Posted on 07/27/2005 9:14:44 PM PDT by RWR8189
WASHINGTON - The House narrowly approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement early Thursday, a personal triumph for President Bush, who campaigned aggressively for the accord he said would foster prosperity and democracy in the hemisphere.
The 217-215 vote just after midnight adds six Latin American countries to the growing lists of nations with free trade agreements with the United States and averts what could have been a major political embarrassment for the Bush administration.
It was an uphill effort to win a majority, with Bush traveling to Capitol Hill earlier in the day to appeal to wavering Republicans to support a deal he said was critical to U.S. national security.
Lobbying continued right up to the vote, with Vice President Dick Cheney, U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman (news, bio, voting record) and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez tracking undecided lawmakers.
The United States signed the accord, known as CAFTA, a year ago with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, and the Senate approved it last month. It now goes to the president for his signature.
To capture a majority, supporters had to overcome what some have called free trade fatigue, a growing sentiment that free trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada have contributed to a loss of well-paying American jobs and the soaring trade deficit.
Democrats, who were overwhelmingly against CAFTA, also argued that its labor rights provisions were weak and would result in exploitation of workers in Central America.
But supporters pointed out that CAFTA would over time eliminate tariffs and other trade barriers that impede U.S. sales to the region, correcting the current situation in which 80 percent of Central American goods enter the United States duty-free but Americans must pay heavy tariffs.
The agreement would also strengthen intellectual property protections and make it easier for Americans to invest in the region.
"This is a test of American leadership in a changing world," said Rep. Kevin Brady (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, a leading proponent of the agreement. "We cannot claim to be fighting for American jobs and yet turn our backs on 44 million new customers in Central America.
Yes, you are misunderstanding. Marx and Buchanan are both "sources" long since discredited by thoughtful conservatives -- in both cases, for being anything but conservative (much less "thoughtful.")
Sure, but I wasn't referencing micro-economics in order to make a statement about trade policy, merely showing how these large indicators don't take into account so many variables when it comes to how these policies impact the individual American. I was replying to the attitude that numbers about real income actually says very much of anything about the average American lifestyle, which was implied in the other poster's comments.
I find these numbers interesting to a point, but I had my Saul/Paul moment a few years ago when I met someone who's worked in government statistics since the 60's. Now I find them useless in trying to determine the effects of government policy on the individual in any meaningful way. Simply put, I've never seen anyone who matched up to these statistics I am always seeing. So they may aid government policymakers, but they don't tell diddly about the actual people and lives those policies are supposed to effect. That may sound glib but it's anything but.
The same way NAFTA was going to create all these new jobs in Mexico to stem illegal immigration?
What the globalists want, the globalists get: Always... since 1945.
Yeah, we can blame the legislators but aren't they doing the bidding of the multinational corps. who have an army of lobbyists either paying off, blackmailing, etc. them to get what they want? It sure wasn't the small business guy or lady in Ill or Ohio that conceived and implemented GATT, NAFTA, etc. We know the big corps. have no allegiance to anything but the dollar and care nothing about nationhood or national sovereignty.
NAFTA demonstrates how American free enterprise economics works. Economic ignorance doesn't. As Prof. Joseph Salerno has explained:
"Capital flowing out of a nation, to other areas where its more productive, to the third world countries, enormously develops the productivity of labor in [those countries] and increases the market for our goods while raising wages and profits in the export industry... Free-market economics gets resources going into their most value productive employments."
That's the way it works in the United States. People should be promoting the American model, especially when the politically insane libs think that America needs to be more like the rest of the world. I can't believe how some of you on Free Republic bought the nonsense that NAFTA was bad for our country or for the other two involved, especially after all the proof to the contrary.
"Each one of the three [NAFTA] signatory countries -- Mexico, Canada, and the United States -- has 'grown considerably faster' than during the previous decade..." Grant Aldonas, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade. In the period of 1999-2003 All NAFTA member economies have grown significantly: U.S., 38%; Canada, 30.9%; Mexico, 30% growth:
U.S. exports to Canada and Mexico grew. Canada's exports to its NAFTA partners increased by 104% in value. Mexican exports increased by almost 227%. Representing a free trade area with about one-third of the worlds total GDP, the NAFTA economies are significantly larger than that of the European Union. Even with the addition of ten new members, the EU's GDP will still be well behind that of the NAFTA region.
The dismantling of free trade barriers and opening of markets have led to economic growth and rising prosperity in the US, Mexico and Canada. The total volume of trade among the three NAFTA partners expanded from 389.3 billion in 1993 to $623.1 billion in 2003.
In the ten years since NAFTA, productivity rose 28% in the US from 1993-2003, in Mexico up 55% and in Canada up 23%.
In the first decade of NAFTA, US manufacturing output soared, U.S. employment grew, and U.S. manufacturing wages increased dramatically. Income gains and tax cuts from NAFTA were worth up to $930 each year for the average US household of four.
In Mexico, wages in export-related industries are 37% higher than the rest of it's economy. Mexican wages and employment tend to be higher in states with higher foreign investment and trade, and migration from those states is lower. Wages are also higher in sectors with more exposure to imports and exports.
Two-way agricultural trade between the US and Mexico increased more than 125% since NAFTA went into effect, reaching $14 billion in 2003 compared with $6.2 billion in 1993.
Merchandise exports to the US from Canada expanded by 250% since 1989 and account for 87.2% of Canada's total merchandise exports.
