Posted on 05/24/2005 7:08:18 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
It really matters where the jobs that Americans lose go. That's what CAFTA is about. It's not about destroying textile jobs in the Carolinas. They're history, anyway--if not this year, then in five years. CAFTA is about keeping work in our hemisphere that would otherwise go to China.
The Central American Free Trade Agreement would cut tariffs on commerce among the United States, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. The Dominican Republic, which is in the Caribbean, also wants to join.
Though President Bush is battling hard for the accord, some observers declare it all but dead. The generally pro-trade New Democrat Coalition has just jumped ship. But new Democrats should think again and back CAFTA. So should old Democrats.
Organized labor doesn't want to hear this defeatist talk about managing losses. That's understandable. But while labor has been dealt a bad hand, it still must play the cards. That means choosing the least bad of bad options.
Some labor critics point to NAFTA as a reason to shoot down CAFTA. The 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement covered the United States, Canada and Mexico. Foes of these accords note, for example, that there were 127,000 textile and apparel jobs in South Carolina before NAFTA. Now there are 48,000.
The truth is, the United States was bleeding these kinds of factory jobs decades before NAFTA. And it's unclear how large a part NAFTA has played in the years since.
Many of these jobs were not sucked down to Mexico but over to China and other Asian countries. And of the lost jobs that can be traced to Mexico, how many would have simply gone to China instead, had it not been for NAFTA? Even Mexico has seen factories move to China.
Labor-intensive industries in America continue to fight a hopeless war against competitors paying pennies-an-hour wages. The futility of it all can be seen in the following numbers, provided by A.T. Kearney, a consulting firm:
It costs $135 to make 12 pairs of cotton trousers in the United States. It costs $57 to make the trousers in China and ship them here. It costs $69 to do so in other parts of the world.
In this business, the United States is clearly out of the running. But many low-wage countries are still contenders with China--especially if they can ship their products here tariff-free.
Americans would be better off if their imports came from Managua, rather than Guangdong. After all, our Latin neighbors are more likely to buy the things we have to sell. That's why farmers producing beef, pork and corn are all for these treaties. So are U.S. companies that make machinery, especially for construction.
Then there are foreign-policy considerations. CAFTA partners would include very poor countries with fragile democracies. More trade with the United States could stabilize them--and reduce the pressures on their people to come here illegally. And if the workers make more money, they'll be able to buy more American goods.
Some Democrats argue that these poor countries compete by exploiting their workers. Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., for example, opposes the accord because, he says, "the basic rights of working people in Central America are systematically repressed."
He has it backward. Economic desperation creates the conditions for oppression. Workers are strongest where jobs are plentiful. CAFTA could empower workers and lift them from grinding poverty.
Rather than protect jobs that will eventually leave America, labor and its Democratic allies should protect the people who lose them. Trade Adjustment Assistance is a federal program that offers financial help and training for Americans who lose jobs because of imports.
Democrats complain that the program is underfunded, and they are right. So why not make more money for Trade Adjustment Assistance a bargaining chip to win support for CAFTA?
There's no exit door out of this global economy. Parts of the American economy will do well in it; other parts will not. Free trade in the Americas is about joining with our neighbors in a common defense against China's growing power. Those are the true stakes, and fighting futile battles will only distract us from what matters.
No.
CAFTA etc
is about implementing the tyrannical, satanic, globalist world government as fast as the puppet masters and stooges can arrange it.
step by inexorable step.
All the rest is noise, smoke, mirrors and MSM BS.
We are still curious if you are receiving a Pell grant.
If we only could get a protectionist to admit, just one, that trade is not a zero-sum game.
CAFTA is merely a stepping stone to the FTAA and eventually an EU type organization of the Western Hemisphere. If you like what NAFTA has done for us, you'll love CAFTA.
I'm not sure I understand this, but yes, if they are American consumers, they will benefit from what they purchase, my post freely admitted that SOME will lose jobs, this will happen with or without free trade.
Like the taxpayer who now has another bureacracy to fund?
The bureacracy in place now to implement and enforce tariffs is not FREE to the American taxpayer, and in addition costs us as consumers. The bureacracy now in place for NAFTA I would presume to be a good deal smaller, and is in place for CAFTA.
Like the citizen who wishes to preserve his sovereignty and the supremacy of the US constitution and not become part of a socialist superstate with the likes of communist Venezuela, Bolivia and the M13 El Salvadorans?
I don't think a FREE TRADE AGREEMENT exposes us to such an outcome, whereas economic isolationism could easily allow the anti-capitalists within our country to win the upper hand.
"Its about creating a global socialist western hemisphere using the classic communist technique of CAUSING A CRISIS, then offering a SOLUTION that is the predetermined outcome of the CRISIS."
Hegelian dialectic? (sp?)
A good number of them keep right on hating us after they get here too. La Raza, Mecha, etc.
Lots of people come here from the Middle East and that is another region that hates us. Just because they don't like us does not mean they are too proud to suck on the taxpayer teat.
THose people are Mexicans from Mexico. I asked about El Centrl America, an entirely different place with it's own history.
But in order to stop you from insisting on turning this conversation in the direction of a pig-sty, let me state for the record that I have not received a Pell Grant ever. Well, there is a possibilty that I may have received one in the early 1980's, but I'm not planning to dig through my records to satisfy your desperate wish to muddy the subject that I intend to discuss here. Satisfied? Go drink some coffee and think of a new tack.
La Raza embraces all Hispanics. Check their web site. But I did say "etc". Their are lots of these organizations and they generally are not to thrilled with America the way they found it.
Another South American state has elected a Leftist!
Socialist Uruguay dawns
By Kelly Hearn
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20050523-094154-5552r.htm
"Leading a party that includes Marxist Tupamaro guerrillas who battled the Uruguayan state in the 1960s and '70s, Mr. Vazquez began his term by reactivating diplomatic ties with Cuba that had been cut by President Jorge Batlle, a Washington ally from the centrist Colorado Party."
The steel mills in NW Indiana and E. Chicago are rockin'. Sorry about Pittsburgh. Say if CAFTA-DR makes Pittsburgh steel cheaper in those countries, will you reconsider? [chuckle]
GREAT!
Sign me up.
A Marxist bloc? I thought at least a few of those countries were democracies. You prefer China which is 100% Marxist bloc?
Like promote our economic growth, lower our unemployment rate, raise our wages, and otherwise increase our standard of living? Sign me up.
La Raza has dreams.
Mexicans are generally hated by people from El Centrl America. They are too rich, too arrogant, to unforgiving. When Hondurans or Nicraguans (for example) move to Mexico just to work, the Mexicans ship them North, at their own expense, to try to cross the very dangerous desert between Mexico and Arizona.
And your response is to have the GOVERNMENT (your caps) decide which jobs should be saved. Sheesh.
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