Thread: CAFTA not merely about free trade

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/2 ... fta28.html

Thursday, July 28, 2005

CAFTA not merely about free trade

By LIZA GRANDIA
GUEST COLUMNIST

At 2,400 pages, the Central America Free Trade Agreement isn't really about trade. Frankly, you don't need 2,400 pages to eliminate tariffs and regulations on exports and imports. But you might need 2,400 pages to smuggle through a new set of transnational corporate rights disguised by complicated legalese. I wonder how many in Congress will even bother to read this trade tome before voting?

I recall in 1994 that only one senator, Republican Hank Brown of Colorado, accepted Ralph Nader's challenge to win $10,000 for charity by taking a simple 10-question quiz on the World Trade Organization agreement. After studying the agreement, Brown announced to the media: "I am a Republican, pro-business and a proponent of the free market economy ... I am here to speak out against the WTO. For when you read this text ... you will understand that the WTO is fundamentally undemocratic."

Any naïve Congress member who thinks CAFTA is merely about free trade should look carefully at its provisions on government contracts and corporate lawsuits.

Government contracts. For any purchases of more than $117,000 (eventually to be lowered to $58,000), CAFTA forces governments to open bidding to transnational corporations. That means that states will no longer be able to give preference to home-based businesses, and so mom-and-pop stores in Central America and the United States will suddenly be competing with the Bechtels and the Halliburtons of the world.

Corporate lawsuits against governments. Perhaps CAFTA's most worrisome provision expands the rights that corporations received under NAFTA to challenge any laws they perceive as barriers to trade and foreign investment. For instance, when California banned a carcinogenic gasoline additive called MTBE because it was seeping into the state's drinking water, the chemical manufacturer, Methanex, sued California for infringing on its trade rights under NAFTA and demanded $970 million in compensation. Such suits are a direct threat to democracy because they prioritize the profits of foreign corporations over a country's own environmental, social and labor laws.

Already corporations are planning more such lawsuits. If CAFTA passes, a subsidiary of Harken Energy (on whose board George W. Bush once served) has said it will demand $58 billion from Costa Rica (whose entire GDP is only $37 billion) in compensation for hypothetical future lost profits, if the company is not allowed to drill offshore in Costa Rica's protected Talamanca region -- one of the planet's richest marine ecosystems.

CAFTA also encourages privatization, especially for government services in health, water, energy and social security. In agriculture, it will allow transnational agribusiness cartels to dump food commodities at below-market prices. It will forbid the public health sector from buying life-saving generic drugs for such diseases as AIDS.

Far from a free trade agreement, CAFTA is rather a corporate trade agreement that transforms foreign investment from a privilege to an inalienable right.

It's like having a house guest who cleans out your refrigerator, claims your nicest bed, takes exclusive control of the television remote control and then -- like Paris Hilton -- demands that you pay for the pleasure of her company and writes you off as a business expense.

The United States has a perfectly sound trade agreement with Central America called the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which makes most of our trade with Central America duty-free. Congress should defeat CAFTA and send the Bush administration back to negotiate a real trade agreement that every U.S. and Central American citizen can read in less time than the pages of "Gone With the Wind" and the King James version of the Bible combined.
Liza Grandia is an anthropologist who has lived and worked in Guatemala for more than six years. Her dissertation concerns the impacts of trade and globalization on the agrarian situation of the Q'eqchi' Maya people.

Hell on Earth has begun.

And could you believe those lyin' Republicans claiming this was Ronald Reagan's idea?

Believe me, THIS was not Ronald Reagan's idea. If this was Ronald Reagain's idea it would have been passed when he was President.

What a sacrilege for these liars, cheaters, thieves and Traitors to use his name on a scheme to end the United States.

Pure Evil was at work in our Capitol Building tonight.

And according to Sheila Jackson Lee, CAFTA is actually 3600 pages.

There are 217 Traitors plus the 2 Cowards = 219 Sicko-Wacko-Evil-Parasites-From-Hell in the United States House of Representatives who are Yella-Bellied, Two-Faced, Two-Timin, Back-Stabbin', Lyin' Traitors that need to be hauled outside to the outhouse so they can suffocate on their own Rat Dung until they CHOKE ON IT.

This was Bush I idea and it was stuck to Clinton and he couldnt do anything. Here comes the FTAA next, the EU can see it why cant our people? Oh i forgot ours have forgotten thier Oath!

Pro

Yep, Bush One and his "sonny boy" got it through for him.

What idiots we were to support this Maniac.

Judy,
Check out the two that sold out and didnt vote.

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-7291.html

Yes I saw it. Taylor from NC and I think Davis is from SC. Not sure, but I think that's what C-Span said.

I'm just drained.

You know what this means?

Now we have to do the same thing on FTAA.

Then we have to figure out how to unravel CAFTA.

I wish we could communicate with some people in Central America. I wish there were some people from there that could find their way to this forum.

They are all going to lose their farms and small businesses, just like in Mexico and then where are they going to go? Right...the US.

Here is one Judy
http://www.cispes.org/english/Campaign_ ... AFTA_FTAA/

Thanks JP!!

I listened to some of the callers who called in to C-Span during the voting and the ones who spoke in favor of CAFTA spoke along two lines:

1) US is moving to White Collar economy so why not let the Blue Collar Work move to the other countries so they can make the stuff cheaper

2) US needs to do something about illegal immigration and if we create jobs in these poor countries then they'll stop coming

Isn't that pathetic? They don't understand that the White Collars jobs FEED from your Blue Collar Jobs. No Blue Collar Jobs, no White Collar Jobs. White Collars are managers....of Blue Collars. Can Americans be that uninformed about their economy? Apparently so. Education ...JP.... we have to keep educating America about its Economy.

They also don't understand that our employers that move to these countries do not pay American Wages, they pay local wages what is called Prevailing Wage. If the going rate is $2 a day, then they pay $2 a day. If they can sneak into the United States and earn $80 a day, at $10 a hour or even $45 a day at minimum wage, without any concept of our cost of living, they think they'll be RICH!!

The vast majority of the callers were opposed but C-Span tries to go from one to the other which is why they have 2 phone numbers...one for each side of the issue to make it appear balanced.

I need to run out and get some air...I'm so disappointed, and I know you are. I had a bad feeling all day because the calls that I made to alot of the Congressman were met with cheery but nonchalant "ok" and I'll pass it along almost as if they were "amused". Did you get that feeling? Like aren't they cute, those Americans, calling as if they don't know the "thing" is already rigged by the President.

It was close, so I know all our calls at the end of the day made a difference just not enough to push it over the top. I can not believe Taylor didn't have the guts to vote like a man.

Well...I'm running out now. I'll be back in a few minutes.

Yes, a lot of uneducated people got on the air. Itries using differnet lines to call in but I kept getting busy signals.

I will need to get some sleep in a little bit and come back in a few hours. I can assure you that I will be making an appointment to see Mr. Taylor when this session lets out. I need to introduce myself as one of his disappointed constituents and his opposition in 06.