Attack of the CAFTA Lobbyists
Attack of the CAFTA Lobbyists
President Bush is working overtime to get the Central American Free Trade Agreement passed. Today he was using the same basic talking points, particularly the claim that CAFTA “would open up the market of 44 million consumers to U.S. businesses, U.S. farms, and U.S. manufacturers.” But the combined economies of the six other CAFTA nations “only equal that of New Haven, Conn.” and “account for barely one percent of U.S. trade.” With CAFTA, President Bush is trading American jobs and Central American human dignity for more corporate profits. Overall, CAFTA fails at being smart trade policy. Maybe that’s why the lobbying effort to get CAFTA passed is starting to show its desperation:
A political group working for the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) has raised the ire of U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, who claims that the organization has been making harassing calls to his constituents.
Gonzalez, D-San Antonio, says his office recently was inundated with hundreds of calls from constituents who told his staff that they received an automated message about the benefits of CAFTA. They were then prompted to “Press 1 for more information.”
Those who did were routed to Gonzalez’ office, even though they were never asked if they wanted to be put in contact with him.
About 80 percent of the calls received by Gonzalez’ office were from people who did not know who they were calling, why they were transferred or whether the phone call would cost them money. For the most part, they were not interested in the congressman’s position on CAFTA, according to Gonzalez.
“It’s unfortunate … that someone, in an overzealous effort to influence my position on a particular issue, has resorted to invading people’s privacy, providing misinformation, and generating confusing phone calls,” Gonzalez says.
“The individuals or organizations generating these counterproductive calls are not achieving their goals, but more importantly, they are making it clear that this type of activity must be better regulated and that people need to know who is calling them at home and asking them to do things under false pretenses,” he adds.
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Are Demorcrats for or against poor Latin Americans? You got to pick the American worker or the poor Latin American Democrats.
Since you’re against CAFTA that means your against the poor Latin American. It’s funny, cause, I never knew Democrats were selfish nationalists when it came to poor folk abroad. Apparently Democrats are selfish nationalists though.
Give Latin America a hand. Support CAFTA.
July 21st, 2005 at 1:29 pmLyle, are you independently wealthy? I wonder because you seem to have no sympathy for american workers. If Latin Americans are poor (which you’ve acknowledged), how is it that they will be able to afford American made products? Can’t you see the BS in the sell job? There’s no benefit to american workers in this (as Bush is stating in his speech), but there’s a big benefit to latin americans who will work for low wages in new factories that get built as american companies shift their workforces there. Sure, companies like Haas Automation who build factory equipment might benefit for a little while, but that doesn’t seem like an even trade. I wonder if you’d feel the same if it were your job being “traded”.
July 21st, 2005 at 1:46 pmThe problem with CAFTA is that it hurts BOTH American workers AND poor Latin Americans. Anti-CAFTA Americans don’t oppose the agreement because if it helps Central Americans it must hurt them. This agreement would help corporations that import products from (or through) Central America, and that can play off workers in the U.S. and Central America through outsourcing or threats of outsourcing.
July 21st, 2005 at 1:52 pmno, i’m not independently wealthy. but you need to choose who you want to help: the well off american worker or the really poor latin american.
you cannot pretend to help both if you’re on one side of the CAFTA debate.
what the american worker needs to understand is that if poor Chinese man or poor Latin American woman can do their job and do it for less money, American worker won’t have a job for long. American worker must go, and like Bill Clintion said, retool him or herself for some industry that does provide a job. The american worker doesn’t have the right to a job if that job is no longer desired of him or her.
and latin americans will be able to afford american goods and other goods. why? cause their economies will grow and create higher paying jobs which their fellow countrymen, likely their children and grandchildren will take.
does not the american worker go to wal-mart and buy stuff made in china?
if CAFTA doesn’t happen, Latin America remains poor. and at the cost of American selfishness.
July 21st, 2005 at 1:53 pmfighting outsourcing is also nationalist and selfish. chinese, indian, mexican, latin american, and african peoples have the right to work just as much as americans do.
July 21st, 2005 at 1:55 pmI agree with John entirely – CAFTA seems to hurt everyone involved except for the people that don’t need help in the first place.
