In the case of LaRoche, the company was fined a record setting $540,000,000 for price fixing by creating a false shortage of raw materials for vitamin B3, in order to increase sales of their anti-cholesterol drugs.

Considering the fine, it does not require much of an imagination to recognize the financial motives behind the war. The customer base that pharma is after is enormous. Recent polls show that 60 to 70% of North Americans now use complementary medicines and dietary supplements.

In addition to those already discussed above, another gift to pharma is buried in the language of CAFTA in Section 6, which requires that all member countries form a Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) committee for the purpose of insuring ongoing harmonization under the terms of the SPS Agreement in the WTO, according to the July 2, 2005, Urgent Alert Health Freedom Is Being Threatened, by Paul Anthony Tayler.

The World Trade Organization's SPS Agreement reads in part: "To harmonize sanitary and phytosanitary measures on as wide a basis as possible, Members shall base their food safety measures on international standards, guidelines or recommendations."

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is the international body charged with setting global food standards. It holds an annual gathering of delegates in Europe each year, many of them trans-national pharmaceutical corporations, who are primarily focused on increasing their market share, by pushing their desired and arbitrary regulatory “standards” into a global standard and forcing it onto the smaller local supplement industry, all in the name of “international regulatory excellence,” according to Eve Hillary in "Codex - The Sickness Industry’s Last Stand, April 23, 2005.

The Codex subcommittee that specifically deals with supplements is the Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, which meets in Bonn , Germany each November. This committee establishes guidelines to govern international trade in supplements. In essence, it has the authority to decide whether consumers can have vitamins, minerals and other nutrients, in what dosage, and who will be permitted to manufacture and sell the products.

Under CAFTA, the US government must not only harmonize federal laws, it must also force state and local governments to conform their laws to the standards.

Many believe there is a real danger that guidelines for supplements could be forced on the US because if it refuses to harmonize, the WTO can apply pressure by withdrawing trade privileges and imposing trade sanctions.

Such sanctions could amount to billions of dollars in tariffs that the WTO could authorize nations to levee on US exports, and not just supplement exports. This sanction would make US goods grossly overpriced and hard to sell. Under such pressure, Congress would likely adopt the anti-supplement regulations. It has already given in on past WTO disputes, to avoid crippling trade sanctions. See Dietary Supplements Under Imminent Threat, James South M.A, January 26, 2005 .

A Major Battle At Home And Abroad

Convincing Latin American countries to adopt the FTAA, may be the least of the administration's worries. Considering how much political capital was waged on passing CAFTA, an even greater battle lies ahead in trying to get Congress to pass a plan that would encompass the entire Western Hemisphere .

One need only consider what has occurred in the country since NAFTA, to recognize the uphill battle Bush is facing. The year before NAFTA was adopted, the US trade deficit with its partners was $9 billion. Last year the deficit hit $111 billion, over ten times what it was before NAFTA.

The Economic Policy Institute determined that the trade deficit has cost US workers nearly 900,000 jobs, and job opportunities, through 2002, and the deficit has grown higher since then. Robert Scott, “The High Price of ‘Free Trade,” Briefing Paper, November 2003.

In addition, life after NAFTA is even worse for our partners. NAFTA promised to raise living standards in Mexico and reduce the flow of illegal immigrants to the US . However, in fact, the opposite has happened. Real wages in Mexico today are actually lower than when NAFTA began, the poverty rate is higher, and illegal immigration to the US has soared.

More than a million small farmers have lost their land to floods of agricultural imports and are forced to seek work in factories along the border or in the US , Economist Mark Levinson told the Senate Finance Committee, on April 13, 2005 .

Our trade relationship with Canada is not looking that great either. Ottawa , Washington 's oldest and largest free trade partner, is close to giving up hope of reaching a fair settlement of its softwood lumber dispute with the US , according to the September 12, 2005 , Toronto Star.

Canadian negotiators are refusing to return to the table, to indicate to the world, the ineffectiveness of trying to negotiate with the Bush administration. "The American position is absolutely untenable," said Prime Minister Paul Martin. "We've got to step up with retaliation, in my view," Industry Minister David Emerson told the Star.

The latest flare-up occurred in August 2005, when a final-appeal panel "ruled that the U.S. had no right to impose a 27 per cent levy on Canadian lumber imports. U.S. Trade Representative, Rob Portman, said the US government disagreed with the decision and would disregard it, according to the Star.
"Canadians shook their heads in disbelief," the paper wrote, while "the rest of the world, Latin America in particular, got a vicarious taste of free trade with the US ."

It appears that a trade relationship with the US is no longer a sought after prize. According to the Star, "a growing number of countries regard it as a dubious asset."

(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption)

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