Economic Liberties’ Rethink Trade program fights for good jobs, fair markets, strong consumer and environmental protections and the ability for those who will live with the results to decide the policies affecting their lives. That is why we work to replace the current rules of the global economy, which were formed by and for the world’s largest corporate powers to the detriment of most people.
Rethink Trade builds synergies between trade justice and anti-monopoly work to create and implement policies that can harvest the benefits of trade and promote healthy economies and local businesses without undermining our democracy, livelihoods and labor rights, health or environment. Among the cutting-edge trade and globalization issues Rethink Trade is now prioritizing:
- Stopping Big Tech efforts to hijack “trade” agreements and policies to lock in monopoly power and evade governments’ efforts to safeguard the rights of workers, consumers’ safety and privacy, civil rights and fair competition.
- Reversing Big Pharma’s use of trade pacts to protect monopolies over essential medicines, including COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests.
- Replacing dominant corporations’ hyperglobalization agenda with pro-worker, pro-resilience rules for the global economy to repair the supply chain meltdown now causing prices to spike and is undermining our ability to make or obtain essential goods.
- Repealing the extreme corporate-power and taxpayer-money grab of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement regime.
- Helping workers to use the revised North American Free Trade Agreement’s new labor rights enforcement mechanisms to test if it offers a model going forward to counter multinational corporations’ use of trade pacts to drive down wages and working conditions.
Rethink Trade monitors domestic and international political and policy horizons and provides strategic leadership and the forward sonar of perils and opportunities to policymakers, partner organizations and activists.
It conducts research and analyses, and develops materials to contribute to national and international policy debates and advocacy work. Rethink Trade convenes strategic partners and designs inside-outside collaboration strategies to connect domestic and international policymakers, civil society leaders and others. Rethink Trade produces outward-facing communications for public education and thought leadership, including the Rethinking Trade with Lori Wallach podcast and a Rethink Trade blog, and uses other platforms to promote our policy alternatives and critiques.