http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/n ... 944958.htm

Posted on Tue, Jun. 21, 2005

CAFTA fight is over who benefits from trade

Globalization and Bush policies have increased U.S. income inequality

DAVID BRODER

Washington Post Writers Group

The fight over the Central American Free Trade Agreement is a stand-in for a much larger debate over economic policy and political leadership. Its implications go well beyond the immediate stakes in the battle.

The CAFTA debate's larger question is whether the world has changed so much that the old ways of thinking about America's stake in the global economy have to be redefined.

CAFTA itself is small potatoes. The six nations involved -- Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic -- are smaller in total economic clout than a middle-sized U.S. city. Most of their products already enter this country duty-free. Our exports to them are modest.

But CAFTA -- pushed by the Bush administration as a prelude to broader future hemispheric and global trade pacts -- comes before Congress this summer in an environment of increasingly serious economic debate.

Part of the public unease measured in every recent poll stems from the forces of globalization, notably the easy flow of investment across national borders and the shift of many jobs to previously laggard countries such as India and China. And part of it stems from the tax and budget policies of the Bush administration, which have added to the income inequality of the country and created an economic recovery in which profits and productivity have grown while wages and incomes have stagnated.

As a result, the political alignments have changed in Congress, shifting the odds against approval of CAFTA and requiring a massive effort from the administration to avert a significant foreign policy setback.

Spokesmen for the administration argued to me that partisan opposition from Democrats is at the root of the CAFTA problem. Certainly few Democrats can be found who have much good to say about the agreement, and most are vehemently opposed to it. But you have to remember that when President Clinton put NAFTA -- the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada -- before a Democratic Congress, most of his fellow-partisans, including key leaders of the House and Senate, opposed him.

Much of the opposition is generated by organized labor, a key Democratic interest group. But the notable thing about this debate is that New Democrats -- the Clinton disciples, who historically have been strong supporters of liberal trade agreements -- are opposing this one.

Bush administration lobbyists cannot blame this defection on the unions. Organized labor has rarely been weaker in decades than it is at this moment.

No, the reason that the New Democrats have balked on CAFTA is that they believe it does not address the realities of the new economy in which their constituents, many in the high-tech world, work. Simon Rosenberg, the head of NDN (formerly known as the New Democrat Network), and Robert Shapiro, a Clinton administration Commerce Department official, argue that Democrats should not support CAFTA until its labor and environmental standards are strengthened and steps are made to help U.S. workers cope with the pressures of globalization.

On the first point, Rob Portman, the able new chief U.S. trade negotiator, argues that CAFTA's provisions are superior to those of the free trade agreement with Jordan, signed during the Clinton administration.

Portman is a serious, sincere person and open-minded about ways to improve the standards in those Central American countries. But the administration isn't prepared to do what Clinton did in the Jordan agreement -- to apply the same remedies to violations of labor and environmental standards that it would impose for violation of the agreement's commercial standards. To many Democrats, that represents retreat.

But even more important is the lack of commitment from the Bush administration to the kind of measures that would address the anxieties of American workers -- expansion of health insurance and controls on health care costs, a higher minimum wage, and generous funding of education at all levels.

When the benefits of liberal trade -- and the benefits of overall economic growth -- are more widely shared, political support for CAFTA and similar measures will be easier to find. Until then, it is going to be a battle.

David

Broder
David Broder is a Washington Post reporter and columnist. Write him c/o Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071, or at davidbroder@washpost.com.