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FYI congressional testimony on CAFTA

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, tonight I wish to suggest eight more reasons to vote ``no'' on CAFTA .

First of all, CAFTA continues the failed neo-liberal trade regimen that puts freedom last rather than first. CAFTA assumes, like NAFTA before it, that trade will bring freedom. But where contingent liberties do not really exist, such flawed trade approaches bring not freedom but exploitation and hardship on the majority of the people struggling to get into the middle class.

A ``no'' vote on CAFTA will result in its renegotiation to expand liberty, opportunity, and hope. Respect and dignity for workers, fresh water, clean air, treated sewage are rights that should belong to every human being. Surely our continent, our hemisphere deserves better than CAFTA .

Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is that it will outsource more U.S. jobs and worsen our burgeoning trade deficit. NAFTA's supporters promised us millions of jobs, as the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) has stated, as well as a trade surplus for our country. Exactly the opposite has happened.

The U.S. has lost over 1 million jobs to Mexico and Canada resulting from NAFTA, and each year we have fallen into deeper and deeper trade deficit with those nations.

Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is it will fuel more illegal immigration. Just like NAFTA, millions of people will be uprooted from the rural countryside with no hope, no continental labor rights, and become an exploitable class of people used by the most unscrupulous traffickers on the continent.

Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is that Central American workers will continue to be subjected to sweatshop conditions because the enforcement provisions that exist in the Caribbean Basin Initiative, CBI, will not apply. Right now CAFTA countries are not robust democracies. But what the CBI does in the Caribbean is assures that trade rights are linked to access to the U.S. market and enforcement of labor provisions.

CAFTA backslides on this lock-tight trigger. It basically has some encouraging language to nations to enforce their labor laws which may be poor or non-existent, and no matter how weak, gives them a go-ahead and then sets aside money in the agreement to give to the very governments that are not enforcing those laws anyway.

Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is it hurts U.S. agriculture. In fact, CAFTA nations already are saturated with U.S. agricultural products which consume about 94 percent of their market, so there is not much room to grow there. And, more importantly, CAFTA provides that Brazilian ethanol and other imports, if processed inside of these Central American countries, and 35 percent of the processing occurs there, can be back-doored into the United States. So it will be the same kind of back-dooring into the United States of products from these other countries that has happened with NAFTA, Mexico and Canada.

Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is it will regress democratic reform in CAFTA countries. CAFTA does nothing to advance democracy in the six nations that are a part of it. In fact, the civil societies in those countries are broadly opposed to CAFTA . Huge demonstrations against CAFTA have occurred in every one of those nations, and the manner in which this is being voted on in those countries is truly troublesome. Three countries have used emergency procedures, bringing up late at night, the public does not know what is happening. And in the other three countries it has not even been voted on. Not exactly a way to carry forward the idea of democratic liberties across the hemisphere.

Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is its lack of real environmental enforcement and our knowledge that with NAFTA drug trafficking has snubbed up right against the U.S. border at Juarez. When you have these trade agreements that do not have other contingent policies attached to them, what you end up doing is empowering some of the worst forces in the hemisphere.

Finally, CAFTA will hurt women workers disproportionately in societies where women's rights are already marginalized. How would you like to be a woman in a textile plant in one of those countries? Or how about in a banana-packing shed? What do you think your future would look like? Sixty percent of those working in these sweatshop conditions are women workers with absolutely no labor protections. CAFTA is doing nothing to improve their standing in our hemisphere, and it will do nothing to obliterate the sweatshops that are so very much a part of their lives.

The combined purchasing powers of all of these Central American countries is the same as Columbus, Ohio or New Haven, Connecticut. They really do not have the kind wherewithal to purchase value-added products from our country.

So what is CAFTA really about? CAFTA is merely about expanding the NAFTA model to six other countries, providing more export platforms to the United States of goods, both agricultural and manufactured are back-doored into this country, and providing none of the advances in freedom, liberty, opportunity and hope that should be the hallmark of this country at home and abroad.