A Laborious AgreementMORE - Visit link
- 06/17/2005
by Dean Kleckner, Truth About Trade and TechnologyI'm happy to announce that the U.S. House of Representative has delivered a resounding victory for free trade. Last week, by a vote of 338-86, members rejected a proposal to withdraw from the World Trade Organization. At a time when political sentiment in Washington seems to be swinging toward protectionism, it is encouraging to see more than three-quarters of the House come down squarely on the side of international commerce.
But the result of the vote was a negative accomplishment--i.e., it avoided a manifest catastrophe, rather than achieving a positive good. As we move ahead, Congress should build on its recent record of expanding free trade with Australia , Jordan , and Morocco . It can do this by approving CAFTA-DR, an important agreement between the United States, Central America, and the Dominican Republic .
President Bush recently identified CAFTA-DR as one of his top legislative priorities. He has linked its passage to national security interests. "CAFTA is more than just a trade agreement," he said on June 6. "It is a signal of the U.S. commitment to democracy and prosperity for our neighbors."
For anybody who remembers the 1980s--a time when our hemisphere was "divided by resentment and false ideologies," as Bush put it--the stability of Central America is nothing to take for granted. The United States must do everything it can to promote freedom in these fledgling democracies. Trade is an excellent way of doing that.
The enemies of CAFTA-DR don't talk about this key point, perhaps because it's so obvious and so indisputable. Instead, they concentrate on the question of labor rights--and their concerns deserve a careful response.
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The New Anti-GlobalistsArticleBy William Finnegan
Exploring the psychology of Seattle, Washington and beyond.Beck was a sophomore at Berkeley, taking a class in international rural development. The daughter of an orthopedic surgeon, she had gone to college planning to do premed, but environmental science caught her interest ...
Beck was a brilliant student"One of these new Renaissance people, so smart they could be almost anything," a former professor of hers recalls. She was intellectually insatiable, and her eagerness to understand the dynamics of economic development propelled her into several academic fields, notably the dry, dizzying politics of international finance and trade.
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Beck had found her strange grand passion--international trade rules--at an auspicious time. Besides the popularity of her class, there were the events last November in Seattle, where fifty thousand demonstrators shut down a major meeting of the World Trade Organization. Beck, who is twenty-seven, was a key organizer of the Seattle protests.
"The Spirit of Seattle," she says, crinkling her eyes and grinning blissfully. "Your body just tingled with hope, to be around so many people so committed to making a better world." Beck says things like "tingled with hope" and "making a better world" with no hint of self-consciousness ...
Truth About Trade and Technology is a pro-free trade organization. If a news entity puts out articles that represent both sides of an issue, you think that somehow negates another persons point of view? Freerepublic has articles from both sides of the CAFTA issue, and in depth discussion. Should its credibility be questioned because of that? Should a person be barred from using Freerepublic as a resource in a discussion because they allow both sides of a discussion to be posted?