Posted on 07/27/2005 10:06:56 PM PDT by Coleus
CAFTA not merely about free trade
By LIZA GRANDIA GUEST COLUMNIST
At 2,400 pages, the Central America Free Trade Agreement isn't really about trade. Frankly, you don't need 2,400 pages to eliminate tariffs and regulations on exports and imports. But you might need 2,400 pages to smuggle through a new set of transnational corporate rights disguised by complicated legalese. I wonder how many in Congress will even bother to read this trade tome before voting?
I recall in 1994 that only one senator, Republican Hank Brown of Colorado, accepted Ralph Nader's challenge to win $10,000 for charity by taking a simple 10-question quiz on the World Trade Organization agreement. After studying the agreement, Brown announced to the media: "I am a Republican, pro-business and a proponent of the free market economy ... I am here to speak out against the WTO. For when you read this text ... you will understand that the WTO is fundamentally undemocratic."
Any naïve Congress member who thinks CAFTA is merely about free trade should look carefully at its provisions on government contracts and corporate lawsuits.
Government contracts. For any purchases of more than $117,000 (eventually to be lowered to $58,000), CAFTA forces governments to open bidding to transnational corporations. That means that states will no longer be able to give preference to home-based businesses, and so mom-and-pop stores in Central America and the United States will suddenly be competing with the Bechtels and the Halliburtons of the world.
Corporate lawsuits against governments. Perhaps CAFTA's most worrisome provision expands the rights that corporations received under NAFTA to challenge any laws they perceive as barriers to trade and foreign investment. For instance, when California banned a carcinogenic gasoline additive called MTBE because it was seeping into the state's drinking water, the chemical manufacturer, Methanex, sued California for infringing on its trade rights under NAFTA and demanded $970 million in compensation. Such suits are a direct threat to democracy because they prioritize the profits of foreign corporations over a country's own environmental, social and labor laws.
Already corporations are planning more such lawsuits. If CAFTA passes, a subsidiary of Harken Energy (on whose board George W. Bush once served) has said it will demand $58 billion from Costa Rica (whose entire GDP is only $37 billion) in compensation for hypothetical future lost profits, if the company is not allowed to drill offshore in Costa Rica's protected Talamanca region -- one of the planet's richest marine ecosystems.
CAFTA also encourages privatization, especially for government services in health, water, energy and social security. In agriculture, it will allow transnational agribusiness cartels to dump food commodities at below-market prices. It will forbid the public health sector from buying life-saving generic drugs for such diseases as AIDS.
Far from a free trade agreement, CAFTA is rather a corporate trade agreement that transforms foreign investment from a privilege to an inalienable right.
It's like having a house guest who cleans out your refrigerator, claims your nicest bed, takes exclusive control of the television remote control and then -- like Paris Hilton -- demands that you pay for the pleasure of her company and writes you off as a business expense.
The United States has a perfectly sound trade agreement with Central America called the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which makes most of our trade with Central America duty-free. Congress should defeat CAFTA and send the Bush administration back to negotiate a real trade agreement that every U.S. and Central American citizen can read in less time than the pages of "Gone With the Wind" and the King James version of the Bible combined.
Liza Grandia is an anthropologist who has lived and worked in Guatemala for more than six years. Her dissertation concerns the impacts of trade and globalization on the agrarian situation of the Q'eqchi' Maya people.
It ain't hardly about tailpipe visibility tests.
Get a good night's rest. I'm about to.
"That didn't help the Canadians though, who were supposedly the ones NAFTA was to benefit."
Actually it did help the Canadians. It plugged the hole allowing Canadian physicians to come the US to practice medicine. Not to many docs want academia.
2,400 pages is only meant to confuse and conceal.
Michigan, for some odd reason, has never diversified its economy. The fact that its an expensive place to do business isn't a good enough reason, as Washington State has the highest corporate income tax in the nation, yet (miraculously) the economy around here is very strong.
Washington State has Microsoft. It's the GM(Circa 1950's) of the 90's. What's the last new revolutionary product that came out of Michigan? I suspect it's either a car or an appliance from West Michigan(also struggling economicwise, not as much with tourism though).
We also have the combination of economic liberalism, dwindling auto market share(Toyota/Honda), one of the highest union states in the country, terrible taxes, and amazing dependency on the auto industry. (1 in 3? if you include suppliers and those which do business with the Big 3
Other than that, tourism is our other major industry, and much of that is related to the auto industry since most of the tourism is from us Michiganders going "Up North".
What about the illegal drug trade?????????
The only thing keeping the economy going in Washington State is taxes which are funding every feel good program. If you love the economy in Washington State it means you also love taxes.
Bechtel and Halliburton are diversifying into groceries? Watch out WallMart!
Don't you realize that these suits that the article refers to, are detrimental to our nation? Don't you realize that businesses in external nations can force our nation through litigation to destroy our own businesses at their benefit?
How can you just sit there an regurgitate that stuff on the forum, and ignore what is happening to our nation?
Well I'm not going to name names, but I too have no respect for people who have bought into this absolute surrender of self-determination.
Every ruling by the WTO that involes the United States, is another example of a decision that has been made by a body that we do not vote for.
Representative government has been severely short circuited in these matters, and I don't see how a conservative could EVER buy into that.
This is an issue that separates the wheat from the chaff.
You and I are on the same page.
oops, sorry about that...
there are so many freepers, and topics where many of us differ I can't keep up with everybody
It was obvious, I should have read it more closely.
Check my "about" page. My position is clear, with graphics! ;)
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