In November, appointed representatives of all the countries in the Western Hemisphere will be meeting in Miami to discuss legislation known as the FTAA, or Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Creation of the FTAA will allow for international laws governing trade throughout the Americas. These laws will hold more weight than any national laws, meaning that the FTAA can ignore all the laws we have fought so hard for in the United States: the 40-hour work week, minimum wages, environmental assessments and safety, democratic rights.

Already jobs are leaving Maine. Under international laws, forest product companies are deciding to downsize their Maine operations and go to Canada where certain safety, environmental and labor standards are not so severe.

Also, the agri-business corporation Monsanto is suing local Oakhurst Dairy because Oakhurst’s labeling of their products as free of genetically modified organisms supposedly implies that genetically modified organisms are bad. The FTAA will give transnational corporations more power to sue or shut down Maine companies.

The FTAA will enforce “fairness” internationally, which really means that transnational corporations can and will sue the United States, such as when the World Trade Organization sued us over our dolphin-safe tuna environmental protections because they were too strict for WTO’s internationally set standards. And soon, corporations will sue the United States for having public schools and welfare programs, and sue Canada for having universal health care, because it will find that these disparities are not “fair” under the FTAA.

Gregory Rosenthal, Lewiston