New Dems: Four Reasons To Support CAFTA

[Robbien]

. . .

First, the United States needs to open new markets and increase exports if we are ever to regain the economic growth levels of the 1990s.

. . .

Second, the United States has a tangible political and moral stake in our partners' success. All six today are peaceful, democratic nations -- and bipartisan American trade policy deserves some of the credit.

. . .

Third, Democratic support for, or at least an open attitude towards, CAFTA can and should be used as leverage to make the agreement better. In what is likely to be a close vote in both Houses of Congress, Democrats could be in a position to demand better policies to "expand the winner's circle"

. . .

Fourth, the United States has strategic interests at stake that go beyond exports and beyond the partners themselves. The great 20th-century Democratic presidents all viewed democracy and economic integration in the Western Hemisphere as essential to the prosperity and security of the United States.

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=253383

Appears the New Dems got theirs from the lobbyists and are ready to sell Central America into slavery.

[Selatius]

1. No free trade without worker protections/environmental protections

If the corporatists in both parties are pushing free trade, chances are they don't want to help these countries, they just want to create another sweatshop.

Until they meet the demands of people like me and others, they can go blow themselves if they want our support.

[endarkenment]

2. I especially like this one:

"Third, Democratic support for, or at least an open attitude towards, CAFTA can and should be used as leverage to make the agreement better. In what is likely to be a close vote in both Houses of Congress, Democrats could be in a position to demand better policies to "expand the winner's circle" "

The Democratic congressional leadership has been so very successful in negotiating changes to totally f*d up legislation. Their working relationship with their fair-minded colleagues across the aisle has produced a virtual cornucopia of legislative compromises and good laws.

:sarcasm:

Translation: sure this bill sucks but we will pretend to be working on improving it right after we gather enough votes to get it passed, sucker.

[Robbien]

3. Worked real well with the bankruptcy bill didn't it

The GOP shot down each and every amendment the Dems tried to put on the bill.

But the New Dems are advertising here that they think this bipartisanship is a good plan. Insanity.

[hermetic]

4. from Jim Hightower today

The media in our country has largely ignored CAFTA, but it has become big news and a political flash point in the six Latin nations it would affect. Thousands of Guatemalans have poured into the streets in opposition, and the army there opened fire on them, killing two. In Honduras, angry protesters surrounded the capitol building after their congress rushed through CAFTAs approval, forcing the terrified lawmakers to flee. The protesters took over the chambers, proclaimed themselves the "true representatives of the Honduran people," and scrapped the congress's approval of CAFTA. (I love that! Why don't we do that?) Also opposition is so intense in Costa Rica that the president won't even submit CAFTA for legislative approval.

[dbeach]

6. Hightower has been anti Cafta and Nafta..

from the start and its been more bucks for the corporats and less jobs for the rest..

Ross hit it when he said "sucking sound"
nafta ..cafta is the same ole shafta for the commoners..

[warrens]

5. The main problem with CAFTA-DR is...

It has a bunch of loopholes that were not in our agreement with Australia, for instance, and this will be the model for the FTAA, which will make this look like a drop in the bucket. Just as one example, there are no triggers that would shut down trade if one of our industries was being severely damaged. We have that in nearly all our other trade pacts.

CAFTA means very little. It's what comes after that matters, and this sets a really lousy precedent.

[yurbud]

7. free trade is NOT the problem--it's pro-corporate details

[endarkenment]

8. free trade without workplace and environmental standards

is simply an invitation for corporations to avoid such regulations by moving their operations to countries so poor and desperate that they cannot insist on decent wages and benefits, safe working conditions, and environmentally sound manufacturing processes.

Free trade is just mumbo-jumbo used to confuse us. Its 'free' so that must be good, right? What it is free of are the constraints we have learned, painfully, over the 300+ year history of the development of modern industrial society, to put on large scale economic activity in order to keep a fair safe and sustainable society.

Free to exploit without barriers. Free to whom? It is certainly not free to you or me, it has cost us a lot so far. It is certainly not free to the emerging economies of the second and third worlds, which are experiencing the devastation of unconstrained capitalist exploitation. It is free to the oligarchs, to the planetary aristocracy, who are busy trying to free thier wealth accumulating activities from all governmental constraints.

[realFedUp]

9. Links please to arguments for both sides?

and what effects will this have on countries
involved...links please.

[Robbien]

10. The main reason this is bad for Central America

is that it makes them adhere to IMF standards of privatization. See this article on how it will insure Central American countries be buried under a mountain of debt and foreign investment.

http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=836&cid=1&sid=45

edit: I can find no country a winner here on either side. The US will lose jobs and "Buy American" is threatened again while Central America is relegated to debtor colony status. The only entity that wins is the global corporates.

[realFedUp]

11. thanks for the link....nt