CAFTA: Last Nail in the Coffin?

The American Conservative ^ | May 9, 2005 Issue | Patrick J. Buchanan

[A. Pole]

With U.S. prisons filling up with aliens, 10 million illegals here and counting, Californians fleeing east, savage Salvadorian gangs battling with machetes inside the Beltway, and Minutemen headed for the Arizona border, Rip Van Republican has awakened to the threat of open borders. Meanwhile, the White House dozes on.

But just as the chickens are coming home to roost on the Bush failure to defend America’s frontier, so they will soon be coming home on Bush’s embrace of free-trade fanaticism.

As I write, the Department of Commerce has just released the trade deficit numbers for February. Again, the monthly trade deficit set a record, $61 billion. In January-February 2005, the annual U.S. trade deficit was running $100 billion above the all-time record of $617 billion in 2004.

In the mail this week came the annual graphs and tables from Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, who has patiently chronicled the decline and fall of the once-awesome U.S. industrial machine. Since 1992, when some of us urged the president’s father not to grant MFN to China, the returns are these:

• Between 1993 and 2004, the U.S. trade deficit with Beijing grew 700 percent to $162 billion.
• In the last decade, China’s total trade surplus at U.S. expense was $805 billion.
• China’s leading exports to us, which account for almost half her $162 billion trade surplus, came from shipments of computers, electrical machinery, and parts.
• Leading U.S. exports to China (Boeing alone excepted) were, in ascending order: meat, meat offal, fibers, ore, slag, ash, organic chemicals, fertilizers, copper, cereals, raw hides, skins, pulp of wood, cotton, and the big seller—oil seeds and oleaginous fruits (soybeans). All very, very high-tech stuff.

China’s surplus, the largest one nation has ever run against another, provides her with the hoard of cash to buy Russian and Western weaponry to menace Taiwan and the 7th Fleet and pile up the T-bills that give Beijing the leverage it enjoys today over the sinking U.S. dollar and shaky U.S. prosperity.

In the 1993 battle of NAFTA, the Clinton-Gore-Dole-Gingrich globalists predicted our trade surplus with Mexico would grow, Mexico would prosper, and illegal immigration would be easier to control. Either they deceived us, or they deceived themselves. For since NAFTA passed:

• The U.S. trade surplus with Mexico has vanished and the annual trade deficit is now running above $50 billion a year.
• The cumulative trade deficit with Mexico is now over $300 billion.
• 1.5 million illegal aliens are caught each year crossing our border and 500,000 make it in to take up residence and enjoy all the social programs a generous but over-taxed America can provide.

With Chrysler now a German company, GM and Ford down to less than half the U.S. auto market, and GM paper looking like Argentine bonds, Americans now import $188 billion worth of autos, trucks, and parts, three times what we export. Motown is no more king of the road.

With three million manufacturing jobs lost under Bush, the U.S. dollar looking like Monopoly money, trade deficits exploding, and our dependence on foreigners for oil, the critical components of our weapons, and the cash to finance our insatiable appetite for consumer goods all growing, one would think even Bush Republicans might pause before taking another great leap forward into a future of global free trade. One would be wrong.

For CAFTA, son of NAFTA, is at hand: the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The White House will bring it up, but only if enough Republicans can be bamboozled into going along. In return for access to our market, we get access to five Central American markets and the Dominican Republic—with a total economy the size of New Haven’s—47 million consumers, half of whom are living in poverty by their standards.

The highest per capita income in Central America is $9,000 a year in Costa Rica, which is less than the U.S. minimum wage. But CAFTA will enable agribusiness and transnational companies to set up shop in Central America to dump into the U.S. and drive our last family farmers out of business and kill our last manufacturing jobs in textile and apparel.

If there are any Reagan Democrats left still loyal to the GOP, CAFTA may see them off. For if the GOP passes CAFTA over Democratic opposition, Hillary’s party may just be able to take back North Carolina, Ohio, and a couple of bright red farm states as well.

[A. Pole]

But CAFTA will enable agribusiness and transnational companies to set up shop in Central America to dump into the U.S. and drive our last family farmers out of business and kill our last manufacturing jobs in textile and apparel.

What is little know fact US/transnational companies are driving millions of Mexican farmers out of their villages. This displaced people flood Mexican/US cities and bring displacing pressure on millions of Mexican city workers.

[Dane]

With Chrysler now a German company

Yeah Pat, by a company from whose car you used to drive, Mercedes-Benz.

Anyway, more sky is fallling rhetoric from the liberals favorite conservative, pat buchanan.

[ARA]

how are they driving them out... I don't doubt you just don't know what you are referencing..

[staytrue]

GM and Ford down to less than half the U.S. auto market

FYI, the author drives a mercedes and GM's new cars are a joke.

GM always had crappy minivans with the Honda Odessey and Chryslers being the best. Their new minivan is a new design that still does not measure up to the old honda's and chryslers.

The Aveo is a tin can better to be exported to somewhere else or to sell to car rental companies offering 19.95 per day. The cobalt is a good car at a good price buy why put a rear spoiler on an inexpensive reliable car that you would rather have other people NOT notice you are driving.