Through the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, which was created from NAFTA, all three countries have beneffited from coordination which is increasing in the effectiveness of conservation efforts by developing the North American Conservation Action Plans for three shared marine species, providing tools such as a map of terrestrial ecoregions which management agencies are using in their programs.. NAFTA partners have undertaken a wide-range of cooperative programs and technical exchanges on industrial relations.
(Source: Office of the U.S. Trade Representative)
Our first opportunity to open new markets is the Central American and Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement. It's a classic win-win situation. We have the opportunity here to open new markets for our workers, for our farmers, for our service providers, while, at the same time, leveling the playing field with a region that already enjoys mostly duty-free access to the United States. At the same time, we can help lift people out of poverty in Central America and the Dominican Republic, and we can help solidify those fragile democracies and staunch allies.~President George W. Bush
Check it out. Another "expert" discovers the wonder of stringing search terms together via Google.
Not an intelligible query. Try again.
What In The He** are you talking about? Sorry, I tend to overuse acronyms. My apologies.
What does Buchanan have to do with it?
Follow the link provided for you (go back and re-read #279; carefully, this time). It should take you less time to read than it took me to provide. You're welcome, incidentally. You placed your smarmy little attempt at guilt-by-association in direct response to my previous post, filled with nothing but Reagan quotes. If this is your attempt at aping the wide-eyed ingenue: it's a spectacularly inept one. If you placed it there without meaning it as commentary, on the other hand: then you're simply addled. Neither one of these is my problem, nor merit any "apology" (hah!) from me.
Ok, I'll click to the link; I had assumed it was some Buchanan piece that made mention of Marx's quote. But I'll go check it now. Oh, and thanks. I guess.
Smarmy little attempt at guilt-by-association? You don't even know me, and yet you choose to read into the placement of my posting as having something to do with yours? Guess why mine followed yours -- BECAUSE YOURS WAS THE LAST POST ON THE THREAD AT THE TIME. If I had meant for it to have ANY connection to your post, I would have included your screenname in my response.
Obviously, past experiences with people with whom you have disagreements has left you embittered to the point where you immediately project those past experiences onto the current focus of your ire -- in this case, me -- and if other people -- maybe others who have trotted out the Marx quote -- ticked you off, well, that's a bummer. But don't go assuming that just because I disagree with you, I'm deserving of your insults; and don't go assuming that just because my post appeared after yours, sequentially, that I was tossing it out there as some sort of response to yours, or an "in your face" or some other such showing-up.
I had just finished reading all of the posts in the thread, yours was the last, so I clicked "respond to", deleted your name, and changed it to "All" -- and then included the quote from Marx.
I think that it's interesting and worthy of discussion from the standpoint of "Hey, this was something Marx supported -- should that be cause for concern?"
Funny, as I'm making this post, I notice that it says "NO profanity, NO personal attacks, NO racism or violence in posts." Well, at least you avoided profanity, racism and violence.
But Marx DID say it, right? And he DID support Free Trade, right?
I wasn't posting that as though it were some amazing feat of Internet savvy; I was posting it to show how I came about the Marx quote. Kent had thought that my quoting Marx's support of free trade had something to do with Pat Buchanan, and I was simply showing him how I GOT the quote in the first place.
Salerno is wrong.
Capital flowing out of a nation merely reflects the decline of domestic industries that used to export goods.
Right. You forgot to add that you misinterpreted Marx's speech. That's the danger of having a search engine do your thinking for you.
So what are it's implications in this particular situation?
I haven't read enough to make a full judgement about CAFTA, but the fact that supplements could be regulated is enough for me to be against it. I would bet that within those 24 thousand pages, other sinister things are hidden.
Ya know ole Ross Perot was flaky on a lot of things but he was dead nuts on about the "giant sucking sound". Just because GW is for it don't make it the gospel according to St. Bush. Witness the abhorent border policy and constant bendover to the Dimwits on judges.
There has not been any demonstrable positive impact of these free trade agreements for Joe Sixpack. And you can take that to the Bank (probably the IMF Bank) if we continue to give away everything we have.
... and THIS puny persiflage, mind you -- this failed attempt at rube dumbshow -- from the same wide-eyed "Who, ME? I wuz just standin' here, Officer! Honest!" Dead End Kid who moans, no more than one paragraph earlier: "you don't even know me." The only way this could be any funnier would be if the March of Dimes were somehow involved.
Your profile -- which I checked (naturally) before saying anything, initially -- reveals that you've been here since 2000. If you want to play pretend that you don't know how message board communications work -- that you had no idea, why, couldn't be more shocked to finally discover, at this late date, that posting in response to an earlier missive means you are commenting upon same -- knock yourself out, kiddo. There were nearly THREE. HUNDRED. prior postings in this thread, by that point... and you just happened to post a Karl Marx anti-free trade snivel in "non-response" to the one filled with PRO-free trade Ronald Reagan ones.
If nothing else: I stand in hushed, awed admiration of your demonstrable ability to sling it two-handed, perfectly straight-faced.
I am not sure. But I remember water fountains for colored and whites. I remember reastrooms for whites and coloreds.
Heck, I remember trash wagons pulled by two horses and ice wagons pulled by one. :)
But Marx DID say it, right? And he DID support Free Trade, right?
I all but tremble asking, given the odd assortment of pantomines and back-flips in response, to date... but: you do actually comprehend what the word "discredited" means in this context, yes...?
Destroy it, join it with latin american cutlure, same difference, it will be gone just the same.
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