What are peoples’ thoughts on CAFTA? Anyone have any articles on it they think are worth sharing?
Anyone have any good articles/research on the impacts of NAFTA?
In general I’m always for the principles of free and fair trade, but having not research this well yet, I’m highly doubtful of the intended and actual impacts to both the US and the other member countries.
The Democratic party has completely stepped away from the free trade stance that Clinton adopted consistently and effectively during his tenure. The six CAFTA countries have a combined GDP less than 1% of the US GDP, so the impact on this country will be minimal. The impact on those six countries, however, will be large and positive.
The economic policies of the large nations, especially in regard to agriculture, is a disaster to small, impoverished nations. We flood the world markets with subsidized agricultural products, thus destorying the economy of these small countries by wrecking the market in those few areas where they can compete. The NY Times, of all people, has run a long series of editorials outlining these policies and their disasterous results.
CAFTA is a good step toward fixing these problems, at least for these six countries.
Maybe we should have had Al Gore debating this issue for us. He did well against Perot in the NAFTA debate.
I do not understand the Democratic Party. Free trade is one issue on which they led with positive policies, consistently followed during the 90s. I can not think of another major policy other than free trade in which Clinton never waivered, never triangulated, never fudged. The Democrats seem to have abandonned this along with every other positive policy proposal so far as I can tell.
All I know is, is that soon after NAFTA (and the welfare reform bill) were passed, US unemployment stats hit their lowest ever. Was there any cause and effect? I don’t know. But, it seems apparent that NAFTA did not cause the catastrophic impact some predicted. Were there job losses in some sectors? Yes there were. But, other sectors more than made up for it. Did the new jobs created pay significantly less than the old jobs lost? Not much evidence of that, really, other than anecdotal. Again, maybe in some sectors/areas but not overall.
My question is–Why does a “free trade” agreement contain 3,000 pages of rules, regulations, and exceptions? That doesn’t seem really “free” to me.
My prediction–CAFTA will not be the disaster the labor unions are saying it will, and will not be the panacea the free traders are saying it will. I know I’m really out on a limb with that bold prediction, there. ;^)