USA : Trade hopes soar as CAFTA goes through the final lap

CAFTA is on its road to fructification with the Bush administration trying to drum support for the pact from business and political leaders in the Carolinas. If it musters enough support, the deal, seen as a referendum on Bush's trade agenda, could go to Congress as early as this month for final approval.

The CAFTA agreement calls for end of import taxes or duties on products like pharmaceuticals, clothing and cars.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Thursday the agreement with five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic would bring North Carolina $730 million in increased output across industries, or $162 million in increased earnings, and create 5,375 jobs after its first year of implementation.

Supporters quote the CAFTA region as the United States' second-largest Latin American export market behind Mexico. U.S. exports to CAFTA countries in 2003 topped $15 billion, according to the Commerce Department. North Carolina was the nation's second-largest exporter to CAFTA countries in 2003, accounting for 11 percent, or $1.7 billion, of U.S. exports.

For factories in the Carolinas and nationwide this would spell more business. Notably, South Carolina ranked 11th with $303.5 million. Textiles and apparel cover over three-fourths of N.C. exports to CAFTA countries. In South Carolina, those goods account for more than half of CAFTA exports.

The CAFTA if implemented will develop partnership between Carolinas and other U.S. fabric makers and Caribbean sewing factories that would in turn provide American mills one of the largest stakes in its outcome. US clothing makers will be able to compete with lower-cost imports from China and other distant countries say its supporters.

This is going to be an important development since textile and apparel import limits ended Jan. 1, allowing China and 39 other countries to ship unlimited amounts of goods to US stores.

CAFTA is a 'free' trade agreement that includes the United States, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica. Dominican Republic joined the five Central American countries in historic FTA with US in August, last year.

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

Online Letter to Congress – Oppose CAFTA

Preserve Our Jobs, Our Borders, Our Independence: Oppose CAFTA!

Your influence is urgently needed to give Congress the backbone to resist dangerous trade agreements that would further threaten our national borders, our jobs, and our nation’s independence. As a first step, please read the sample letter opposing the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) at the link below, then send that letter (or your own version) to your congressman and two U.S. senators. Then send this message to others in your circle of influence so that they can do likewise.

The CAFTA trade agreement is merely a steppingstone to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which presents an even more serious threat to both our national borders and our national independence. The European-Union style FTAA is being deceptively promoted as an effort to increase prosperity through free trade. Instead, this revolutionary proposal would expand NAFTA to set up new layers of socialist regulation to which all nations of this hemisphere would have to submit.

As the peoples of Europe are discovering, their original so-called “free trade” bloc, the Common Market, was but a steppingstone to a merger of their nations under a regional government, with a common currency, a European central bank, a European army, and no enforcement of common borders.

Click Here to Read and Send the CAFTA Letter

Good grief, Coleus; that report sounded like it came from the giddy champagne party hosted by the people most likely to benefit from this heist. "Here's to the little people and their not soiling your shoes overly much while you shortchange their futures."

Here's something I was saving for a stand-alone:

CAFTA isn't some Motor Sports designation. From the Public Citizen site (are they still good? So hard to keep up):

"The Central American Free Trade Agreement (known as CAFTA) is a proposed agreement between the United States and five Central American nations (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua). It was signed May 28, and the next step is a vote in Congress. At that point, CAFTA may be combined with a proposed U.S.-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement. CAFTA is a piece in the FTAA jigsaw puzzle and is based on the same failed neoliberal NAFTA model. Its passage would serve to push ahead the corporate globalization model that has caused the "race to the bottom" in labor and environmental standards and would promote privatization and deregulation of key public services."

Don't miss the"Latino groups oppose CAFTA" link there if you have a PDF reader; it's worth the load time to see paths converge.

I'm all for making money above board. Allowing high party contributors to perpetuate the misery that NAFTA has wreaked on Mexico would be criminal, considering we have already become the world's petri dish of alien mutation while most of our citizens are muzzled by Political Correctness. The EU is avidly watching the effects of our country's invasion by unskilled and under-educated labor. They have their own problems with encamped enclaves of "guest workers" demanding rights by their very presence with the eager help of those nation's traitors. The EU has the added onus/problem concerning their new guests' adherence to Islam.

Canada is especially plagued by their non-judgemental approach to immigration standards. It seems Islamist tribes have carved out little sections of Canada and declared themselves "Islamic Enclaves" where Sha'ria(sp) Law is supercedent over all others.

We ourselves have enough problems trying to make our representatives represent us when big money is calling to them over mysterious byways. Perpetuating the same sweatshop labor practices as China does in it's hemisphere reduces the United States' stature in the world in a brutally unforgivable way. Without the strength of moral precedent our country could be rapidly overwhelmed by a combined and determined coalition in this cobblestone reality of a slowly forming world governance (insert tinfoil reference here).

Most seriously, we deserve better protection and less consideration for our enemy's concerns considering the overall money our government gobbles. Ivy league polliwogs have saturated the media with their gilded malarkey about overall benefits of allowing parasitism while never knowing the tough decisions working parents are having to make for their meager progeny while the illegal neighbors are perpetually expanding their families knowing that our system will take care of them (Vicente' Fox even bragged about this in an EU speech). Fox went even further by chastising the United States for opposing the growth of different nationalisms within it.

How amenable are the illegal population to being brought into legitimate track-ability, considering that they have far more flexibility and money by staying "underground"?. Our challenge is to find an incentive to make them go home where serious business needs to be conducted. We are, de'facto, harboring every young man needed in his own country's fight against their respective nations' fight against tyranny. Sending them home is the best thing we can do. If we can send them armed we will have tilted the balance from evil.

In the liberal vein, I'm formally calling on the government of Mexico to come to an intervention. I'll be the guy holding the rubber hose of realistic expectations.

"Instead, this revolutionary proposal would expand NAFTA to set up new layers of socialist regulation to which all nations of this hemisphere would have to submit."

That is a bunch of communist doublespeak! NAFTA, CAFTA, and the FTAA are going to lower trade barriers and benefit American industries. Yeah, a couple of people might have to take a paycut or see their jobs go to another country. Too bad, because you are not entitled to you job. Either take the paycut, go back to school or start your own business.

This "sovereignty" argument is such a red herring (pun intended). The US voluntarily submits to these treaties (as do the other governments) to create better opportunities for trade. I am so sorry that judicial hellholes like Mississippi will now not be able to discriminate against foriegn competetors to local businesses. Boo Hoo!

Why don't you just take this commie garbage to DU where it belongs?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.