Add Chile FTA to Trade Act

Adding US-Chile FTA to the TRADE Act

This would involve bugging the co-sponsors and sponsors of this bill that will never be voted on to add Chile to the TRADE Act. The point of this is....well, who knows! Since this bill isn't going to be voted on, or supported, by these people anyway, especially not if we think to add another country that has the same problems as the other countries implicated in the trade agreements on the bill! But I don't think this is a good campaign anymore, because MOST trade agreements aren't implicated in the bill anyway, and I hardly see the point in adding Chile to this. But maybe someone else will disagree, so I'm keeping this in here.

Chile would make an excellent new campaign, as two groups (ForestEthics and ProtestBarrick.net) have done extensive work on mining and lumber problems in Chile. Chile is also a perfect subject for an extractive industries campaign, as the nation is overly dependent on them for its growth. It also has some of the highest levels of inequality in the world and a unique economy that arose out of the original site of the (failed) neoliberal experiment in Chile under its dictator Pinochet. A campaign against the exploitation of the resources here could easily fit with campaigns against the high inequality in Chile, and to a condemnation of the history of neoliberal experiments as brutal affairs, and its obvious failure as an experiment (Pinochet himself, after a few years of experimenting with the privatizations recommended by Milton Friedman, his close friend, backtracked when he saw the glaringly obvious poor performance of the experiment). (7) There are also incredibly unique circumstances in Chile's ecosystem that would allow for easy propaganda - from “save the oldest tree”, to “protect the smallest deer”.