What’s at risk here in Scotland from a US-UK trade deal?
How a US-UK trade deal could threaten Scotland’s food, farming, health and public services and why we need to make sure it doesn’t
Modern trade deals are no longer just about buying and selling goods. Today, they go far beyond that and can have an impact on all sorts of other things: from food standards to how we run public services, from financial regulation to protection of the environment. Trade deals attempt to ‘harmonise’ – in practice usually lower – regulations to make life easier for big business to invest and trade around the world. But these regulations are important – they exist because people have democratically decided they want a certain level of protection for public health, workers and the environment, and that they want high quality public healthcare and education. Trade deals should not be able to override these democratic decisions. But they can.
Not only that, modern trade deals hand unprecedented levels of power to big business. The Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) was a gigantic proposed trade deal between the EU and US. That deal contained a mechanism that would allow big business to sue governments, using special ‘corporate courts’, for policy decisions that could threaten profits. So a government could be sued for raising the minimum wage, banning fracking or bringing public services back into public hands, for example. Through people power – campaigning and protesting – we defeated TTIP. It was never finalised or signed. The UK government was one of the biggest cheerleaders for TTIP. Now that we are no longer in the EU, it’s negotiating a trade deal directly between the UK and the US. We could be looking at ‘TTIPon-steroids’.
We need to make sure that the UK government cannot make a US-UK trade deal behind closed doors.
Photo: Gabriela Palai//Pexels
Food standards
The US has fundamentally different food standards to us. Often animals are kept in industrial scale ‘factory farms’, with low standards of welfare. Cows might be kept in crowded conditions, never seeing the outside world and eating grain rather than grass. In such conditions, animals are given antibiotics, steroids and hormones to help them grow faster and prevent disease. As meat is prepared for market, poultry is often washed in chlorine to get rid of levels of bacteria that have come from the intensive way they have been reared. Far more GM food is grown and sold. Crops can go to market with higher levels of chemical pesticide residue, and milk is sold with a higher white blood cell count (in effect meaning more pus is likely to be in your dairy). These practices are banned here because they are bad for animals, bad for consumers or bad for farmers. It would be near impossible for UK farmers to compete with lower standard, more cheaply produced food imported from the US. The choice facing them would be stark: either go out of
business or demand lower food standards from the government here.
Under threat from a US
Consumer choice Some argue that it’s for customers to choose what sort of food they want to consume. But the US also has less strict rules on labelling of food, which it could well put pressure on the UK to adopt as part of a trade deal. And so it would be more difficult to
know what we’re buying.
The US is also opposed to public policy aimed at encouraging healthier diets – for instance minimum unit pricing for alcohol, or sugar taxes. And it opposes the use of ‘protected geographical indicators’ (PGIs) to designate special, local foods made to traditional methods. Scotland has fifteen iconic products that could be at threat, including Scotch Beef and Lamb, Arbroath Smokies and Stornoway Black Pudding, plus of course Scotch Whisky.
The US has repeatedly told the UK that unless it accepts US food standards, there will be no trade deal.
US-UK trade deal
Photo: Whitelee Wind Farm//Ian Dick//Flickr//CC BY 2.0
The climate emergency To tackle the climate emergency, the fossil fuel industry has to be restrained (and eventually phased out) while
governments must put in place all the plans and policies needed for a just transition to a low carbon economy. Trade deals are completely at odds with this, given the extraordinary powers that they give big business and the constraints they can put on governments, which can be (and have been) used to prevent legislation that would
address and prevent environmental destruction.
The US fossil fuel industry will be expecting a US-UK trade deal to open up new markets for its products. So Scotland’s target date of 2045 for reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions and its moratorium on fracking could be seen as barriers to that and, under a US-UK trade deal, could be put
under intense pressure.
Under threat from a US
Once a US-UK trade deal is signed, then future action on
climate change could be challenged by the fossil fuel industry using the ‘corporate courts’ mechanism in the trade deal. And on the global stage, trade deals have more teeth than international environmental and climate change agreements, which would take second place.
We can’t address the climate crisis under a trade deal that allows corporate interests to dictate public policy
US-UK trade deal
Photo: Steve PB // Pixabay
The NHS and public services The US health system is extremely expensive, and prices many citizens out of essential healthcare. The US is also home to some enormous private healthcare corporations. These companies will demand the right to bid for contracted-out parts of the NHS in any trade deal with the UK. We fear this would be a further step towards privatisation of the NHS, especially if a corporate court system allowed these corporations to sue the government if it chose to bring privatised parts of the NHS back into public hands. And many modern trade deals incorporate ‘ratchet’ and ‘standstill’ mechanisms, which effectively lock in and increase levels of privatisation in a specific service sector, something the US could well demand for the NHS.
What’s true for healthcare could also be true for education, water, energy, railways or other public services.
Under threat from a US
Affordable medicines The US is also well-known for insisting on the highest possible levels of ‘intellectual property’ protection in trade deals. Most importantly, this includes protection for medicines and medical procedures. This is good for big pharmaceutical corporations, but not for our NHS and its patients, because it means drug companies can maintain monopolies over drugs for longer. The US is increasingly arguing for protections which make it easier to renew patents on drugs (so-called ‘evergreening’), to develop patents on currently unpatentable aspects of healthcare, and to strip away restrictions on the advertising of patented drugs. All of this would certainly increase the price of medicines in the UK, currently far lower than the price of medicines in the US. Increasing drug prices are already a huge strain on NHS budgets.
A US trade deal could massively increase the NHS deficit – or leave patients without many effective drugs.
US-UK trade deal
Photo: Saltire and bridge // Magnus Hagdorn // Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0
Scottish powers Scotland has regularly been the first nation in the UK to bring in stronger public policy legislation: from banning smoking in public places, to the extended moratorium on fracking, the ban on growing GM crops, the commitment to no nuclear power stations and stronger climate change targets. Scotland has also so far chosen to resist efforts to introduce greater private sector provision in the NHS. It has also been spared the top-down reorganisation of the NHS that England has seen as a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. And Scottish Water is one of the very few water companies in the UK that is still publicly owned.
A US-UK trade deal could threaten this. It’s possible to imagine cases being taken against the Scottish government by corporations for all manner of positive social or environmental policies.
Under threat from a US
These cases are normally held in secret, and even if the government wins, the proceedings are extremely expensive. What’s more, the Scottish government wouldn’t be able to defend itself if it was challenged by a foreign company in a ‘corporate court’ on a policy it had made. Rather it would be defended by the Westminster government, but if the case was lost then the Scottish government would have to pay
the costs.
What can you do? It’s vital that we all stay informed, and continue to work for a democratic trade system which protects the rights of workers, the welfare of animals and the environment, the safety of consumers, and access to public
services
To keep up with current trade developments, support our work, and find out how to get involved in the fight for trade justice, visit us at
globaljustice.org.uk/trade
US-UK trade deal
Find out more and join us at
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@globaljusticesc
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