DLC Positions on Trade...pt. 1 CAFTA [View All]

[SaveElmer]

This is a big article...so will only post bits and pieces...

<snip>
This should not obscure the fact, however,that CAFTA is in the best interests of the United States and the six partner countries. Oscar Arias,former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize laureate for his work to end the civil wars of the 1980s in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, is convincing when he argues that approval would mean job creation and economic stability for the region, and that rejection would “send a chill through our hopes to achieve
self-sustaining democracies.”2 In this spirit, the U.S. House should pass the agreement for three reasons:

1. Economics: American exporters,struggling for the past five years, should see real,if modest, benefits. Central America and the Dominican Republic, fearing loss of exports and jobs after the 30-year-old U.S. textile quota system was abolished last winter, may find
CAFTA essential as they weather the transition.

2. Social reform: The labor and environmental provisions in CAFTA are similar to previous trade agreements, especially now that they have been strengthened with the capacity-building and technical cooperation
commitments won by Democratic supporters of the agreement.

3. Hemispheric strategy: The deliberation on CAFTA—as Congress’ principal Latin American policy debate in this decade—will profoundly influence the attitude of Latin American peoples and governments toward the United States, and will therefore shape relations
among the hemispheric democracies under the next U.S. president.
<snip>


<snip>

The principal argument of CAFTA’s progressive opponents is that the agreement does not address labor issues strongly enough. More particularly, opponents believe that the argument should commit CAFTA partners to laws that fully implement the core standards of the International Labor Organization (ILO), and that it should provide the same enforcement measures, ultimately sanctions based, that apply
to more traditional trade disputes. Labor problems in Central American and Dominican export industries are well-publicized and real. But they are part of a larger, complex environment, in which export-oriented jobs are often already much better than the alternatives. Wages for Central American and Dominican garment workers, for example, appear to be considerably better than wages for similar jobs in South America and East Asia. Working conditions and wages in CAFTA-member export industries (as elsewhere in the developing world) also receive far more international attention than maid service, seasonal rural labor, construction work, or the other occupations open to less-educated and less-skilled workers. For example, while the CAFTA debate has focused closely on the work environment in export industries, Arias points out that fully 70
percent of Guatemalan workers are in the informal sector. Solutions to the problems in export industries need to be designed carefully if they are to have humane rather than harmful effects. The progressive challenge, therefore, is threefold:

! To encourage adoption of higher labor standards for CAFTA export industries, but also in the CAFTA economies more generally;

! To simultaneously encourage investment in the CAFTA countries, which sustains growth and provides better-paying jobs; and

! To avoid measures that force export
workers out of their jobs or make it harder
for low-income workers in informal and
rural industries to find better-paying jobs.