Thread: CAFTA will cost Alabama jobs

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CAFTA will cost Alabama jobs


Sand Mountain Reporter

Published July 12, 2005

To the Editor:

For many workers in rural Alabama, times have been hard and under a proposal by the Bush Administration they are going to get harder. Our families are having to work harder to make ends meet, and the jobs that were once a staple for our rural communities have gone to other countries because of trade agreements that have been bad for Alabama and American workers.

Many people thought old Ross Perot was crazy and maybe he was. But one nail that he hit square on the head was that NAFTA and other similar trade agreements made a giant sucking sound – the sound of Alabama jobs going south of the Mexican border.

Last year the Bush administration negotiated a trade agreement with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. This new trade deal is modeled In the early 1990’s NAFTA was sold to the American public as a way to increase US trade with Mexico, and create jobs in the United States. During the discussion of NAFTA, the Institute for International Economics estimated that NAFTA would result in a US trade surplus with Mexico between $9 and $12 billion dollars by the year 2005.

A decade after NAFTA passed, we have the facts not an estimate. The fact: The United States has gone from a $1.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico in 1993 to a whopping $45 billion trade deficit. And the jobs that were to be created? The fact: The U.S. Department of Labor reports that 1.8 million workers filed for trade adjustment assistance because their jobs were eliminated in the United States and sent to Mexico, because of NAFTA.

The National Association of Manufacturers now estimate that passage of CAFTA will generate about $1 billion in new exports and create 12,000 new jobs. NAM said the same thing about NAFTA. We should learn from history, this just will not happen. The results of trade agreement modeled after a failed NAFTA are predictable. NAFTA was a disastrous trade policy for Alabamians, just as CAFTA is a disastrous trade policy.

Alabama has lost (70,000 manufacturing jobs) almost 40,000 textile jobs since NAFTA was approved. The Fort Payne area used to be the “sock capital� of the world. Before NAFTA there were 7500 workers in the mills around Fort Payne, today there are only 4000. This new agreement will make it easier for cheap labor in Central America to take our jobs.

The United States International Trade Commission recently issued a study that found under CAFTA, the textile industry would suffer the second worse job losses in the United States. The worst job loss would be agriculture. Alabama farmers and textile workers have suffered enough. Alabama’s farmers and textile workers should not have to pay for another international trade deal.

I have been accused of some simple and blunt talk and this is the way I see it; CAFTA is not a trade agreement, it is an outsourcing agreement. The primary export of CAFTA will be American jobs.

When CAFTA comes before the US Congress, I hope the Alabama Representative will follow the lead of Senator Shelby and vote “No.�

Lowell Barron

President Pro Tem

Alabama Senate

No to CAFTA.

Great letter. I have never heard of ANY American getting a job from NAFTA, only people losing them. And here are beloved president is PUSHING "NAFTA ON STEROIDS," CAFTA. Did you all listen to the interview with Spence this afternoon--the one listen on the Border Patrol website? They had some Mexican guy on talking about how this invasion is part of an "agreement" made between the US and Mexico regarding "integration" of the two countries? Gray Davis made a similar statemnt before he got kicked out, where he said soon there'd be no border, just "one glorious region." I also recall Vicente Fox whining a while back about the agreement "I thought I had" with Bush. Immediately my ears perked up and I was thinking oh really? What agreement might that be?

Seems like everyone's in on this little scheme except us Americans--we just get to foot the bill. This president is devious and seems to be acting more like a king by the day than a a representative of our people.

"Alabama workers and farmers have suffered enough"

Darn right, and you know what....you didn't need to suffer at all and you must lay blame where it belongs with these CrackPot Trade Treaties putting foreign interests and their Globbie Friends ahead of the best interest of the American People.

Wake Up America and Defeat CAFTA....stop this nonsense now.