Did We Really Hafta?

Yesterday the House of Representatives Republican leadership finally managed to twist enough arms and make enough deals to pass the Central America Free Trade Agreement or CAFTA. At the end of the allotted 15 minutes of voting time, the count was 180 to 175 against CAFTA, so the Republican leadership kept the vote open for over an hour, in order to bully legislators into approving the bill. The final tally was a razor thin 217 to 215, significantly less than the 234 to 200 NAFTA was passed by.

This soon to be law is heartless in its implications. Under CAFTA nations such as Guatemala and Honduras that currently allow the sale of generic anti-AIDS medications will be forced to conform to U.S. pricing which will raise the cost of these drugs to some of the hemisphere's poorest people by thousands of dollars. Instead of conditioning trade benefits on international labor standards CAFTA provides no meaningful worker protections. This is particularly egregious in light of Central America's poor record on labor rights. Central American workers regulary suffer discrimination and abuse. Union busting tactics and the use of child labor are widespread. Attacks on labor organizers in Guatemala have resulted in torture and even murder. (source Citizen's Trade Campaign at www.citizenstrade.org)

In the decade or so since NAFTA passed the U.S. has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 million relatively high paying unionized manufacturing jobs. The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico has soared while Mexican wages are lower in real terms than they were in the early 90's. This in turn has caused a surge of Mexican emigration to U.S. that is creating fear in many quarters of a demographic "reconquista" of the Southwest.

NAFTA did the exact opposite of what Bill Clinton and its other boosters said it would. Why should we expect that CAFTA will be any different?