“People Would Be Outraged”: An interview with Tom Loudon from the Alliance for Responsible Trade

by Ariel Troster

Tom Loudon is the coordinator of the Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART), an organization in the U.S. that brings together dozens of social justice and faith-based groups to challenge corporate trade agreements. Working with partners in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, ART was one of the early opponents of NAFTA and is now working to oppose the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP).

In a recent phone interview with Canadian Perspectives, Loudon talked about the government secrecy surrounding continental integration, and why people in North America should be skeptical about the SPP.

What are social justice advocates in the U.S. saying about the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America?

Obviously, for Canadians and Mexicans, there are things that should be totally frightening about handing over sovereignty [to the U.S.]. But the issues are the same in the U.S. – handing over governmental authority to transnational corporations. And it’s happening silently in a broad number of areas without any scrutiny whatsoever and very little access to information.

We learned from NAFTA, the FTAA and the Central American Free Trade Agreement that the more people become aware of things, the more resistance there is.

What is ART doing to challenge the SPP in the U.S.?

About a month ago, we filed an Access to Information request about the SPP. It’s hard to know what [the U.S. government] is willing to tell us. So far, it’s not encouraging. The issues that affect and impact all of our lives are being relegated to a few corporations and what it means for their bottom line. Legislative bodies have been excluded from these very crucial decisions about our future. A handful of legislators in each country get it, but there hasn’t been any significant resistance yet. If we were able to get our hands on more documentation, I know people would be outraged.

How is ART’s response to the SPP fundamentally different from the opinions of right-wing groups like the Minutemen and Judicial Watch?

I would say that we do share the horror at the level of corporate take-over, but we have severe differences when it comes to our analysis of immigration. From my reading of their perspective, immigrants are the enemy . . . but at ART, we believe migrant workers are largely the victims of the free trade agenda, because they are forced to migrate as an economic survival technique. What we see as a just alternative is a trade policy that would actually give people a reason to stay with their families and have a viable way of surviving.

For more information about the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), click here.

Ariel Troster is the Publications Officer at The Council of Canadians, and the Editor of Canadian Perspectives.

INTEGRATE THIS! Challenging the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America Free Trade’s Big Lie: NAFTA has failed to create quality jobs or close the income gap, by Jean-Yves LeFort Way Too Close for Comfort: Canada-U.S. military and security integration endangers all Canadians, by Stuart Trew Courting TILMA: U.S. investors eye Alberta and B.C.’s interprovincial trade agreement, by Stuart Trew Unlikely Bedfellows: Right-wing U.S. groups oppose deep integration – for the wrong reasons, by Ariel Troster “People Would Be Outraged”: An interview with Tom Loudon from the Alliance for Responsible Trade, by Ariel Troster See No Evil, Report No Evil: Why the media isn’t telling you about deep integration, by Meera Karunananthan The Council of Canadians’ Demands

Read more about the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) on our website. Email inquiries@canadians.org or call us at 1-800-387-7177, for more information.

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Integrate This! Challenging the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
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updated March 7, 2007