Proponents of the Central America Free Trade Agreement have conveniently ignored this fundamental fact: the effect of trade on incomes in Central America and how to alleviate the adverse consequences of trade liberalization on the poor.
From Stephen F. Lynch
Likewise, free trade does not, as evidenced in CAFTA, mean fair trade.
You do not export democracy through the Defense Department or the Defense Secretary. You do it through trade agreements, through the Department of Commerce and favorable agreements with our friends and neighbors across the globe.
Since NAFTA was put in place, Mexico has lost 1.9 million jobs and most Mexicans' real wages have fallen.
Free trade should not mean free labor.
I am told that the clinical definition of insanity is the tendency to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.
As for the expected boon to the Mexican economy, we have seen none of these gains, and instead we have seen NAFTA's detrimental impact on the Mexican workers.
Now, given the experience that we have had thus far, with our subsequent trade agreements with NAFTA and others, you would think that with our experience of job loss that we have had there that when you find yourself in a hole that you might stop digging.
If you consider that a typical Central American consumer earns only a small fraction of an average American worker's wages, it becomes clear that CAFTA's true goal is not to the increase U.S. exports.
The one thing that I have been struck with, after coming here to Congress is, how many people in Washington, D.C. talk about job loss like they are talking about the weather, or a natural disaster like an earthquake.
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