Posted on 07/25/2005 11:17:40 PM PDT by hedgetrimmer
Official: Agreement would threaten U.S. immigration laws
TWIN FALLS, Idaho -- If the Central American Free Trade Agreement- Dominican Republic gets a thumbs up from the House of Representatives this month it will likely serve as the next stepping stone to a Western Hemispheric free-trade zone similar to the European Union.
The North American Free Trade Agreement, now 10 years old, got the ball rolling connecting Canada, the United States and Mexico under one free-trade umbrella. Should CAFTA-DR pass, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic will increase the scope of free trade to the northern tip of South America.
Stephen Devadoss, agricultural economist for the University of Idaho, Moscow, said, beyond CAFTA-DR lies something even bigger -- the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
"Thirty-four countries would make up the FTAA," he said, "but it hasn't gotten far because Brazil isn't willing to sign on. All countries must agree or it won't go forward."
Brazil may feel as threatened by the United States as the United States would be by Brazil's low-cost products were the doors to trade thrown open. A South American news report said Brazil's farm exports for the first half of the year reached an historic of $20.2 billion in U.S. dollars with beef exports exceeding US$7 billion and sugar and alcohol US$4 billion.
In the world of free trade, Devadoss said, "if your commodity is imported you lose -- but if your commodity is exported, you win."
Under CAFTA-DR, tariffs and duties on U.S. products vary. Some commodities are duty-free from the outset, while others phase out over 10 to 15 years.
Which is one reason Senator Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said he did not vote for CAFTA-DR. In an address to the Senate, Craig said, "Trade agreements ought not to be trading one industry off against another."
Plus, Central America stands poised to export its No. 1 crop, sugar, to the United States. Sugar is one of Idaho's major commodities, and Craig said "CAFTA nations already enjoy duty-free quota access for sugar with the United States."
"I am not prepared to trade away an industry so vital to my state to improve the overall well-being of some other country's sugar industry," he said.
But Jim Peterson, a Montana cattleman and chairman of the Beef Committee of the U.S. Meat Export Federation, said in a release from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association that CAFTA-DR represents opportunity.
"These markets are open to U.S, beef exports, but they are saddled with tariffs as high as 40 percent," he said. "Meanwhile, beef imported into the United States from these countries is completely duty-free up to certain tariff rate quotas. These quotas have never been filled, so we are playing on a very lopsided field."
"CAFTA also provides an excellent blueprint for fair-trade agreements with developing nations," Peterson said. "We need trade policy that ensures the products we produce are not disadvantaged and discriminated against in the world market."
More than sugar and bananas
But Representative Tom Tancredo, R- Colo., said CAFTA-DR would do more than just "open new markets."
"In the rush to highlight who wins and who loses when these trade barriers come down, almost everyone has overlooked the troubling non-trade provisions that are tucked into the voluminous document."
Tancredo said buried in its 1,000 pages, CAFTA-DR gives people in Central America a de facto right to work in the United States. Defined as "cross-border trade in services" he said the trade agreement is a "thinly disguised immigration accord."
He explained that "cross-border trade in services" means "a party national" in one territory can supply a service in the "territory of another party."
CAFTA language goes on to say that member nations take care to ensure that local and national requirements "do not constitute unnecessary barriers to trade in services" and "guarantee domestic laws are not "a restriction on the supply of the service."
"What that means is that under CAFTA, a foreign company could challenge the validity of our immigration laws in international tribunals that would overrule U.S. immigration limits, visa and licensing requirements and zoning rules as 'unnecessary burdens to trade' that act as 'restrictions on the supply of a service,'" Tancredo said.
"In reality, CAFTA is about expanding a growing body of international law that supersedes our own," he said.
The misprint is from the original article.
farms and CAFTA ping
Thanks. I thought it might be. I just wanted to place little disclaimer on here.
Good idea. I try to keep to the original headline as much as possible to avoid duplicates.
More stuff.
And you should. Take care.
...buried in its 1,000 pages, CAFTA-DR ... is a "thinly disguised immigration accord."
Hmmmm, somebody must be reading FR!
FYI
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.