Posted on 05/24/2005 7:08:18 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
It really matters where the jobs that Americans lose go. That's what CAFTA is about. It's not about destroying textile jobs in the Carolinas. They're history, anyway--if not this year, then in five years. CAFTA is about keeping work in our hemisphere that would otherwise go to China.
The Central American Free Trade Agreement would cut tariffs on commerce among the United States, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. The Dominican Republic, which is in the Caribbean, also wants to join.
Though President Bush is battling hard for the accord, some observers declare it all but dead. The generally pro-trade New Democrat Coalition has just jumped ship. But new Democrats should think again and back CAFTA. So should old Democrats.
Organized labor doesn't want to hear this defeatist talk about managing losses. That's understandable. But while labor has been dealt a bad hand, it still must play the cards. That means choosing the least bad of bad options.
Some labor critics point to NAFTA as a reason to shoot down CAFTA. The 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement covered the United States, Canada and Mexico. Foes of these accords note, for example, that there were 127,000 textile and apparel jobs in South Carolina before NAFTA. Now there are 48,000.
The truth is, the United States was bleeding these kinds of factory jobs decades before NAFTA. And it's unclear how large a part NAFTA has played in the years since.
Many of these jobs were not sucked down to Mexico but over to China and other Asian countries. And of the lost jobs that can be traced to Mexico, how many would have simply gone to China instead, had it not been for NAFTA? Even Mexico has seen factories move to China.
Labor-intensive industries in America continue to fight a hopeless war against competitors paying pennies-an-hour wages. The futility of it all can be seen in the following numbers, provided by A.T. Kearney, a consulting firm:
It costs $135 to make 12 pairs of cotton trousers in the United States. It costs $57 to make the trousers in China and ship them here. It costs $69 to do so in other parts of the world.
In this business, the United States is clearly out of the running. But many low-wage countries are still contenders with China--especially if they can ship their products here tariff-free.
Americans would be better off if their imports came from Managua, rather than Guangdong. After all, our Latin neighbors are more likely to buy the things we have to sell. That's why farmers producing beef, pork and corn are all for these treaties. So are U.S. companies that make machinery, especially for construction.
Then there are foreign-policy considerations. CAFTA partners would include very poor countries with fragile democracies. More trade with the United States could stabilize them--and reduce the pressures on their people to come here illegally. And if the workers make more money, they'll be able to buy more American goods.
Some Democrats argue that these poor countries compete by exploiting their workers. Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., for example, opposes the accord because, he says, "the basic rights of working people in Central America are systematically repressed."
He has it backward. Economic desperation creates the conditions for oppression. Workers are strongest where jobs are plentiful. CAFTA could empower workers and lift them from grinding poverty.
Rather than protect jobs that will eventually leave America, labor and its Democratic allies should protect the people who lose them. Trade Adjustment Assistance is a federal program that offers financial help and training for Americans who lose jobs because of imports.
Democrats complain that the program is underfunded, and they are right. So why not make more money for Trade Adjustment Assistance a bargaining chip to win support for CAFTA?
There's no exit door out of this global economy. Parts of the American economy will do well in it; other parts will not. Free trade in the Americas is about joining with our neighbors in a common defense against China's growing power. Those are the true stakes, and fighting futile battles will only distract us from what matters.
it looks as if regional free trade zones are the way forward as compared to the monolithic WTO model thus far.
A very interesting take on the matter, I had not seen this discussed before from this point of view. I tend to agree with the article.
It's almost like the game of Risk, imo.
I agree.
For sure, China does not want us to sign CAFTA, as good a reason as any to move it forward.
Some of us work for companies which would have to make changes to compete, some of us work for companies which stand to add employees by virtue of the agreement, but one thing for sure, ALL of us are consumers who would benefit, an outcome which generally is under-esteemed by the anti-free traders among us, IMHO.
Gosh CAFTA is about HOPE. Its about EQUITY and giving away US tax dollars to pull Central Americans out of POVERTY. Its about TRANSFORMATIONAL DIPLOMACY. Its about countering the CHINA THREAT CREATED BY ROBERT ZOELLICK, the WTO and the FREE TRADERS in the first place.
Its about creating a global socialist western hemisphere using the classic communist technique of CAUSING A CRISIS, then offering a SOLUTION that is the predetermined outcome of the CRISIS.
Good article, 1rudeboy. For a person who hates subsidies for sugar farmers, you sure like them if they are for "job retraining" or for students.
So by unloading the remainder of our industries to Latin America, a marxist bloc where we are hated as much as the Chinese hate us, we're helping ourselves out.
Great plan.
Take reply #7, for example.
Brilliant. For a person who loves subsidies for sugar farmers, you sure hate them if they are for "job retraining" or for students.
Can you pick it up a few notches? Drink some coffee or something.
One of the more treasonous contradictions in the "Free Traders" globalist argument is that the American taxpayer should lift the Central American countries out of poverty at our expense and give away massive amounts of tax money to foreign corporations to they can "trade" and expand the size of government dramatically by funding behemoth bureaucracies in our country and abroad to administer the programs while contending that the massive outflow of US wealth to the rest of the globe is good for the U.S.
Ping.
FUR SHUR, I'd much rather have American industry develop in El Centro America than in China!
Bump at least someone in the free trade camp is admitting that our trade policies have caused this massive lost of jobs and wealth in the usa mostly to the benefit of Communist China. Now they are using the threat that THIER POLICIES CREATED to try to scare us into more of the same. No freakin way, just about everyone now sees the stupidity of so called "free trade" which is really just substituting American labor for foreign labor.
When will we actually see it?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.