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How important? Give me some numbers to put them in perspective.

Naw....I think I'll allow you to defend your position that $15 billion is not a lot of money and that thousands of jobs don't matter.

Considering that the jobs that purportedly would be created by CAFTA don't even exist yet, it's hard for me to take that comment seriously.

You're the one who suggested that $15 billion in trade with the CAFTA-DR countries was nothing significant By the way, that $15 billion annually - is that even 1/10 of 1% of our GDP? and equating their economies to that of South Central LA...no, nothing pejorative there, eh?

Would eliminating tariffs on American goods in the CAFTA-DR countries increase exports or not? The American Farm Bureau says that CAFTA will increase sales of American food products by $1.5 billion a year. Those products do not currently have access to the CAFTA-DR countries. That's just one product category. Do these increases in sales create new jobs? Only someone with no knowledge of business could claim that they won't.

You have no idea what it takes to create products or services that will generate $15 billion in sales. If you had any kind of clue you wouldn't be so flippant.

One of your allies on this thread posted a link in an attempt to show that CAFTA would be nothing to worry about. I quoted from it at #164

Do you even know what Wikipedia is? I can write anything I want to in Wikipedia and they will post it. It's a good place for general information but not a great place for facts.

Here are some more reliable sources for info on CAFTA other than Wikipedia:

The CAFTA Briefing Book
CAFTA and U.S. Sovereignty
The Case for CAFTA

The talking pints don't hold water. I.e., "trade in services" licensing regulations will be regarded as "discriminatory trade barriers". "Intent" will be inferred by their simple existence. All it will take is for any one to bring the action.

So while the agreement itself does not immediately effectuate the destruction of the State's regulatory role, or U.S. sovereignty, it will be implemented gradually piecemeal pursuant the tribunal litigation. The talking points are not what is actually going to happen. They aren't prophets, and the "good intentions" don't count for a hill of beans even if they were honest. But they most likely aren't being honest...or else those "trade in services" clauses wouldn't be there.