Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition

Contact:
Doug Williams
Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition
Email: doug@citizenstrade.org

Web: http://mnfairtradecoalition.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mnfairtrade/

Over 20 Years Fighting For Justice In The Global Economy

The Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition is more than 40 Minnesota labor, faith, environmental, social justice, and family farm organizations striving to create respect for working people, family farmers, our environment, and our democracy as an integral part of the global economy. We came together in 1991 in opposition to the failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement and globalization to incorporate these very values.

The impact of globalization today, under the guise of international development and free trade, is characterized as mega corporations that reap huge profits through the exploitation of the world’s working people and the relaxation of environmental, food and product safety standards, and the offshoring and outsourcing of jobs that range from manufacturing to telemarketing. While such ventures prove very lucrative for the corporate minority, it has resulted in lost jobs, rural dislocation; widespread toxic dumping by transnational companies, and lower living standards for a majority people. There is nothing necessary or inevitable about this type of global economy. Globalization today is a result of corporate and one-sided government decision-making and we recognize that this can be corrected through citizen action. Together MNFTC works to:

  • Ensure that Congress approves trade agreements only if they contain comprehensive and fully enforceable protections for working people, the environment, family farmers, food and product safety and democracy.Our current focus is educating people who may or may not have been directly affected by the previous generation of free trade deals, and about the dangers of the coming generation, particularly focused on the trade-in-services GATS and bilateral trade deals such as the Colombia, South Korea and Panama FTAs.
  • Educate policy makers and the public about the negative consequences and vast injustices of the type of globalization seen to date.We communicate regularly with our state’s Congressional delegation and other elected officials on these matters. We communicate with the public via direct outreach to citizen’s groups and through the news media.
  • Build international solidarity against the injustices of today’s global economy.The Coalition mobilizes its member organizations and contacts to respond to requests of solidarity action from workers, grassroots groups and other countries over maltreatment by transnational corporations. We support and struggle for justice for all workers in the global garment industry, and through anti-sweatshop campaigns.
  • Create and build national and international relationships that support positive alternatives to current unjust and exploitative global economic policy.We partner with grassroots networks in the United States and throughout the hemisphere in an ongoing effort to develop and support governments proposals like the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act, that respect workers, our jobs, family farmers, and have environmental based approach to global economic integration.

If your organization believes it has a stake in determining what kind of a global economy we live in, we invite you to join the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition and help make a difference.