[Mb-civic] Seafood Fight

Tue Dec 7 11:45:40 PST 2004

Seafood Fight! 

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
 Posted on December 6, 2004, Printed on December 7, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/20667/

You understand the mainstream debate over trade  on one side are the
sophisticated, global "free traders," and on the other are those naïve
"protectionists" trying to wreak havoc with their pesky environmental and
labor regulations. But over the past two weeks, the slips of those who claim
the mantle of free trade have been showing.

Given the chance to stand by their rhetoric or protect American industry 
most recently from the Yellow Peril of Asian seafood exports  they did what
they always do; they proved that, in reality, there are no free traders.

The first blow to the notion of "economic freedom" came Nov. 26, when the
World Trade Organization authorized sanctions against us in retaliation for
the WTO-illegal Byrd Amendment. That law allows American corporations to
receive duties directly from overseas rivals they accuse of "dumping" and
other trade hijinks. The foreign firms get a double-whammy; they pay the
duties and at the same time they fatten their competitors' bottom line. And
consumers get a double-screwing; our tax dollars are used to collect the
private sector's alms and in return we get to pay higher prices.

Then, last Tuesday, there was another knock to the notion that 'a rising
tide will raise all boats.' In what Forbes called "a blatant display of
protectionism," the free-trading, market-worshipping Bush Administration
approved of duties ranging from 4 to 113 percent on shrimp from China and
Vietnam.

Vietnam may be a trade opponent now, but starting in the late 1980s, there
was a big bipartisan push  led by Republican John McCain and Democrat John
Kerry  to introduce a free market system to our former enemies in Hanoi.
The hope was that we could accomplish with aid and technical assistance what
we failed to do with guns and napalm 40 years ago.

Two areas USAID officials identified for development were shrimp and catfish
farming in the lush, nutrient-rich Mekong Delta. With its inexpensive labor
and good climate, Vietnam had excellent prospects for developing its seafood
exports. USAID and international development banks started pumping seed
money into fish farming projects.

Their optimism proved well founded. According to the New York Times, "within
a few years, an estimated half-million Vietnamese were living off a catfish
trade nurtured by private entrepreneurs. Vietnam captured 20 percent of the
frozen catfish-fillet market in the United States." By 2002, shrimp was
Vietnam's largest seafood export, and, according to Agence France Presse,
the U.S.  at $467 million dollars  was its biggest buyer.

Rural poverty rates in Vietnam dropped from 70 percent to 30 percent during
the 1990s, according to the Times. But prices also dropped and catfish
producers in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Arkansas, and shrimpers
from eight coastal states began to feel the pinch. So in 2002 The
Mississippi Delta Catfish Farmers  an industry lobby  reached out to Trent
Lott (R-Miss.), then the Senate Majority Leader.

Lott amended an appropriations bill with a little rider that declared that
out of 2,000 types of catfish, only the American family   Ictaluridae 
could be labeled "catfish," according to the New York Times. So the
Vietnamese could sell their fish in the States only under the Vietnamese
words "basa" and "tra."

Needless to say, sales dropped dramatically  "a fried basa po-boy" just
doesn't have the same down-home feel. But that wasn't enough; the same group
then initiated an "anti-dumping" measure against Vietnam. With the help of
Lott and Arkansas Democrat Marion Berry  who, with typical congressional
tact, reminded worried consumers that we dumped quite a bit of Agent Orange
in the Mekong Delta  the Commerce Department imposed tariffs of 64 percent
on Vietnamese catfish.

A foreign industry is said to be "dumping" when it sells its goods at prices
below the cost of production to drive out local and foreign competition. At
a fair trade conference last year, a member of a Vietnamese delegation said
that the rural catfish farmers are simply too poor to "dump" their products
on the American market even if they wanted to. "There aren't big
agribusinesses in the Mekong Delta," she said. "If these people sell below
cost, their families won't eat."

The Southern Shrimp Alliance  another industry PAC  was impressed by
Lott's moves. They hired a couple of mega-law firms and lobbyists to follow
the catfish model.

According to Forbes, they were going up against 20 firms retained by Brazil,
Ecuador, India, Thailand, China, Vietnam and the American Seafood
Distributors Association.

But the shrimpers' hired heavy players (and paragons of corporate
responsibility). In the lead is Dewey Ballantine, which took some heat in
the legal community when its annual dinner featured a song parody with
buttoned-down white guys (I assume) pretending to be Chinese; they did the
Charlie Chan "we so solly" thing. Funny, no?

That was followed by the leak of a firm-wide e-mail about some puppies up
for adoption, in which the London office's Douglas Getter, Director of
European acquisitions, begged: "Please don't let these puppies go to a
Chinese restaurant!" Oh, how the Asian American Bar Association laughed and
laughed.

Funnier still was when the firm was forced to fork over a fine to settle
Treasury Department allegations that it engaged in trade with North Korea,
according to the Corporate Crime Reporter.

The shrimpers also hired the Louisiana firm Jones Walker to lobby on its
behalf. Jones Walker is the leading employer "labor relations" firm (read
cutthroat union-busters) in Louisiana. Through June, it also handled at
least $150,000 bucks worth of lobbying for CACI, the defense contractor that
was implicated  in one of five separate probes of its Pentagon dealings 
in the prison abuse at Abu Ghraib, according to Salon.com.

Judging by last Tuesday's announcement, the firms were effective, but the
dumping charge is as bogus for shrimp as it is for catfish. U.S. shrimpers
catch their fare in the open ocean while most Asian shrimp is raised with
cheap labor in efficient fishponds.

As a result of all this chicanery, shrimp exports to the U.S. through June
had declined by 34 percent compared to the same period last year, according
to the Voice of Vietnam. Rural poverty rates, too, are on the rebound. And
for his maneuvering, Lott went on to win the 2003 "Spirit of Enterprise"
award from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for his dedication to free-market
ideals.

Tip of the Iceberg

According to Public Citizen, despite our breathless devotion to free
markets, "Each year, U.S. taxpayers subsidize businesses to the tune of
almost $125 billion, the equivalent of all the income tax paid by 60 million
individuals and families." That's probably a conservative estimate; using a
broader definition of 'corporate welfare' than Public Citizen, Mark
Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman estimated in their book "Take the Rich Off
Welfare" that the federal government handed out $448 billion dollars to
private firms in 1996.

Keep that in mind the next time you hear a member of Congress blathering on
about free trade. Remember precisely what they mean: during the next decade,
with projected federal deficits of between $1.4 and $5.9 trillion dollars,
our Congress will hand over more than a trillion tax dollars to private
firms, a fraction of which will then be funneled through campaign
contributions right back into getting those same representatives elected so
they can support future protectionism and more porky subsidies. That's what
they mean by free trade, and the Asian seafood wars are a perfect example.

Now, I'm happy to call Trent Lott, George Bush and Co. a bunch of
hypocrites, but I won't judge them for trying to save their jobs, just as I
won't condemn a vulnerable steelworker who does the same. It's a complex
issue, and free trade sounds great to a lot of people until their livelihood
is at stake. That's just as true for Trent Lott when he protects his
corporate patrons as it is for those struggling to eke out a living in
fishponds and rice paddies in the developing world. The only difference is
rhetorical.