Posted on 07/18/2005 7:52:21 AM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
The proposed trade pact is fatally flawed in its present form
A current radio commercial urges Alabamians to oppose CAFTA "because CAFTA rhymes with NAFTA" and references the opposition to NAFTA of H. Ross Perot, the erstwhile presidential candidate who once claimed President George H.W. Bush was plotting to disrupt Perot's daughter's wedding.
No, that ad doesn't give you much meat to chew on. Anyone who would oppose the Central American Free Trade Agreement (or CAFTA-DR, now that leaders in the Dominican Republic have come aboard) on the basis of that sound byte isn't thinking things through.
But within the complicated legislation are very good reasons for Americans to withhold their support. Some involve border security.
To start with, the proposal that the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on this month has to be up or down. That might be a good idea on federal court nominees, but the notion that a trade document can't be amended by representatives of different constituencies across the country should raise red flags.
And CAFTA has other problems. What it primarily does is ease the way for investors to come into poor countries and make them poorer. Laws that help strengthen local economies take back seats to international business' needs. Problems between nations and business will be decided by secret panels, with business holding the upper hand. Local efforts to protect the environment and improve the lots of workers, particularly women, will be stymied.
Proponents make much of the fact that ending produce tariffs will help U.S. farmers. What will happen, however, is that Central American family farms will no longer be able to compete. Those who live on the land must find work elsewhere - primarily the United States.
The giant sucking sound from Mexico, thanks to NAFTA, is the United States sucking in an estimated 600 poverty-stricken peasants a day who can no longer eke out a marginal existence in their homeland. Yes, it may take workers longer to get from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, et al., to our borders, but if CAFTA passes, they are coming.
In an opinion-page column for The Washington Post, U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., says that a free-trade agreement with Central America "must be to expand markets and raise living standards, not promote a race to the bottom."
CAFTA promises more bottom-feeding - not just for working people in Central America but for many in the United States as well.
It's another license to outsource, to run roughshod over people already living on the margins, to do to other another region what has been done to labor in Mexico.
The proposal needs to be reworked. This is another area where bipartisan efforts are needed. As it stands, CAFTA will mostly benefit only the very rich, the very powerful and the very greedy - and should be rejected.
We'll get CAFTA, or the North American Community, or both whether we like it or not.
The game is rigged. Rational people can't vote democrat and the pubs are driving us over the cliff, too.
Say Yes to CAFTA.
I send off e-mails to my reps daily asking them to say no to CAFTA.
That's funny.. i e-mailed my reps and told them to vote YES for CAFTA.
CAFTA may or may not be a good agreement, but it's a smoke-sceen when they oppose all trade and advocate government control of employment and government set prices.
Yet strangely I find that I couldn't care less what you think.
What a vapant and danely thing to say.
LOL...and just plain suppeft too!
Why? Because I support CAFTA?
It's okay for you guys to e-mail your congressmen and tell them how to vote, but it's unacceptable for me to do so??
Explain.
Hahaaa, I agree!
No. It's just that illegal immigrants aren't permitted to vote.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear.
I never explain anything.
I am saying:
NO to CAFTA and revoke NAFTA even at this moment in letters and postcards to my Representative and Senators, with copies to my State representatives as well.
I never explain anything
Well at least you are being truthful in a clintonesque way.
Sure. Thats what FDI does. All that money pouring into a country makes it poorer. What an idiot. The author should stick to writing obit's and stay away from subjects he knows nothing about.
Problems between nations and business will be decided by secret panels, with business holding the upper hand. Local efforts to protect the environment and improve the lots of workers, particularly women, will be stymied.
Tin foil time. He did, however, forget to include children along with women being hurt most. Unmitigated MSM BS.
Proponents make much of the fact that ending produce tariffs will help U.S. farmers. What will happen, however, is that Central American family farms will no longer be able to compete.
I wish these guys would get their story straight once and for all. One week they tell us our farmers can't compete with the slave wages of the CAFTA-DR countries and will surely be ruined. The next week they tell us the CAFTA-DR is going to drive all the CAFTA-DR farmers across our boarders even though the tariffs are removed over a 15 year period for exactly this reason. Which is it?
Consistently inconsistent. I guess the propaganda is good for ginning up opposition.
Actually, both claims are true.
Latin American countries typically place restrictions on foreign ownership of property.
CAFTA is all about lifting those restrictions and securing property rights for transnational corporations.
Economies of scale will enable the transnationals to drive the much smaller, Latin American family farmers off their land, offering them meager wages as laborers if they choose to stick around. And the transnational exports to the U.S. will also undermine our domestic farmers.
And continue to buy stuff from China, and get nuke threats from them.
NAFTA delivered tremendous benefits to American food producers despite those who were saying the same thing you are now:
To understand how much NAFTA has benefited U.S. exporters, compare our export performance to Canada and Mexico since 1994 with our performance to the rest of the world. The difference is startling. Between 1994 and 2005, global U.S. agricultural exports have increased from $46.2 billion to a projected $60.5 billion, a total gain of $14.3 billion. During the same period, exports to Canada and Mexico increased from $9.5 billion to a projected level of $19 billion in 2005, a gain of $9.5 billion. This means that our NAFTA partners – Canada and Mexico – now account for 31 percent of overall U.S. agricultural exports and two-thirds of the worldwide increase in U.S. exports since 1994. Of that $9.5 billion increase, $5 billion was to Canada and $4.5 billion to Mexico. As a result, in 2005, they will be our two largest export markets in the world and, along with China, our fastest growing markets since 1994 - by a wide margin
Myths Regarding the Impact of NAFTA on U.S. Agricultural Trade
Inefficient family farms in the CAFTA-DR countries will probably not survive over the 15 year lead in. Being protected from competition provides no benefits to anyone. The net result however, will be greater variety and lower prices for consumers. The lead in period for tariff removal provides the affected governments time to deal with any short-run disruptions.
....me too....more dollars in U.S.....lower prices on products...sounds like a winner to me....
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