CAFTA Reeks of Raging Hypocrisy

My neighbor came over a few weeks ago and asked if he could sell his clay pots to my roommates. "Hell no," I said. "We have enough pots. Plus, everything you make is crap. They shatter for no reason and give people lead poisoning. Even if they weren't so cheap, all your dye and trash ends up in my back yard. You're a mess."

"Yes," he responded, "but they are cheaper than your pots. And if you don't give me access, I will get the landlord to raise your rent."

"Beat it. Get your act together then we might want some of your wares."

And he wasn't kidding; my landlord increased my rent until I had to let my neighbor set up a mini flea market in my living room. Not only is he undercutting my own clay pot business, he leaves all his trash and broken porcelain all over my property.

The whole thing has gotten pretty ridiculous. And if my own situation wasn't enough, the entire country is facing the same problem on a much larger scale. Years ago Clinton signed off on NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), which basically creates a free trade zone from Canada's artic regions to the tropics of Mexico. Throughout most of the North American continent, companies can buy and sell goods without paying the normal fees and taxes that come with doing international business.

And now it looks like President Bush is going for the whole enchilada, including five Central American countries in the free trade party with CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement).

Seems like a good idea, more trade should equal more wealth. What has happened is that American (and foreign) companies have begun to set up factories anywhere they want, getting cheap labor in places Mexico, cheap lumber in countries like Canada and selling it in the United States. Wherever the comparative advantage is best is where the company will go.

Pretty sweet until you quantify where the comparative advantage comes from. If I make acne medication here in Berkeley, but the EPA rides my behind to clean up all the noxious chemicals that result from my production, I can just relocate to Tijuana. Down there, they have similar laws but about 1/100 of the protection. So I can dump all sorts of bleaching chemicals right into the Tijuana River without having to treat them. Thus my costs plummet and I can make the cheapest product on the market.

Never mind that the very laws I moved to avoid exist because Americans decided that poison exposure is not a pre-requisite for an American company to succeed. By moving to a foreign country to get around American laws, I am just perverting the original intention of a free trade zone. Or am I?

If the intention of NAFTA and the current CAFTA is to benefit U.S. companies by opening foreign (read: cheap) labor to us and foreign markets to our products, then shouldn't foreign companies be subject to the same basic conditions that U.S. companies are? If you place an American camera against a Mexican camera that was built without our labor and environmental standards, which do you think is going to be cheaper?

U.S. citizens passed laws outlawing illegal dumping, environmental destruction, child labor and sweatshop conditions because we know that while cheap stuff is good, it is not worth extreme human degradation. What we are doing now is outsourcing this degradation throughout the Western Hemisphere for the benefit of a few.

So if foreign and multi-national corporations are beating American companies because of our stricter standards, why wouldn't President Bush require labor and environmental standards? American companies already have to abide by them, so when the standards are spread across the trade zone, they would have an advantage over foreign companies that would need adjust to the standards.

In addition to giving U.S. companies a benefit, imposing rigid standards would protect women and children workers from working 12 hour days in near-slavery. Plus, these standards would prevent rogue companies from using foreign countries as their personal outhouse.

So if environmental standards in CAFTA would give an advantage to US companies, with an added bonus of protecting the health of millions of Central Americans, why is President Bush fighting them?

The answer is that CAFTA is not meant to help American businesses. And it is definitely not for American workers or consumers. The president is doing the bidding of a few multi-national conglomerates that see the benefit of exploiting unprotected labor and lax environmental standards in Guatemala, Nicaragua and the like. Wal-mart, Target and a host of other incredibly powerful companies see the huge profits in products built without American standards but sold in American stores.

The fact that labor and environmental standards are not included in these agreements shows who the President is really working for. If his first priority was American businesses, he would make CAFTA fair by making foreign businesses live up to the same standards as US companies.

CAFTA helps multinational corporations, while giving Americans the shaft. The whole thing stinks of greed: raging, unrestrained greed. And that is un-American.

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