Trade Talk:  Conversations with Leaders in the Fair Trade Movement

As part of Fair Trade Local’s “Trade Talk” series, GGP invites leaders in the fair trade movement to answer questions about global trade, grassroots activism, poverty, women’s rights and their favorite fair trade products. For our first installment, we're pleased to be speaking with Scott Codey of the New York City Fair Trade Coalition.  Scott is a committed, accomplished activist with years of experience, and we're honored to have him here on Fair Trade Local. Thanks for joining us on Fair Trade Local, Scott. Q:  There are a lot of economic development models out there, and a lot of debate over which works best.  Why have you decided to devote your time to Fair Trade?  What makes it a good solution to ending poverty? I think Fair Trade is attractive to a lot of people because it’s a simple and easy way to make a significant difference in the lives of people at the other end of the supply chain.  Most people I come across are not indifferent to the exploitation of workers around the world – they simply don’t know what is happening.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been approached by people at the end of the wonderful film “Black Gold” which lays out the grim reality of the coffee industry who say, “I had no idea any of this was happening.” When people learn about learn what is going on, they want to do something about it. At its best, I think Fair Trade is “gateway activism” – a first-step way for people to engage with these issues in a way that makes a difference but does not require going to meetings, learning a whole set of acronyms or having to endure long bus trips to Capitol Hill. But trade activism cannot stop with buying products.  I think we have to remember that Fair Trade is not a panacea for poverty.  It is something that we can and should do while we work for profound changes to the current rules of international trade. Q:  Many critics claim that Fair Trade is a form of “charity,” a “band-aid” instead of a sustainable solution.  How do you respond to such critiques? I don’t think Fair Trade is any more a form of charity than minimum wage laws.  We have those laws in place because we believe that people should be paid a minimum for their labor, irrespective of market forces.  I think of Fair Trade more as a form of civil disobedience – as a way of refusing to consent to, if only for a moment, participate in a global trading system that causes such severe poverty and exploitation around the world. Q:  For a lot of people, the term “global trade” conjures abstract, elusive, perhaps even negative thoughts.  WTO.  Closed doors.  Men in suits.  How can regular people advocate for fairer trading practices without being a policy expert or political bigwig? If people think of the WTO and men in suits behind closed doors when they think of global trade, they are not far off the mark.  To this point, the rules of international trade have largely been written by and for large corporations where short term corporate profits are the most important thing and everything else – public health and safety, workers rights, women’s rights, the environment and the health of local economies are secondary. I think what is so exciting about the Fair Trade movement is that over the last 20 years, regular people – not policy experts or political bigwigs – have gotten organized not only to raise their voice in protest of the current system (which is important) but to build positive alternatives that model the kind of economy we want to see. Q:  What impact do you think the new Obama Administration will have on fair trade, global poverty and women’s rights?  Should we expect to see some important gains, or more of the same? I think it’s a bit too early to tell.  I expect we will see some important gains in some areas but it is by no means guaranteed that at the end of the Obama administration, we’re going to have a global trading system that is better than the one we have today.  If you look at who Obama has chosen as his trade advisors, it seems reasonable to expect that they will try to advance a vision of global trade that is not that different from the one advanced by the Clinton administration.  However, political leaders are generally only as good or as bad as the political pressure they feel like they have to respond to.  Our challenge is the coming years will be to expand consumer awareness of Fair Trade while at the same time continuing to build a political movement that is strong enough to enact a set of policies that make Fair Trade a baseline principle for doing business in the global economy.  One promising piece of legislation is the 2009 TRADE Act which folks can find more information about here: http://action.citizen.org/t/1153/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27339 Q: Thank you for your informative responses.  For our final question, we’d like to end on a lighter note: what’s your favorite fair trade product?  Coffee? A fair trade bag?  Or perhaps those delicious fair trade bananas? Well, I had a lovely Fair Trade bag until a few years ago when I left it in a cab in Chicago.  All my friends told me it made me look like a goat herder which made me like it even more!