July 21st, 2005 at 2:10 pmThe problem is that we would see a lot of the same results that we’ve seen with NAFTA – the American market is expanded and, thus, flooded with cheaper labor (hurting the American workers), the Latin American markets are flooded with American products that can afford to drive the market price down (like with corn in Mexico, where the real wages of corn workers fell 60% in the first five years of the treaty), which hurts the workers in Latin America.
Also, with China in the picture, there’s constant competition for cheap labor. Jobs were driven out of Mexico to El Salvador despite NAFTA. There’s no reason to think that jobs wouldn’t be driven out of Central America to China for the same reason – international trade agreements have become a race to the bottom when it comes to workers’ rights.
Everyone has a right to work, but everyone has a right to work at a fair wage in conditions that are favorable to the worker, and that’s just not found with international trade agreements. This is not entirely the fault of the foreign governments involved – when promised an overall boost for their economy, they see the rights of workers as a short term sacrifice for the long term gain of their overall economy and, thus, the workers. The problem comes with the stringent regulations placed on Foreign Direct Investment (basically taking away the power of the nation itself – like Mexico, in NAFTA) that basically cripple the government’s power to develop its own economic policy. So, they don’t get the long term gain, and the workers are hurt in the meantime.
CAFTA is just an extension of NAFTA, but far worse – because it’s 10 years later, we should know better, and it hurts even more people.
Lyle,
that is a complete garbage argument. Noone is denying the right of people to work, or make a living. What most people are upset about is the obvious corporate abuse inherent with cafta. We are a nation of by the people, for the people, not by the corporations for the corporations.
July 21st, 2005 at 2:10 pmLyle – Capitalism is selfish, and every bit of American culture is based on the idea of nationalism. If fighting outsourcing keeps Americans here employed and hurts some poor bastard in China, so be it. Its not our job to take care of workers in other countries, especially not when our own economy is having as many problems as it is. (And that crap about American workers being well off, I’m guessing you don’t live in reality and happen to have missed the last few years..)
July 21st, 2005 at 2:13 pmThanks for helping me understand your view, it was well stated. I’m not sure I will accept being labeled a nationalist, but I don’t like to see Americans unemployed when it results in hungry children without healthcare. If American business prospers as a result of outsourcing jobs, a social responsibility to Americans comes with this tradeoff. I don’t see a plan for that.
July 21st, 2005 at 2:19 pmLook at this statement:
“..would open up the market of 44 million consumers to U.S. businesses, U.S. farms, and U.S. manufacturers.”
Um, yea right! Like NAFTA opened up new markets of consumers… like our trade agreements opened up new markets of consumers in China. The only new consumers to be had would be us! Our trade deficit will climb with the passing of this.
How much is our TD with China currently anyway? Look: “…trade deficit with China rose 24.3 percent to $103.9 billion in the first five months of the year compared with the same period a year earlier.”
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_baum&sid=azcqs4J0UZuI
*yawn*
TO ALL ON THIS THREAD:
Please ignore the likes of Lyle and Ed. These are merely Trolls who do not deserve the respect of your attention. They do not argue with logic and truth. They only come here to incite and irritate, void of any search for truth.
July 21st, 2005 at 2:28 pmJ -
July 21st, 2005 at 2:29 pmI’m not sure that leaving CAFTA alone will really fight outsourcing – it’s kind of naive to think that the jobs aren’t already going to El Salvador and China.
What leaving CAFTA alone does do is help the Latin American worker, because enacting large scale economic policy without a basis in human rights is pretty bad form.
US trade policies also seem to have a history of hurting other people’s environments pretty severely (the cancer rates at the Northern Mexican border went up 85% in the ten years since NAFTA was incepted, compared to a 20% hike in the rest of the country) due to the large amounts of pollution we leave behind.
It seems like taking such an isolationist stance wouldn’t bode well for the positive policy that we do have in Latin America right now, like the trade agreements with Chile and the aid package associated with Plan Colombia (where we give millions of dollars to help build economic infrastructure).
You know… we all would probably agree that Corporate America WOULD get richer from this. If this is so, where is the moral and ethical responsibilty of Corporate America to “share the wealth” with the workers of THIS country?
It also kills me that oil companies are recording huge profits. How is it if supply is so small that we are paying record prices for the goop, that they have any room to increase margins?!