Only the old pontiac vibe (toyota matrix in disguise) and the buick rendezvous (not state of the art but made in mexico and a good value for what you get) are priced appropriately.

[Dog Gone]

The main feature of CAFTA is the elimination of tariffs on US exports, something which is clearly in our interest. But there's not much point in using logic or facts with protectionists.

[KevinDavis]

I did not know that.. Thanks for the info!

[TheSpottedOwl]

What is little know fact US/transnational companies are driving millions of Mexican farmers out of their villages. This displaced people flood Mexican/US cities and bring displacing pressure on millions of Mexican city workers.

Very disturbing on several different levels. Are we exporting raw materials to China, so they can produce high end products to export back to us? I haven't kept up with trade deficts in quite a while, so I'm shocked by the numbers.

[A. Pole]

how are they driving them out...

Mexican farmers or peasants before free trade made modest living by selling their products while being protected by tariffs. Now they cannot compete with industrial agrobusiness.

I don't doubt you just don't know what you are referencing..

It is impressive how little doubts if any the freetraders have.

[1rudeboy]

Mexican farmers or peasants before free trade made modest living by selling their products while being protected by tariffs. Now they cannot compete with [American] industrial agrobusiness.

Rock on, ADM. Rock on, Cargill.

[junta]

The "Free Traders" are down to dogma and charges of heresy, they are the Jesse Jackson's of the economic sphere. The driver of our new paradigm economy is vendor financing of our purchases, think Lucent and the dot-coms. For the most part this dogmatic adherence to free trade is promulgated by think tank whores and the salesmen for multi-nationals and to each their day is coming. By their logic I could H1-B them out of a job, if they can outsource the tech industry they can outsource the fools who brought this about.

[Nowhere Man]

The "Free Traders" are down to dogma and charges of heresy, they are the Jesse Jackson's of the economic sphere. The driver of our new paradigm economy is vendor financing of our purchases, think Lucent and the dot-coms. For the most part this dogmatic adherence to free trade is promulgated by think tank whores and the salesmen for multi-nationals and to each their day is coming. By their logic I could H1-B them out of a job, if they can outsource the tech industry they can outsource the fools who brought this about.

I remember a quote from another forum I'm on, Audio Karma, an old radio/TV forum (I'm a radio geek/ham radio operator) where it went something like this, "we used to make money by making things, now we make money on money, something is wrong with that." I'd like to ask a lot of these think tank people if they had times where they were out of work, worrying about where the money is coming from to pay the bills and so on. They need to come down to the frontlines where the battle is being fought. My aunt used to say, "every dog has his day." Personally, I think these guys are just as bad as the lefty think tankers, both live in isolation of the real world.

[neutrino]

Good post. That being said, a great many people here will ignore or ridicule it. I think they fail to grasp the possibility that a great many voters are dissatisfied with the consequences of free traitin'.

[1rudeboy]

That being said, a great many people here will ignore or ridicule it.

I believe "ridicule" is more accurate.

[teg_76]

What?????

Lets talk facts then....did you know the whole Central American Market is less than that of Connecticut?? Yeah that's such a lucrative market for our products....

The only thing CAFTA does is allow our companies to leave the US and manufacture in Central America without any penalty.

Wake up people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look at our trade deficit and its exponential growth...this can't go on forever.

[1rudeboy]

Mexican farmers or peasants before free trade made modest living by selling their products while being protected by tariffs. Now they cannot compete with industrial agrobusiness.

While I am touched by your concern for Mexican peasants, please consider that, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative:

In 1993, before NAFTA, American exporters who wanted to sell to Mexico faced trade barriers of about 10 percent, nearly five times the 2 percent rate that the United States. imposed on Mexican goods. With NAFTA, Mexico's average tariff has already fallen to about 2 percent, creating more export opportunities for American farmers.

--Two-way trade between the United States and Mexico increased more than 55 percent since 1994, reaching more than $11.6 billion.

--Record levels of exports to Mexico in 2000 include red meats, processed fruits and vegetables, poultry meat, snack foods, fresh fruits, feeds and fodder and rice. This broad cross section of commodities suggests the benefits of the NAFTA are widely distributed across United States agriculture.

--U.S. pork producers credit NAFTA with their gains in market share in Mexico for pork products, which increased 130 percent between 1994 and 2000.

From 1993-2000:

--U.S. soybean volume exports doubled to Mexico.

--U.S. beef and veal volume exports increased nearly five-fold to Mexico.

--U.S. corn volume exports increased eighteen-fold to Mexico. Mexico chose to expedite its market openings for corn under NAFTA, to provide lower cost food to its increasingly urban population and to ensure it had sufficient animal feed.

[eskimo]

Anyway, more sky is fallling rhetoric from the liberals favorite conservative, pat buchanan.

It must really irk you that he has been mostly correct about the affects of this phoney "free trade" nonsense over the years and you have been completly wrong. LOL.