Free Trade is not Fair Trade: Corporations reaps the benefit more than host country

We would like to further emphasized why Free Trade is not Fair Trade. When a FTA is signed both country's market is liberalized, it is the corporation from the stronger country that will first move to take it's position. The FTA practice in a country is only as good as the corporation that enters the country. When we look at past experiences, we can all see that the conclusion is "not good". These behemoth are not interested in the "regional development" or "democratic clause" both trading country committed into in the agreement. These behemoths of trade saw these FTA as merely an act of taking maximum profit in a new emerging market. ""Ask anyone who has worked in a corporation and they will tell us that corporations are only interested in "making profit"."" In fact, as summarized regarding the EU - Mexico "Global Agreement" it has been stated that "The EU-Mexico FTA has mainly helped European companies by lowering their production costs and enabling them to use Mexico as a platform for shipping goods to markets that have greater purchasing power, as well as higher income markets in Mexico " How can we show that these corporation aims for profit rather than the interest of the host country? We only need to set one example in the form of the Nestle Corporation. Nestle has enjoyed enormous growth during the early 1990's when many trade barriers crumbled (Mainly in Africa and South America). During these growths, Nestlé’s atrocities are listed from farmer exploitations, union crackdown to the famous unethical marketing of Nestlé’s baby milk that has been linked to the death of 1.5 million deaths of infants in Africa. [[http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=240#pollution]] Even recently, Nestle has clearly violated the sovereignty of Ecuador’s Labor regulation when it openly fires 13 employees on the basis that they are involved with a union. [[http://www.rel-uita.org/sindicatos/rel-nestle_ecuador-eng.htm]] A vivid case of this argument existed in, again, Mexico where corporation interests are placed ahead of the worker. When continental tires took over a tyre manufacturing plant in mexico, they applied new rules in their profit making mechanism which included: 1. 12 hour work a day 2. No sunday off 3. No profit Sharing 4. Increased output without pay raise Enraged since the new foreign buyer has clearly violated the law, the worker went on strike and left the factory to shut down. Going to local authorities, The Local Conciliation and Arbitration Board, which is charged with resolving conflicts between workers and owners to report the situation. They were then surprised when shamelessly the board took sides with the owners and declared the strike illegal, refusing to recognise its validity even though the owners had violated the law [[http://www.tni.org/reports/altreg/eumexicofta.pdf page 22]]. This is merely one of the many examples of the abuse that has happened in countries applying FTA. Our point is, a country can never deregulates its market for the promise of "economic development" then open it's infant market to compete with big corporations. Especially when there has been rampant case of abuse by major corporation taking advantage of the FTA, whose sole purpose is to "make maximum profit". This is a risk countries should take on assessing the benefit of FTA, where we have clearly shown that it cause more harm than the benefit it promised.