CAFTA: Where Do We Stand?
Following up from yesterday's post –
there have been many items written about CAFTA, and why “The Democrats”
seem to be taking different positions with regard to free trade.
The Washington Post writes CAFTA Reflects Democrats' Shift From Trade Bills:
A
long, slow erosion of Democratic support for trade legislation in the
House is turning into a rout, as Democrats who have never voted against
trade deals vow to turn their backs on CAFTA. The sea change — driven
by redistricting, mounting partisanship and real questions about the
results of a decade's worth of trade liberalization — is creating a
major headache for Bush and Republican leaders as they scramble to
salvage their embattled trade agreement. A trade deal that passed the
Senate last Thursday, 54 to 45, with 10 Democratic votes, could very
well fail in the House this month.
Tom Harkin has publicly opposed CAFTA on labor and environmental standards:
“But
it's not fair competition if other countries allow their manufacturers
or farms to disregard internationally recognized labor rights, and
child labor protections or if those countries have lax or nonexistent
environmental regulations and rules.”
But, as
with NAFTA, CAFTA is not about labor or the environment (most
manufacturing has not been moving south, it's been moving to China) –
it's about agricultural subsidies. Robert Reich commented on APM's Marketplace about this issue.
Reich
supports CAFTA as a 'crack in the door' to undermining the subsidies
large agribusinesses recieve for sugar and rice production in the
United States. CAFTA would presumably open the door to imported
sugar and rice, which would force the goverment to either pay larger
and larger subsidies, or start phasing out the program altogether.
To me, that sounds ominously like “starving the beast” – the very type of governance we've seen from the Bush administration.
What we
need to do is develop a common-sense approach to agricultural subsidy
policy before committing to opening markets that will both overwhelm
locally owned operations (like the farmer-owned ethanol co-ops), or
place yet another burden on the federal budget to maintain corporate
agribusiness interests.
Using free trade agreements as a means to an end is not only dishonest,
but will likely put increased pressure on the small producers who are
the most vulnerable to sudden economic shifts.
Blog For Iowa 