Thread: Deja vu: CAFTA will be NAFTA all over again

The Oregonian


Deja vu: CAFTA will be NAFTA all over again
Monday, May 23, 2005
Judy O'Connor

IN MY OPINION Judy O'Connor

T he Oregonian's editorial supporting the Central American Free Trade Agreement ("The case for CAFTA," May 16) failed to provide an honest assessment of what NAFTA's supporters predicted and its opponents warned of when that agreement was debated by Congress in 1993. Here is what many former supporters know after 12 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement: NAFTA didn't work.

But it appears The Oregonian hasn't learned that lesson despite the fact its own predictions did not come true. More than a decade ago, on Nov. 12, 1993, The Oregonian editorialized, "According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Oregon would be one of the top five NAFTA job-winners, with 3,500 new jobs expected over the next five years." Five days later, in another editorial, your newspaper stated that Oregon "will be one of NAFTA's big winners."

Here's what really happened: Oregon's economy was roiled by plant closures and layoffs because of cheaper imports from Canada and Mexico and the shift of production to Mexico's maquiladora factories. Pendleton Woolen Mills moved its remaining mills to Mexico. Freightliner imported more parts for its trucks from Mexican factories, instead of making them here. And lumber mills collapsed under an avalanche of cheap wood from Canada.

By 2002, the Department of Labor had certified more than 13,000 jobs lost in Oregon as a result of NAFTA. And, even when accounting for new jobs created by exports to Canada and Mexico, we still lost more than 9,000 jobs in Oregon and almost 900,000 jobs nationwide, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

And in Mexico, NAFTA was a failure. By flooding the market with highly subsidized U.S. agricultural products, NAFTA destroyed 1.7 million farming jobs, forcing small farmers to migrate away from their collapsing communities in search of work. Meanwhile, the real wages of Mexican factory workers actually declined.

During the debate over NAFTA in 1993, The Oregonian dismissed concerns about new mechanisms in the agreement that threatened the authority of state and local governments to enforce their own laws related to public health, the environment and workers' rights. You did so again in your recent editorial, claiming that opponents of NAFTA cannot point to a single case "where local laws in the United States have been overridden."

In fact, seven cases against the United States are in arbitration under NAFTA's infamous "Chapter 11," and five more cases await arbitration. These cases challenge a broad array of important laws protecting the public interest, including limits on imports of cattle from countries with mad cow disease, regulations on open-pit mining and the terms of tobacco settlements reached by state governments.

The Oregonian started promoting a NAFTA-style trade deal with Central America just days after NAFTA was ratified by Congress in 1993. After 12 years of devastating job losses in our economy, increasing poverty in Mexico and the continuing threat to local sovereignty posed by corporations empowered to challenge our laws as restraints of trade, it's time to rethink that position.

If we learned anything from our experience with NAFTA, it's this: We need to find a better way. We need fair trade that protects workers on both sides of our borders and smart trade that promotes sustainable economic development in rich and poor countries alike. That's not NAFTA, and it won't be CAFTA.

Judy O'Connor is executive secretary-treasurer of the Portland-based Northwest Oregon Labor Council.

Is it me or am I seeing a bad trend? MSM is touting all of the positive benefits of CAFTA while the smaller papers are warning of the dangers of CAFTA.

MSM has their marching orders and they have for years.

To trust what they say is to be a fool.

Why do they keep repeating the mantra "you can't believe everything you read on the internet".

Anyone with a brain can find out the real news on the internet, but you can't get it from MSM.

I think a lot of MSM knows we are getting alternative facts from doing our own research.