Gutknecht hints he'll vote against CAFTA

Gutknecht hints he'll vote against CAFTA

FREDERIC J. FROMMER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Rep. Gil Gutknecht, the last remaining undecided Minnesota lawmaker on the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement, is hinting he'll vote against the deal when it comes up in the House later this week.

Gutknecht has declined recent interview requests on the vote, but in a weekly letter to constituents last Friday, he wrote, "If I were to vote on CAFTA today, I would vote no."

Gutknecht, a Republican from Rochester who generally supports free trade but often bucks his own party, said he agreed with critics that the deal needs to be fixed.

"Unfortunately, we can't amend it here in the House," he said on his radio show on Friday. "We have to either vote for it or it has to be defeated. Now if it's defeated, I think it can be fixed relatively quickly, on about three fronts."

In the constituent letter, Gutknecht said he was worried about language in the proposed deal that would allow international companies to take the United States to a trade tribunal over alleged "unnecessary barriers to trade in services."

"So, preventing a company from bringing in foreign workers could prompt a foreign company to file a trade dispute claim against the United States," he said.

"Another problem is that we are being forced to change our U.S. laws to comply with these free trade agreements," Gutknecht said, citing an export subsidy law Congress rescinded after it was ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization.

He also expressed concern that the deal would let in more sugar than called for in the farm bill. The Bush administration has agreed to offset those increases by either compensating exporting countries for not sending sugar here, or converting the excess sugar into ethanol. But the American sugar industry has remained opposed to the deal, noting the concessions apply only until the end of 2007, when the farm bill expires.

"I don't have a lot of sugar beet growers in my district, but those I do know are just regular folk," Gutknecht said. "They are not the big, bad sugar farmers they are being made out to be. Many have mortgaged their farms to invest in sugar refinery co-ops. They are scared to death that they will lose their farms because of CAFTA."

Phillip Hayes, a spokesman for the American Sugar Alliance, which is leading the effort to derail the deal, said he was happy about Gutknecht's statements.

"Representative Gutknecht recognizes the harm that CAFTA would cause the 46,000 sugar workers and farmers in the Red River Valley," he said. Minnesota is the nation's largest producer of sugar beets.

Officials with the U.S. Trade Representative's office, which is promoting the deal for the Bush administration, and the House Ways and Means Committee, which passed the deal in the House, declined to comment Monday on Gutknecht's statements.

CAFTA would bring six Latin American countries - El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic - into the open U.S. market that now includes Mexico and Canada.

The Senate approved the deal last month, with Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican, voting yes and Minnesota Sen. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, voting no. In the House, all four Democrats from Minnesota are opposed, while the three Republicans besides Gutknecht are in favor. The vote this week in the House is expected to be close.

Who supports the very UNFREE "free trade system", with its corporatist fascist style public/private partnerships? Once again proving that you have a very warped view of economics and what constitutes freedom.

By your definition, the sugar cartel is a fascist enterprise. It meets all the criteria.

That being said, just about every agricultural product and interest in the U.S. is allied against big sugar in their support of CAFTA. Are all these agricultural companies fascists?

You regularly defend the sugar industry (remember you said: government support of the sugar cartel - read: public/private partnership - creates stable prices and supplies). Il Duce would be proud of you. Also remember: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."

Evidently, it is difficult for you to follow instructions. Here is the url found on the official FTAA website. This pretty well explains why Bush hasn't offered a plan to cut welfare nor close our borders.

The Bush administration is following orders as I see it. These little countries are so greedy that they don't want the illegal alien to pay a dime for the transfer of remittances to their countries. Bush has until 2008 to implement this plan.

http://www.summit-americas.org/SpecialSummit/Declarations/Declaration%20of%20Nuevo%20Leon%20-%20final.pdf

The "free trade" system you support isn't free trade. You people ignore the fact that a 600 page agreement bolstered with thousands of pages of additional agreements and rules is NOT free trade, but it is managed trade. Worse, its trade managed at the international level, and completely cuts the average US citizen out of loop which is in defiance of the US Constitution.

We do not have a sugar cartel in this country. You have used any number of slurs and untruths to slur sugar producers in this country. Your kind of inflammatory rhetoric is classic to the Alinski method and the communist technique of demonizing the opposition.

You are telling another untruth when you say every agricultural product and interest is allied against sugar producers.

The sugar industry isn't a public/private partnership.

The GAO says these are:

Build-Own-Operate
Build/Operate/Transfer
Buy-Build Operate
Contract Services Operations and Maintenance
Operations, Maintenance, and Management
Design-Build-Operate
Developer Financing
Enhanced Use Leasing
Lease/Develop/Operate
Lease/Purchase
Sale/Leaseback
Tax-Exempt Lease
Turnkey

Now, the most important thing to me is that the government stop forming public/private partnerships, stop selling out our sovereignty to the internationalists, and follow through with their duty to protect individual rights.

Whatever anyone thinks of the price support program for any agricultural product, the government cannot just go in and write treaties that advantage foreign producers and put Americans out of jobs.

If you have such a problem with the sugar producers tell your congressman, but when the government has been working with them on one hand, enjoining them to build up the sugar production facilities then on the other bankrupts them for doing what the government has asked them to do in the first place, I see a terrible problem.

I defend my fellow Americans, and their rights. You however revile them and want to undercut them and not even give an opportunity for the American people to make the decision about it. That is about as anti-American as you can get.

Here is an example of the government spending you are all about-- that is giving away the money earned by the paycheck to paycheck taxpayer to FOREIGN countries so that they can "compete" with the people of this country.

Summary: The USAID program to increase economic opportunities will: 1) improve conditions for a more competitive economy; 2) strengthen environmental protection policies; and 3) improve basic education through community and private sector participation. USAID will fund technical assistance and grant support to initiate reforms of key economic policies, especially those that affect economic opportunities for poor Dominicans, and improve the countrys ability to compete in global markets. USAID will strengthen and support public-private partnerships in sectors such as tourism and agriculture (exotic fruit and vegetable production and specialty coffee) to improve the Dominican Republics international competitiveness. Technical assistance will help improve trade policy formulation, prepare for new trade agreements, and implement existing trade obligations. USAID will grant funds to support rural electrification that will provide economic opportunities for thousands of Dominicans. USAID-funded technical assistance will continue key environmental policy reforms that help protect the environment and safeguard natural resource-based economic opportunities. Finally, USAID will support technical assistance to improve the quality of basic education through increased community and private sector participation to enable better-educated children to become productive members of society.

This is big government that has gotten so big it goes out of country to create corrupt public/private parternships spending US tax dollars. Just how do they they "strengthen agriculture"? Surely you cannot support CAFTA if it means subsidizing agriculture in the Dominican Republic, can you? That would make all your arguments against "big sugar" pretty silly.

Just to remind you that the sugar agreements are determined by Congress, that they are publicly debated and they are part of spending bills, that you and I can always oppose.

The public/private partnerships with foreign governments and transnational corporations, get no such public scrutiny, they are negotiated in private by the unelected.

Elected representation, public scrutiny, public debate good.

Unelected bureacracies, secret negotiations and partnering with corporate interests breeding corruption and undermining the indivdiuals right to representation and self government, bad.

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