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.

[1rudeboy]

Lets talk facts then....did you know the whole Central American Market is less than that of Connecticut??

No, I didn't. Let's talk facts, then . . . starting with a source.

[Dog Gone]

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

There isn't any penalty now. CAFTA allow US goods to be sold there without a tariff imposed on them. Explain to me how that is a bad thing.

[Dane]

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

Yeah were back to the era of the Depression(exacerbated by the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, BTW) in 2005(/sarcasm)

[eskimo]

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

How much went each way?

[1rudeboy]

I found some information that the CAFTA-DR region accounts for some-odd 15 billion dollars' worth of U.S. exports per year. If anyone can find the size the "Connecticut market," please post for comparison. I tried, but I cannot.

With [the] addition of the Dominican Republic, CAFTA will become the second-largest U.S. export market in Latin America, behind only Mexico, buying more than $15 billion in U.S. exports. That exceeds U.S. exports to Russia, India, and Indonesia combined. The two-way trade amounts to some $32 billion.

Source

[1rudeboy]

Why do you ask? Do you feel that our exports fell?

[You Dirty Rats]

Bush’s embrace of free-trade fanaticism.

Pat's calling the President a fanatic? That's pretty funny.

Pat should run for President again. Maybe in 2008 he can get 0.45% instead of the 0.42% that he got in 2000.

Anyway, CAFTA will happen for the following reasons:

The second richest zipcode in the entire country for the GWB Campaign was 45243, which includes Indian Hill just outside Cincinnati.

The Congressman who represents this district is Rob Portman, who has been nominated as US Trade Rep.

The host of the fund raisers in 45243 is Carl Lindner, owner of the Cincinnati Reds and Chiquita Banana.

Chiquita gets its bananas from Central America.

Uncle Carl's money speaks louder than Pat and his brigades.

Too bad Pat, but your brigades are no match for billions of bananas. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

[Penner]

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.

Go Pat Go!

[You Dirty Rats]

One more thing -- Carl Lindner also owns the majority of AMTRAK Common stock (although control is vested w/ the preferred held by Uncle Sam) -- so anyone who supports trains is also supporting one of the biggest free trade advocates in the country. (Does Willie Green prefer trains or tariffs? Inquiring minds want to know!)

[eskimo]

Yeah were back to the era of the Depression(exacerbated by the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, BTW) in 2005(/sarcasm)

Yeah, I know, now your telling us the sky is falling because there is not enough phoney "free trade". All that old "free traitors" propaganda isn't worth trying any more, history has dispelled that old Marxist utopian myth you embrace

[Dane]

All that old "free traitors" propaganda isn't worth trying any more, history has dispelled that old Marxist utopian myth you embrace

Yeah I really embrace the closed market of marxist stalwart kim il-jung of North Korea.

Esk, your igloo is melting, IMO.

[eskimo]

Yeah I really embrace the closed market of marxist stalwart kim il-jung of North Korea.

I guess that was meant as a silly distraction in lieu of a rationl response.

Tell us all how 100s of thousands of pages of international law and a gang of international corporate appointed bureaucrats with dictatorial power to enforce those laws is going to give us "free trade". Should not real free trade be zero pages of regulatory nonsense and no interference from any aspiring global government Marxist type administrators?

[dljordan]

" Rock on, ADM. Rock on, Cargill"

Yeah, rock on Cargill. The local Cargill plant has a horde of illegals working there. The management seems to be American though and I guess that's good.

[LjubivojeRadosavljevic]

["With three million manufacturing jobs lost under Bush,..."]

Yes, Pat Buchanan doesn't seem (or want) to understand the fact that free trade, at its core, has never been about "jobs jobs jobs".

Rather, free trade is about providing the consumer with high quality products produced and sold at the cheapest price (period).

[meadsjn]

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

NAFTA in Mexico: Lessons for a Central American Free Trade Agreement

{ snip }
NAFTA and Labor in Mexico

• Blows to the rural agricultural sector under liberalization have not necessarily been offset by increased employment in urban areas. Under NAFTA, Mexico has seen a dramatic expansion of maquiladoras, with these plants contributing to 35% of all new manufacturing employment between 1995 and 1999. However, jobs were lost during the same period, as factories that had previously supplied inputs to exporters were replaced by foreign suppliers. On balance, employment in the manufacturing sector fell 9.4% between 1993 and 2000, as the loss in supply-chain jobs overtook growth in the maquiladora industry.⁵
• Even in sectors that experienced job growth under NAFTA, wages and purchasing power fell. According to a report issued by the office of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo in 2000, incomes of salaried workers in Mexico fell by 25% between 1993 and 1998. While some of this decline can be attributed to the peso crisis Mexico experienced in 1995, even wages in maquiladoras—a rapidly expanding sector of the economy—fell by 21% during this period. Moreover, the purchasing power of the minimum wage fell by 17.9% through 1999.⁶

[eskimo]

Rather, free trade is about providing the consumer with high quality products produced and sold at the cheapest price (period).

I think the point is that the idea is good but the present implementation is phoney nonsense. See #32. What would be your answer?

[Sam the Sham]

More hard, unpleasant facts that the usual free trade at all costs shills can't dispute.

[neutrino]

I believe "ridicule" is more accurate.

Remember what I said about voters.

[A. Pole]

I believe "ridicule" is more accurate.

See my tagline!

[Happy2BMe]

CAFTA: Last Nail in the Coffin?

(CAFTA and NAFTA "AGREEMENTS" have never worked - and never will. These are wholesale giveaways.)