*ill*
July 21st, 2005 at 2:31 pmmaggie,
the u.s. isn’t responsible for other countries polluting themselves. for third-world countries to develop, they must pollute. that’s why china and india were originally left out of kyoto discussions.
without pollution they would remain impoverished.
jim,
how in the world am I a troll? is this place only for people who agree with another. how asinine would that be. disagreement is America’s glory man!!!
July 21st, 2005 at 2:34 pmMaggie – does the amount of positive trade agreements we have with latin america result in any kind of net benefit for them when compared to all of the harmful things we force upon them like cafta?
In the end it seems like until we learn to get past our policy based on corporate interests, an isolationist stance would probably benefit everyone..(Americans and Latin Americans)
July 21st, 2005 at 2:34 pm“the u.s. isn’t responsible for other countries polluting themselves. for third-world countries to develop, they must pollute. that’s why china and india were originally left out of kyoto discussions.”
What happened to caring about poor latin american workers and their health? Can you at least try to feign consistency?
July 21st, 2005 at 2:38 pm3rd man-
The positive trade agreements we have with Latin America and are fairly unrelated to the negative ones – Colombia isn’t involved in CAFTA, nor is Chile. It seems like, as always, we decide to help some groups while hurting others.
Lyle-
The problem is that we’re enacting policy, like NAFTA, saying that we’ll clean our own industrial waste and outsource a lot of the processing involved there (back to the US), but then we break those promises because of the amount of power granted to us in the trade agreements. It’s rather naive to think that everyone in CAFTA would have equal footing, and I see no real reason to think that we wouldn’t continue to loophole ourselves out of responsibility just as we have in the past.
It also seems like an interesting shift on your part to go from saying that we have to help them so that they don’t starve to “let them do what they want on their own, don’t interfere”.
All CAFTA is doing is helping the people who are already rich in Central America, hurting the workers both domestically and abroad, and continuing to harm the global environment.
July 21st, 2005 at 2:39 pmAll you have to do is look at the recent uprisings in the towns where the Chinese have built their manufacturing facilities and have polluted the area so bad that the people and animals are dieing and make the giant mental leap that cheap labor is bad for the producing country because all restrictions are lifted for the mighty bottom line. Every from the Mariana Islands to Mexico to China to C. America have problems because they are have citizens that will work for a dollar a day and we sit back in this country and buy Wal-Mart garbage and wonder why these “other” countries can’t get their acts together. If we are not part of the solution we are part of the problem.
’nuff said lyle
July 21st, 2005 at 3:22 pmmaggie,
there’s no inconsistency in my statements. they’re going to have to pollute themselves to develop, at least until there’s some clean way of growing an economy. industrialization is just not clean. that’s why the U.S. should not paternalistically dictate to them that they maintain high enviromental standards. they just cannot afford high enviroment standards, cause they’re poor. to have a clean enviroment, a country must be affluent.
you just cannot have a clean enviroment and righteous labor standards before there is some form of economic growth. CAFTA is just the beginning of better opportunities for Latin American countries.
July 21st, 2005 at 5:08 pmlyle,
way to go with the “same as alwaysno matter how much it sucks” attitude. The point is CAFTA, NAFTA and any other AFTA is a bad path. Period. It won’t help the people of that country the least bit. They won’t have enough money to buy the products they are producing ever. This country was built not only on industry but the workers were able to improve their lives. The AFTAs don’t hold these county’s governments accountable to improve the worker’s lives. And our government is just turning a blind eye to the problem. Don’t see it..it must not be happening. Your attitude toward the problem of polluting in the name of growth won’t help. If the US really wanted to help these countries supplying them with the means and by that I mean the newest technology would be a good start. It could be done…but will it? That’s the whole point…doing things different is not a bad thing…especially when the current way does more harm than good. I think I learned that when I was 5.
July 21st, 2005 at 5:43 pmbrain noogie,
the fact that countries are producing stuff for wal-mart is progress, because before then they weren’t producing anything. china, by the way, is becoming quit affluent.
just south korea and taiwan did before them. india is benefitting from outsourcing and indonesia is developing thanks to americans visiting their local wal-mart.
July 21st, 2005 at 5:45 pmlyle,
Please read this.
