Posted on 08/03/2005 8:12:20 PM PDT by RWR8189
PRESIDENT BUSH SIGNED the Central American Free Trade Agreement on Tuesday in a White House ceremony made possible in part by 15 House Democrats, who defected from their party's otherwise solid bloc and supported the pact.
There has been a lot of talk about the "CAFTA 15," and their votes could cost them dearly. Union leaders have already pledged to try to oust them in Democratic primaries next year, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco is reportedly threatening to yank plum committee assignments.
It's a sad day for the Democratic Party when narrow-minded protectionism has become the litmus test of party loyalty. And it's shameful for California, one of the world's most dynamic economies, that not a single one of its 32 Democratic representatives in the House voted for CAFTA.
It's a worrisome sign that the party has been hijacked by special interests.
As we've noted before, the agreement with five small Central American nations and the Dominican Republic is beneficial to both the United States and Central America. And among the strongest advocates of the deal were industries that employ millions of Californians: the Hollywood studios and high-tech companies such as Intel, Oracle and Hewlett-Packard. How could Howard Berman of West Hollywood and Anna Eshoo of Silicon Valley embrace such an isolationist economic worldview?
The pressure from their constituents could not overcome labor's opposition and the party leadership's desire to deny Bush a victory and force as many Republicans as possible into the "yea" column. The theory is that American voters will punish at least some of those Republicans for exporting jobs to Guatemala and Honduras — a false argument, but an easy one to make in a 30-second attack ad.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein was the sole California Democrat to support the pact, along with 20
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"Free" trade is really the bizzaro world in politics were right and left have no meaning.
Exactly how many pages is CAFTA?
CAFTA will drive central american farmers off their land because they won't be able to compete with american agribusiness.
guess where those displaced farmers will go.
same thing happened in Mexico with NAFTA
CAFTA is the EU-ization of America. Our national soverignty was just sold for a few bananas by the "conservative" party.
The EC and later the EU was a great idea until it became less and less about free trade and more about political union.
The EC, CAFTA, NAFTA, and GATT are inherently political. The U.S. has always been able to make free trade with any willing trade partner. What these international agreements do is bind the nation into a trade policy. This does serve a free-trade purpose, but what is created is a supranational governing body. Once such bodies are formed, they inevitably seek to expand their influence.
Got to wake up tomorrow to move manufacturing back from China to Central America.
Note to self. Cut off anymore work for China, transfer to Central America instead.
Good day.
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.