More on CAFTA

July 30th, 2005 at 07:54 Björn Hallberg

Additional information on CAFTA that ought to raise a few eyebrows.

Analysis: The Hidden Pages of CAFTA

Common Dreams - At 2,400 pages, the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) isn’t really about trade. Frankly, you don’t need 2,400 pages to eliminate tariffs and regulations on exports and imports. But, you might need 2,400 pages to smuggle through a new set of transnational corporate rights disguised by complicated legalese. I wonder, how many of our Congressional representatives will have even attempted to read this trade to me before next week’s vote?

I recall in 1994 that only one senator Republican; Hank Brown (R-CO), accepted Ralph Nader’s challenge to win $10,000 for charity by taking a simple ten-question quiz on the content of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement. After studying the agreement, Brown announced to the press: “I am a Republican, pro business and a proponent of the free market economy and I am here to speak out against the WTO. For when you read this text - and I invite my colleague senators to do this - you will understand that the WTO is fundamentally undemocratic.”

Any naïve Congressperson who thinks CAFTA is merely about free trade should look carefully at its provisions on government contracts and corporate lawsuits, among others.

And also …

How Cafta Passed House by 2 Votes

NYT - It was just before midnight on Wednesday when Representative Robin Hayes capitulated.

Mr. Hayes, a Republican whose district in North Carolina has lost thousands of textile jobs in the last four years, had defied President Bush and House Republican leaders by voting against the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or Cafta.

But the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, told him they needed his vote anyway. If he switched from “nay” to “aye,” Mr. Hayes recounted, Mr. Hastert promised to push for whatever steps he felt were necessary to restrict imports of Chinese clothing, which has been flooding into the United States in recent months.

Kurt Nimmo adds:

As our corporate telescreens were abuzz with al-CIA-duh terr’ists gone wild—thus distracting the masses with an unending stream of scary campfire stories—the House passed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the bastard sibling of NAFTA, a monster that ate 900,000 American jobs. Thus we are on our way to becoming part of the neolib’s global slavery plantation as more jobs are “outsourced” to Latin American countries where workers earn about 90 cents an hour. “This bill is a commitment of freedom-loving nations to advance peace and prosperity throughout the Western Hemisphere,” declared Bush before the vote. Of course, he is talking about the “peace and prosperity” of transnational corporations and the international bankers behind the IMF and the World Bank—the rest of us will experience increasing poverty and a complete loss of our sovereignty. Get used to it.

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