The Socialist Workers Campaign will not participate in the protests against the WTO. The fair trade campaign of the labor officials has a reactionary political character. Underneath all the demagogy of protesting pollution, child labor and abysmal wages, one theme emerges: Protect jobs in the U.S. and buy products "made in America."

Fair trade is economic nationalism. Whether it is the Teamster officials trying to lock out Mexican truckers or U.S.W.A. or I.A.M. officials joining the anti-China slander campaign against imports, the effect is to put cooperation with U.S. bosses above unity with working people abroad. Instead, labor needs to mobilize the broadest solidarity around today's strikes and protests against U.S. bosses.

The most logical economic nationalist is rightist politician Pat Buchanan. His cultural war targets entire layers of the working class as scapegoats for the social crisis. He especially rails against immigrant and Mexican workers and has tried to create a McCarthy witchhunt scare around Chinese spying. His current issue is the chief organizing center today of incipient American fascism. The fair trade anti-WTO protests provide him an opportunity to get a broader hearing within the working class and recruit to the Buchanan brigades shock troops eventually to be turned against the labor movement.

The WTO has nothing to do with promoting free trade or the development of oppressed nations. It is a vehicle used by Washington, as the dominant imperialist nation, to organize trading policy in a world of capitalist disorder, with intensified competition and rising tensions. There is no better alternative within the framework of capitalism.

Labor needs to chart an independent working-class course. Instead of fair trade protests against the WTO, it must champion international solidarity and back working-class struggles against U.S. bosses. Along this road a transformed labor movement can forge an alliance with farmers to fight for a workers and farmers government that can put an end to capitalism and build a society based on human needs not profit.

In the Port of Seattle race, our campaign has stressed backing strikes and protests by workers and farmers that are taking place now in the United States and abroad. In office, our priorities remain the same.

Puget Sound port drivers struck last summer to demand union recognition and a living hourly wage. They ran into opposition from the trucking companies, shipping lines, railroads and the ports of Seattle and Tacoma. The port was open for business, authorities said, and worked with the railroads especially to keep the freight moving.

The Port of Seattle must institute a licensing arrangement to enforce an agreement with the truck drivers similar to that won by drivers at the Port of Vancouver. Only those trucks that recognize the Teamsters as the port drivers' bargaining agent and that pay a living hourly wage should be licensed by the port.

The port drivers' strike (their ranks are made up of workers from many different countries) is part of the growing mood of resistance to capitalist injustice in the United States and worldwide.

Here is an action program for building a political movement led by labor that the Socialist Workers campaign advances:

• Cancel the debt of third world nations that is squeezing workers and peasants, destroying any chance for progress and development.
• Support an international fight for a shorter work week, with no cut in weekly pay. This is labor's answer to layoffs and downsizing.
• Guarantee all farmers a livable income.
• Open the borders and defend the rights of immigrant workers.
• Oppose any imperialist intervention or war, which is at bottom always directed at preserving capitalist rule and domination. Get the United States and the United Nations out of East Timor. Get U.S. and NATO troops out of the Balkans.
• Oppose economic sanctions against revolutionary Cuba and against North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yugoslavia or any other nation targeted by Washington. Oppose the military and economic threats against China.