CAFTA: The End of Resistance to Unfair Corporate Trade?

The U.S. House of Representatives just joined the Senate in passing legislation to remove taxes on imported goods between itself and most Central American countries plus the Dominican Republic, and to further restrict free use of corporate-owned knowledge.  The legal agreement also specifically removes barriers in these poor countries to the subsidized U.S.-produced drug, tobacco, an acknowledged addictive killer of millions.

In Despite Broad Opposition, House Passes Free Trade Deal, the national progressive hard news on-line newspaper The NewStandard reports that corporation advocacy groups are celebrating the bare passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (expanded to include the Dominican Republic) as the end to the ground-up resistance to such top-down trade agreements.

"I hope this CAFTA vote marks the end of political opposition to trade liberalization," said National Association of Manufacturers' president John Engler, quoted by reporter Brendan Coyne.

That the vote was so close in the corrupt legislature of the United States, where few people will be directly affected by the agreement, suggests that supporters of capitalists' privileges (take the National Association of Manufacturers for example, which has an income of more than $27 million a year) are going to have difficulty repeating or even consolidating this success if we can build on the beginnings of a cross-border people's movement.  The United States government, abandoning the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA/ALCA) for now, has picked off the small countries least able to resist its pressure: Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.  Even so, Coyne reported, the governments of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic have not yet accepted the U.S.-made trade deal due to the broad opposition in their countries, and it is under legal challenge in El Salvador.

After noting possible losses to workers at U.S. sugar producers (as well as textile manufacturers), Coyne and The NewStandard (TNS) reported:

The negative effect in the other member countries is predicted by CAFTA's opponents to be even more severe.  Mexico’s experience under the North American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA's big brother enacted in 1994, saw the displacement of some 1.5 million peasant farmers, according to the government watchdog group Public Citizen.

Oxfam, an international relief organization that testified in opposition to the bill earlier this year, warned that CAFTA "will force legislative changes that will erode the policy space required for national development" in poorer nations. Oxfam also joined with a coalition of groups to denounce intellectual property restrictions in the bill that could bring AIDS research in CAFTA nations to a grinding halt.

The group Tobacco-Free Kids charged in a statement that including tobacco in the free trade provisions was a dangerous move that will undermine efforts to prevent addiction and "will be remembered in lives lost and in millions of dollars in health care bills."

According to the Department of Agriculture, the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua will immediately end their tariffs on imported tobacco under CAFTA.  Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic will eliminate theirs within ten years of passage.  US-imposed tariffs will gradually phase out over fifteen years, the USDA noted.

Be sure to look at their three-part series on CAFTA from May linked at the end when you check out the whole New Standard article.