Thread: Barack Obama speaks out against CAFTA

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Barack Obama speaks out against CAFTA

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama spoke out today via The Chicago Tribune against CAFTA. Following are excerpts of what the senator wrote.

This week Congress will debate the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

I wish I could vote in favor of CAFTA. In the end, I believe that expanding trade and breaking down barriers between countries is good for our economy and for our security, for American consumers and American workers. CAFTA would benefit farmers here in Illinois as well as agricultural and manufacturing interests across the country.

We also shouldn't kid ourselves into believing that voting against trade agreements will stop globalization--especially ones like CAFTA, where the countries involved have combined economies one-sixth the size of Illinois'.

Globalization is not someone's political agenda. It is a technological revolution that is fundamentally changing the world's economy, producing winners and losers along the way. The question is not whether we can stop it, but how we respond to it. It's not whether we should protect our workers from competition, but what we can do to fully enable them to compete against workers all over the world.

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So far, America has not effectively answered these questions and American workers are suffering as a result. I meet these workers all across Illinois, workers whose jobs moved to Mexico or China and are now competing with their own children for jobs that pay 7 bucks an hour. In town meetings and union halls, I've tried to tell these workers the truth--that these jobs aren't coming back, that globalization is here to stay and that they will have to train more and learn more to get the new jobs of tomorrow.

But when they wonder how they will get this training and this education, when they ask what they will do about their health-care bills and their lower wages and the general sense of financial insecurity that seems to grow with each passing day, I cannot look them in the eyes and tell them that their government is doing a single thing about these problems.

That is why I won't vote for CAFTA.

I believe that expanding trade and breaking down barriers between countries is good for our economy and for our security

Yeah, Barak, it's done wonders for security on the border with Mexico. Why, I hear that you are safer there than anywhere in the country.

Talk about your meally-mouthed, forked tongued politicians. He's already given up to the globalists, but he doesn't like CAFTA! Is his brain always in ELECTION mode?

Scarecrow,
They better be thinking about elections because they won’t be winning if they continue with their idiotic ways.