NYT
Another free-trade battle
The New York Times
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Dogfights in the U.S. Congress over free-trade pacts usually pop up not long after presidential elections. Back in 1993, President Bill Clinton doled out promises to everybody and his mother to get the North American Free Trade Agreement passed, while President George W. Bush in 2001 had his congressional allies actually hold a vote open for an extra 23 minutes so they could force a weeping North Carolina congressman to abandon his textile constituency and give the president the single-vote margin he needed for trade negotiating authority.
Next year promises to be no exception. Bush has indicated he will try to push through Congress a Central American Free Trade Agreement, or Cafta. Like Nafta, Cafta would open up trade - valued at $32 billion - between the United States and El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
The usual suspects are already lining up - business leaders for, labor unions against - and many Democrats are protesting that the pact does not go far enough to protect labor and environment in Central America. It would be easier to believe congressional opponents really did care about protecting labor and environmental standards in other countries if many of them had not also voted in favor of an American-Jordanian free trade accord, which included nearly identical language on labor and environment. Cafta actually goes further than the pact with Jordan, since penalty fines collected for not enforcing labor laws would be sent back to the offending country to fix the offense.
It is easy to see why leading House Democrats like Representative Charles Rangel of New York, the ranking minority member on the House Ways and Means Committee and a normally sound voice on trade, are distancing themselves from Cafta. Rangel has been pushed around for so long by highhanded Republican behavior that he is not feeling particularly bipartisan these days. The few Democrats who do sometimes support free-trade pacts are waiting to see what they might be offered as the legislative equivalent of the ever-popular swing voters.
We hope Bush and the Republican leadership can come up with compromises in other areas that might woo Rangel and the Democrats. The Central American accord is a good idea that will help job growth in a needy region. And if Rangel and his associates can persuade the other side to pare back some of their other plans - those tax cuts for the wealthy come to mind - so much the better.
The New York Times
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Dogfights in the U.S. Congress over free-trade pacts usually pop up not long after presidential elections. Back in 1993, President Bill Clinton doled out promises to everybody and his mother to get the North American Free Trade Agreement passed, while President George W. Bush in 2001 had his congressional allies actually hold a vote open for an extra 23 minutes so they could force a weeping North Carolina congressman to abandon his textile constituency and give the president the single-vote margin he needed for trade negotiating authority.
Next year promises to be no exception. Bush has indicated he will try to push through Congress a Central American Free Trade Agreement, or Cafta. Like Nafta, Cafta would open up trade - valued at $32 billion - between the United States and El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
The usual suspects are already lining up - business leaders for, labor unions against - and many Democrats are protesting that the pact does not go far enough to protect labor and environment in Central America. It would be easier to believe congressional opponents really did care about protecting labor and environmental standards in other countries if many of them had not also voted in favor of an American-Jordanian free trade accord, which included nearly identical language on labor and environment. Cafta actually goes further than the pact with Jordan, since penalty fines collected for not enforcing labor laws would be sent back to the offending country to fix the offense.
It is easy to see why leading House Democrats like Representative Charles Rangel of New York, the ranking minority member on the House Ways and Means Committee and a normally sound voice on trade, are distancing themselves from Cafta. Rangel has been pushed around for so long by highhanded Republican behavior that he is not feeling particularly bipartisan these days. The few Democrats who do sometimes support free-trade pacts are waiting to see what they might be offered as the legislative equivalent of the ever-popular swing voters.
We hope Bush and the Republican leadership can come up with compromises in other areas that might woo Rangel and the Democrats. The Central American accord is a good idea that will help job growth in a needy region. And if Rangel and his associates can persuade the other side to pare back some of their other plans - those tax cuts for the wealthy come to mind - so much the better.
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