Sides forming over Central American free-trade agreement, CAFTA hearings to Begin

Sun-Sentinel ^ | 01.27.05 | Shawna Gamache

[Coleus]

WASHINGTON · Congress is gearing up for a battle royal this winter over a pact to slash trade barriers with Dominican Republic and five Central American countries.

Backers of the U.S.-Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement, known as CAFTA, sent lawmakers letters Wednesday urging speedy passage to help expand U.S. sales overseas.

The Bush administration seeks congressional hearings as soon as mid-February and approval by summer.

The opposition is lobbying hard too, from organized labor to the American sugar industry. The AFL-CIO and other labor groups have held back firepower against other free-trade pacts, aiming their biggest guns at CAFTA.

There's one more hitch: Guatemala. The Guatemalan Congress passed a law the U.S. pharmaceutical industry considers a rollback of patent protections in CAFTA. Until Guatemala reverses the measure, showing that U.S. trade partners will respect the pact, proponents concede they won't be able to muster the votes for CAFTA.

"We are optimistic that it will be resolved," said Calman J. Cohen, a CAFTA advocate and president of the Emergency Committee for American Trade. "Guatemala's neighbors have been saying: `You're holding up the agreement for all of us.'"

Proponents are racing against the clock.

The deadline expires this summer on the president's power to propose complex trade pacts that Congress can accept or reject without amendment -- a power called trade promotion authority. Congress could pass a resolution denying Bush a chance to extend that power for two more years.

The Business Coalition for U.S.-Central America Trade met with 23 key members of the House this week to push CAFTA, among them U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Bartow).

"We will focus initially on the House, but we're not taking the Senate for granted," said coalition member Cohen.

[Coleus]

Milton Friedman said of Nafta: Nafta is not free trade, it is "managed" trade. >>

I like their foundation. Is there information about NAFTA on his website? I thought they were mostly into education issues.

[JustAnotherSavage]

I've never looked at the website. I got his quote from a Cspan airing 10 years ago about a discussion on NAFTA.

[Coleus]

1000+ page documents are not free trade. >>



Right on

[1rudeboy]

Milton Friedman said of Nafta: Nafta is not free trade, it is "managed" trade.

Do you have a source for this, or an idea of context? Just curious.

[1rudeboy]

We have had our food security impaired because under NAFTA rejection of low standard or contaminated produce can be considered a trade violation, where before NAFTA it was only a health and safety issue.

Name one example of this. One.

[1rudeboy]

Here's a portion of the relevant NAFTA text:

Article 904: Basic Rights and Obligations

Right to Take Standards-Related Measures

1. Each Party may, in accordance with this Agreement, adopt, maintain and apply standards-related measures, including those relating to safety, the protection of human, animal and plant life and health, the environment, and consumers, and measures to ensure their enforcement or implementation. Such measures include those to prohibit the importation of a good of another Party or the provision of a service by a service provider of another Party that fails to comply with the applicable requirements of such measures or to complete its approval procedures.

Right to Establish Level of Protection

2. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Chapter, each Party may, in pursuing its legitimate objectives of safety or the protection of human, animal or plant life or health, the environment, or consumers, establish the levels of protection that it considers appropriate in accordance with Article 907(3) [arbitrary distinctions prohibited].