Free trade: A new fight (CAFTA)

The politicians can dicker over whether free trade is good for America. On the shaded front porch of David's Catfish House, there is no debate.

"Free trade did a number on Atmore. We need more of those deals like a dog needs fleas," said Atmore native Alfred J. Johnson. "They can talk all they want about the positives. We know different down here."

With the Senate set to begin hearings Tuesday on a complex, 2,600-page trade agreement with Central America, old questions over how to protect U.S. laborers are threatening to derail the pact. In places like Atmore, the last big free trade pact, the North American Free Trade Agreement, has been blamed for everything from job losses and bankruptcies to potholes and drug crime. NAFTA, in short, is a dirty word.

"It would be hard for me to go to Atmore or any other small town in my district and hold up NAFTA as a model agreement," said U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile. "They've seen a harsher side of free trade."

The new accord, the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement, commonly called CAFTA, would eliminate tariffs and other trade barriers between the United States and six Central American countries. CAFTA proponents, led by the Bush administration and an array of American industries, tout its potential economic benefits, saying they expect it to add thousands of jobs and boost demand for U.S. goods and services.

"It should be a no-brainer," said John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers and former Michigan governor. "It is difficult to understand why there is any opposition to CAFTA."

Indeed, few economists dispute the advantages that can come with free trade, particularly for consumers: cheaper prices, wider selection and a greater emphasis on innovation. Easing the flow of goods between countries also creates job prospects for thousands of workers -- a benefit primarily enjoyed by foreign laborers, and coming at the expense of blue-collar Americans. In the low-wage, low-skill corners of the Alabama economy, global trade has introduced a world of job-hungry competitors.

"We can demonstrate that the economic gains from free trade exceed the losses, but try explaining that to someone who's just been laid off," said Keivan Deravi, an economics professor at Auburn University Montgomery. "You can make the case that what's bad for him is good for the rest of the nation. But you can't expect him to be happy about it."

The hitch for CAFTA proponents is that free trade's gains tend to be slow-developing and spread widely across the economy, while its losses are often immediate and acute. The trade deal has met opposition from U.S. sugar, shrimp and textile industries, who foresee a flood of cheap imports from CAFTA countries. Some legislators oppose the deal because of what they say are weak labor rights and environmental standards in Central America.

"We acknowledge that there are concerns, but we can't let fear win out over opportunity," said Chris Padilla, an assistant United States trade representative who helped negotiate the CAFTA deal. "The opponents of free trade are very vocal and very organized. And they are very wrong."

There's an added twist in Alabama, where the proposal could widen the rift between the state's economically strong urban areas and its down-at-the-heels rural communities. CAFTA generally is met with open arms in big cities -- Mobile sees potential customers for its port, Birmingham for its banks and Montgomery for its newly opened Hyundai auto assembly plant. But there's deep skepticism in small-town Alabama, where many residents are still stinging from job losses that they tie directly to NAFTA.

Atmore, in southwest Escambia County along the border with Florida, lost its largest employer three years ago, when Vanity Fair Corp. shuttered an apparel plant and moved the work to Mexico. The plant employed more than 500 workers in a town with a population of about 8,000.

Atmore's story was far from unique: a 2003 study by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute found that NAFTA caused a net loss of nearly 900,000 American jobs in the 10 years after it passed. Alabama lost more than 15,000 jobs, according the study. Those findings have been disputed by some, but there's no mistaking the bitterness that many people in rural Alabama feel toward free trade. Less than a year after the Vanity Fair plant's door swung shut, Atmore lost its largest retailer -- and its primary source of sales tax revenue -- when Kmart Corp. closed a local Big K department store.

"Places like Atmore got left in the dust," said John Watkins, a local city councilman. "NAFTA almost devastated us, took away nearly everything we had. What good are cheap products when you don't have an income? What have we gotten in exchange for what we gave up?"

The "politicians" are mere parasites on the process, as usual

I don't think so. They are by stealth integrating the countries of the Western Hemisphere, especially ours, because they know the American people would never agree to the loss of their Constitution and form of government. The Canadian press isn't so secretive to the Canadians, and Mexico is openly lobbying for it because the "integration" will raise the average annual income in Mexico significantly. At the same time of course, it is wreaking havoc on the pocketbook of the American citizen and our local and state governments.

The politicians that are feeding off hemispheric integration are people like Jeb Bush-- he's set up an unconstitutional corporation the Miami FTAA to lobby for the trade agreement and pedal influence to foreign countries when the FTAA is passed. Utterly a conflict of interest to the American people and rather than being "parasitic" because and organism can survive parasite, it is utterly corrupt and will destroy the United States.

Its a document that authorizes the transformation of national governments into mere subregional entities that report to hemispheric "civil society" where the citizen is nothing and business interests and NGOs are consultants to government.
It is a document that authorizes the creating of "working groups" who develop "initiatives" that governments must follow to adhere to the trade agreement. The "initiatives" will eliminate borders and integrate, in the case of NAFTA, CAFTA and the FTAA, all the countries of the western hemisphere into one bloc.

I'm not sure I would use the word "document", maybe volumes, or libraries, but document, is iffy. Those poor poor dead trees.

Have you read the agreement or do you know where I can find a copy of it online?