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/071905EB.shtml
July 21st, 2005 at 5:52 pmBuy Wal-Mart – make poor people rich? You have GOT to be kidding. Just think about what you are saying.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:03 pmyes, wal-mart is making some people in the third world rich. i mean they’re paying some guy or women who owns a factory or runs a factory in some country money to make clothes and what not. people profit from this stuff. the laborers won’t become rich, but americans who teach school also don’t become rich.
not everybody can be “rich”.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:07 pmnoogie,
i had already read that. i’m well aware of social unrest and enviromental problems in china. environmental policies in the u.s. didn’t arise until we were well on our way to screwing our enviroment, and most importantly when we could afford to protect the environment. china is going through the same process.
this is all consistent with what i’ve been saying.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:10 pmUgh…please follow me…we don’t have to follow the same path CAFTA is the same path….same path – bad….CAFTA – bad. It won’t help the people of those countries…or us in the long run for that matter.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:22 pmSo then Lyle, is it acceptable to you that we are essentially encouraging these underdeveloped countries to “pollute themselves” to develop? What is the benefit to them? It sure doesn’t sound humanitarian so it must be economic, right? We get cheap products at the expense of the health of some poor people. Are you OK with that?
And your explanation of the development of US environmental policies leaves out one important element. At some point there was the realization that what we were doing to the environment was not good for our health. Had we known that going in, I’m sure we would have found other ways to industrialize with less pollution. But since we know about it now, why should we encourage another nation to just throw away what we’ve already learned and force them to start over. That’s insanity.
From the movie ‘Throw Momma From the Train’, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.”
July 21st, 2005 at 7:26 pmmikey,
we aren’t encouraging anybody to pollute. they are polluting themselves because they want better lives. we don’t control China’s economy, the Chinese Communist Party does.
they are in fact implimenting so enviromental standards, but it is just a beginning. for example Beijing is working on ways to cut down on car pollution much more agressively than any American city.
like i’ve said before, and what you need to understand, is that you cannot take care of the enviroment unless you’re affluent. it’s just not possible to develop a nascent industrialized economy and keep the enviroment very clean. to believe this is possible is simply fantasy.
July 21st, 2005 at 8:59 pmI live in the DR…
The people here do not want Cafta…
Why”
It raises their taxes…taxes will be paid on items at the 16% level…
Drugs will be prohibitively expensive…
Many small farmers and businessmen will increase the size of the already large slums…
Politicians want it because they receive commissions on each project…Many of these projects will never be completed because the money walks away…because of incompetence…
No one who lives here who dos not work for the government wants this….
This is horrible for this country…Bush is a complete moron and is completely out of touch with what really goes on here…
July 21st, 2005 at 9:32 pmok, so we’re one of China’s premiere trading partners, but we have no influence whatsoever on their society.
July 21st, 2005 at 10:17 pmseems like someone’s a bit naive regarding how much business influences governments and societies.
also, the trade agreement we have with China is different because we’re not limiting the actions that they take, we’re just allowing them a large amount of exports to our country.
with CAFTA, we limit environmental and labor standards that countries can impose because they’re “anti-business”
just because we’re major trading partners with China doesn’t mean we affect their enviromental policies. the Chinese decided to become capitalist 26 years ago. America didn’t make them do that. America doesn’t make China burn coal or buy cars or do any other thing. they’re joining the developed world and that means they have to privatize and industrialize, which means a shitload of pollution.
it sucks but it is reality.
CAFTA is going to allow Latin American countries put certain American businesses, like some farmers out of business in the long run. it has benefits for both the U.S. and Latin America. it’s also going to mess up some American and Latin American lives. why? cause Latin Americans will start doing somethings Americans were doing and those Americans will have to find another line of work.
effective enviromental policies are too expensive for developing countries to have. it will be a gradual increase in enviromental protection and they are able to afford better policies.
economic growth first, enviromental policies second.
July 21st, 2005 at 11:15 pmI’m against CAFTA because of the way the rethugs are selling it. Everyone I have heard speak of it talk of raising standards of living and labor conditions and, oh yeah, it will spread freedom and democracy.(Their mallable version of it that is) These sound like good things but these are the people who are right now removing these same securities from the American people. So..do you trust them?
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