Fair Trade

[IndianaGreen]

Published on Saturday, October 6, 2007 by The Huffington Post

Fair Trade

by Sen. Bernie Sanders

Costa Rica on Sunday will become the first country where citizens have the opportunity to vote for or against a trade agreement. Despite being heavily outspent by the moneyed interests, despite opposition from the Costa Rican government and the U.S. ambassador, despite an extremely hostile media, the latest polls show momentum building for the opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Incredibly, just the other day, in a nation of only 4 million people, more than 100,000 marched in opposition to the treaty — a sign of the deep grassroots opposition there to CAFTA.

Free trade is very good for the large multinational corporations who can throw American workers out on the street, move abroad to China and other low-wage countries, hire people there for pennies an hour, and bring their products back into this country. For those people, for the CEOs of large corporations, unfettered free trade has been a very good thing, but for the middle-class and working families of this country, for working families and poor people in Mexico and in other low-wage countries, unfettered free trade has been an unmitigated disaster.

Increasingly, trade policy is not a partisan issue. The vast majority of Republicans now have serious concerns about our current trade policies because they see those trade policies as being harmful to the middle class and working families of this country, according to a new poll. “By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president. The sign of broadening resistance to globalization came in a new Wall Street Journal-NBC News Poll that showed a fraying of Republican Party orthodoxy on the economy,” The Wall Street Journal reported in a page-one news story on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, the pundits for the plutocrats, twice this week weighed in on what it thinks is good for the people of Costa Rica. They also had a thing or two to say about me.

My trip to Costa Rica last month was not about telling the people there how to vote. That’s their business, not mine. The trip that Rep. Mike Michaud and I made was to help counter the lies being spread in Costa Rica that suggested that if the people there, exercising their democratic rights, voted “no” on Cafta, the U.S. government would punish them by excluding them from the Caribbean Basin Initiative as well as other punitive actions.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/06/4363/

Poll question: Considering all the recent threats made by US State Department of the dire consequences if CAFTA is rejected, and the money pumped by NED into Costa Rica to skew the election, how do you think Costa Ricans will vote this Sunday?

[gateley]

1. I voted that the Costa Ricans WILL defeat CAFTA because that's my heartfelt hope. nt

[Warpy]

2. The dogma of fair trade as practiced now has benefited

nearly every country on the planet except the USA. The Costa Ricans may well approve it, since to them it means more good paying manufacturing jobs moving there from the USA.

Remember, it means different things to different people in other countries. Here, it's been a total disaster for the country and its people. Overseas it's been a howling success. Well, except for those pollution and slave labor condition things.

Don't be too surprised if the people of Costa Rica approve it.

[IndianaGreen]

4. I am not sure how the vote will go. I recall reading something about voting machines.

It wouldn't surprise me if the election results were skewed.

[Maribelle]

5. A lot of Costa Ricans are against it ...

Ironically the left/right, pro-U.S./ anti-U.S. portrayal of the CAFTA issue in Costa Rica is somewhat of a red herring, since not all the opposition to the free trade deal comes from anti-free trade sentiment. With its population of just over four million enjoying a much higher standard of living and much more political and economic stability than its Central American neighbors, some Costa Ricans simply don’t want to be lumped in a regional trade bloc.

A faction of CAFTA opponents would much rather negotiate a bi-lateral trade agreement with the U.S., of the type the U.S. is trying to push through with Peru, Colombia and Panama. The U.S. is the largest recipient of Costa Rican exports, including apparel, coffee, fruit and high-tech products.

Trade and investment are reportedly up in the Central American countries which implemented CAFTA, with a 68 percent increase in exports from El Salvador and a 30 percent increase in foreign investment in Nicaragua, where leftist president Daniel Ortega allayed early U.S. government fears by supporting the agreement. But many labor and human rights advocates in those countries question whether the economic gains are reaching the bulk of the population, as opposed to staying in the hands of a wealthy minority.

Much of the increased investment has been in textile, electronics and other manufacturing, industries that are known for sweatshop conditions and for quickly pulling up stakes when cheaper labor becomes available elsewhere on the globe. Textile and apparel companies in the US and Central America have been among the major backers of CAFTA, seeing it as a way to compete with producers in Asia. But so far that promise hasn’t panned out, with about a million textile factory jobs shifted from the Americas to Asia in the past decade.

CAFTA essentially takes the place of and negates the existing Caribbean Basin program, which allowed duty free trade in the apparel industry within the region and was widely described as a political tactic to avert leftist revolutions.

It is widely feared CAFTA would have numerous negative effects on the Costa Rican economy and individual well-being, because of competition from cheaper U.S. imports, widespread privatization and new intellectual property and other trade-related restrictions.

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/912/1/

[Colobo]

3. They will defeat it. Costa Rica is a country in which Dennis Kucinich could be president.

But the way, the best president in Central America right now is El Salvador's Tony Saca.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. Guess where I'm flying to tomorrow? :) Yes! Costa Rica! :-)

[LWolf]

7. I hope they reject it. n/t