of
international trade between OECD countries into an anarchocapitalist framework
where nobody has overriding authority. This is probably a strong exaggeration
(because it's alleged by the critics), but it is not exceptionally far away
from what libertarians would like to see.
The MAI web page is at
http://www.oecd.org/daf/cmis/mai/mai.htm
and the best anti-MAI site I've seen is
http://mai.flora.org/
I think this is an important fight.
--
Seth David Schoen L&S '01 (undeclared) / schoen@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo
custodi huius urbis, gratia, quod hanc tam taetram, tam horribilem tamque
infestam rei publicae pestem totiens iam effugimus. -- Cicero, in Catilinam I