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05/27/2005:

"Activist-led rebellion threatens to defeat the Central America Free Trade Agreement"

With the left-leaning governments of South America having derailed the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), the Bush Administration had pinned its free trade hopes on bullying the smallest countries in the hemisphere. A year ago this weekend -- on May 28, 2004 -- the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was signed, and forwarded to Congress for what was expected to be rapid approval.
And there it still sits. Activists have convinced a coalition of Democrats and conservative Republicans to come out in opposition to CAFTA. This month, the New Democrats -- a moderate Congressional caucus that is historically pro-free trade -- announced its opposition, calling CAFTA "flawed" for its lack of an economic development package. Conservative Southern Republicans, seeking to protect the sugar and textile industries in their home states, are opposed. And the original Democratic bloc opposed to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is back for another round.

NAFTA figures large in the debate on CSFTA. In many ways, CAFTA is the most direct referendum Congress has had the chance to engage in on the results of NAFTA, the agreement between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico forged by Bill Clinton in 1993. NAFTA has contributed to the enormous loss in manufacturing jobs in the last decade in the United States, with many of them fleeing for the cheaper labor markets of Mexico. Meanwhile, Mexican agriculture has been decimated by the dumping of cheap North American grain. NAFTA has been a disaster for poor and working class people in all three signatory countries, and Democrats fear that the impact of the even cheaper labor of CAFTA's signatory countries in Central America and the Caribbean would be even worse.
Full: workingforchange.com