10 reasons to oppose CAFTA

[Elwood P Dowd]

http://www.tradealert.us/news_item.asp?NID=1629500



No. 10: Our trade deficit actually shows how strong the economy is. That's a lot like arguing that the more you go into debt, the richer you really are. Here's what happened with NAFTA: Our trade deficit with those countries is 12 times bigger than before the pact - it shot up from $9 billion in 1993 to $111 billion last year. A high trade deficit weakens our economy.

No. 9: CAFTA slows immigration. This same false promise was made under NAFTA, and we all witnessed the opposite result of increased immigration from Mexico. CAFTA has back-door provisions that may make U.S. immigration laws and visa requirements in violation of the agreement, and unenforceable.

No. 8: CAFTA opens a substantial market for U.S.goods. Central America has some of the poorest countries in the world, and the aggregate economy of the six CAFTA nations is minuscule. "Add up the six CAFTA economies and you get a market the size of New Haven, Conn.," points out trade analyst Alan Tonelson of the U.S. Business and Industry Council. Tonelson concludes that CAFTA is a "classic outsourcing agreement" - an arrangement in which the only significant U.S. export would be manufacturing jobs to poor, low-wage nations.

No. 7: CAFTA helps the working poor of Central America. Since NAFTA, real wages for Mexican workers have fallen. Over 1.5 million displaced Mexican subsistence farmers were turned into unemployed masses. Mexico is becoming poorer. Today, 40 percent of Central America's workers earn less than $2 a day. Their employment rights are routinely abused, and CAFTA will require these countries to merely enforce their own weak and unfair labor laws. CAFTA is about making corporations, not Central American workers, richer.

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[Beaver Tail]

1. Keep in mind

NAFTA and CAFTA were never ment to be good for the people or country... only good for the Companies

[Elwood P Dowd]

3. You also have this little piece of crap buried in CAFTA

http://www.tradealert.us/news_item.asp?NID=1629471



CAFTA and Dietary Supplements

by Rep. Ron Paul, MD



The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement in the next two weeks, and one little-known provision of the agreement desperately needs to be exposed to public view. CAFTA, like the World Trade Organization, may serve as a forum for restricting or even banning dietary supplements in the U.S.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission, organized by the United Nations in the 1960s, is charged with “harmonizing” food and supplement rules between all nations of the world. Under Codex rules, even basic vitamins and minerals require a doctor’s prescription. The European Union already has adopted Codex-type regulations, regulations that will be in effect across Europe later this year. This raises concerns that the Europeans will challenge our relatively open market for health supplements in a WTO forum. This is hardly far-fetched, as Congress already has cravenly changed our tax laws to comply with a WTO order.

Like WTO, CAFTA increases the possibility that Codex regulations will be imposed on the American public. Section 6 of CAFTA discusses Codex as a regulatory standard for nations that join the agreement. If CAFTA has nothing to do with dietary supplements, as CAFTA supporters claim, why in the world does it specifically mention Codex?

Unquestionably there has been a slow but sustained effort to regulate dietary supplements on an international level. WTO and CAFTA are part of this effort. Passage of CAFTA does not mean your supplements will be outlawed immediately, but it will mean that another international trade body will have a say over whether American supplement regulations meet international standards. And make no mistake about it, those international standards are moving steadily toward the Codex regime and its draconian restrictions on health freedom. So the question is this: Does CAFTA, with its link to Codex, make it more likely or less likely that someday you will need a doctor’s prescription to buy even simple supplements like Vitamin C? The answer is clear. CAFTA means less freedom for you, and more control for bureaucrats who do not answer to American voters.

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[barb162]

4. That's right. When are people in this country gonna get it?

[Larkspur]

2. It will be interesting which Dems will vote for this piece of trash.

[sadiesworld]

5. Thank-you for posting this.

No true representative of the people would vote for this. They can't even pretend they don't understand the repercussions this time.

[Elwood P Dowd]

6. Any dem that votes for this should be run out of the party

They are simply crooks using the party to get elected, go to Washington, and rake in the money from corporate interests. I wonder how much cash some of these crooks have stashed in overseas bank accounts?