Sometimes I have problems sleeping, I figure reading it might get the job done, its either that or listen to a taped Kerry speech on "nuances".

I'll bet you don't know what is actually happening in the sugar industry do you? Did you know that the WTO is forcing an oversupply of sugar in the US because they are forcing the US to purchase at least 25% of our sugar supply from countries THEY designate? Is that FREE TRADE?

Did you know that sugar producers voluntarily cut back on their production to stop the oversupply, only to be stabbed in the back by the WTO who increased the amount of sugar that the US must purchase from foreign producers, hurting US producers even more in the process? IS THAT FREE TRADE?

Is killing $800 million in the economy of a state with a population of 3 million people in the best interests of the United States? Or is it in the best interest of Mauritus? If the WTO REQUIRES the American public to subsidize pharmaceuticals in Nigeria and China, but says Americans cannot give any breaks to our own sugar farmers who are contributing a significant amount to our national economy,what does that say about the WTO? To me it says it is an unconstitutional adversarial organization and that America should withdraw immediately.

Sometimes I have problems sleeping, I figure reading it might get the job done

It won't help you sleep. You will lie awake at night, terrified at the life your children and their children are going to lead when all sovereignty is lost and the US is but a cog in the Western Hemipsheric trading bloc.

You will need a dictionary to translate the terms they use. It is a combination of communese and bureacratese. For example: when they talk about "trade capacity building" or "capacity building" they mean "take money from the US taxpayer and give it to foreign governments and foreign corporations to build roads, power systems, water systems and other infrastructure. It means using our tax money to buy computers and set up offices for foreign governments because they are too greedy and stupid to do it for themselves. It means using employees of federal agencies on the taxpayer dime to go to these countries and set up their systems for them.

CAFTA Draft Revised Text

CAFTA National Action Plans for Trade Capacity Building

For the record:

The students and faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law cordially invite you to this conference which will examine legal, economic, social, and human development issues surrounding the ongoing initiative of integration in the Western Hemisphere. This conference has passed, but the conference notes are available.

http://www.law.uiowa.edu/ftaa/program.php

The 1994 Miami Summit of the Americas initiated the process of uniting the southern and northern halves of the Americas in a hemispheric free trade agreement. Since then, trade and integration have taken the central role in negotiations among the 34 Summit countries and considerable advances have been made toward the goal of creating a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2005.

Since actual FTAA negotiations began in 1999, the process has been carefully institutionalized to produce progressively more effective planning and implementation. The process is administered by a tripartite committee consisting of the Organization of the American States (OAS), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which facilitate the negotiations by providing comprehensive technical and analytical support.

http://www.americasnet.net/trade/index.htm

Martin, Bush, Fox agree on partnership deal for continental co-operation

Bush told a news conference after the meeting: "We had a good discussion about prosperity and security. It turns out the two go hand-in-hand."
"We've got a lot of trade with each other and we intend to keep it that way," the U.S. president said. "We've got a lot of crossings of the borders and intend to make our borders more secure and facilitate legal traffic."
Asked whether the deal is paving the way for a continental integration, Martin said: "What we are talking about here is not a big bang, we're talking but big progress."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20050323/ca_pr_on_na/summit_martin_8

Rice in Mexico, pushes security
Secretary of State warns border volunteers to obey law

Derbez said that he and Rice discussed "NAFTA-Plus," Mexico's hopes for expanding the scope of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and that Mexico wants it to be on the agenda of the March 23 summit.

"We are searching for a gradual solution to the problems of the bilateral relations of two countries that share a 3,000-kilometer (1,860-mile) border, two nations that are concerned about democracy and hemispheric integration," he said.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0311rice11.html

Press Gaggle with Scott McClellan
And I would just say that the United States has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the summit agenda, and worked hard at achieving our common summit goals, which are strengthening democracy, creating prosperity and realizing the full potential of humans. This summit represents an important next step towards realization of this shared hemispheric vision.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040112-4.html

Canada's Left Angry With PM's 'Hidden' U.S. Agenda
OTTAWA (Reuters) - An opposition party that is helping to keep Canada's minority Liberal government in power angrily accused Prime Minister Paul Martin on Tuesday of planning to push an agenda of closer integration with the United States.

But the idea of any deeper integration with the United States is particularly unpopular with Canada's left-leaning New Democrats, who have been backing Martin since last June's election stripped the Liberals of their majority.

"Can the prime minister tell us why he will be pursuing an agenda of deeper integration with the U.S., sacrificing Canadian sovereignty? Why is he pursuing this hidden agenda without telling Canadians about it?" the party's leader, Jack Layton, asked in Parliament.

http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=%22Initiative+for+North+America%22&ei=ISO-8859-1&fl=0&x=wrt

Fourth Western Hemisphere Trade Ministerial and Business Forum
San José, Costa Rica - March 1998

"Industry Objectives for Hemispheric Integration"
Speech by Mr. Salazar Xirinachs, Minister of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica,
at the Institute of the Americas Conference, in Washington DC,
on February 17, 1998.

…the Summit of the Americas provide nothing less than the comprehensive framework and organizing principles for the social, economic and political relations among the community of nations of the hemisphere in the XXI century. The FTAA is not just one more initiative among the 23 initiatives launched in the Summit of the Americas. It is the pillar, the foundation of the grand project of hemispheric integration contained in the Summit vision

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