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Article Last Updated: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 11:56:47 PM PST

Learn and then oppose CAFTA

I am aware of, and terribly concerned about the trade agreements that are being railroaded through Congress. I urge more Americans to learn more about the current one, named CAFTA and to get involved in opposing it.

CAFTA is the Central America Free Trade Agreement which will involve North America and all the Central American countries. According to the acting U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier's message to Congress last month, CAFTA would help consolidate "democratic and free-market gains toward economic, political and social reform." He is insisting that CAFTA nations are very big markets for our products. How could that be? Sales pitches for CAFTA ignore the fact that the combined economy of the six CAFTA nations is insignificant.

Trade analyst Alan Tonelson of the U.S. Business and Industry Council pointed out: "Add up the six CAFTA economies and you get a market the size of New Haven, Conn." He says that CAFTA is a another classic outsourcing agreement an arrangement in which the only significant U.S. export would be manufacturing jobs to the poor, low- wage nations.

If CAFTA is intended to be a "free trade" agreement, why does it handicap U.S farmers and give an artificial advantage to Central American farmers? It seems to me to be another foreign aid program for Central America governments. Dragging the United States economy down does nothing to help Central America prosper.

Local farmers must understand better than anyone else that CAFTA is a threat to them. Now is the time to let your representtives in Congress know that you are not buying the so-called free trade argument used to promote CAFTA.

Please folks, learn more about it, and let your representives in Congress know that you are not about to let them trade away our nation's economic independence.

Margueriti Patten

Lakeport