Save the USA: stop CAFTA

[JGrubbs]

A 'European Union' Model for the Americas or a New Homeland Called Aztlan?

"The effort to unite the economies of the Americas into a single free-trade area began at the Summit of the Americas, which was held in December 1994 in Miami. The heads of state and government of the 34 democracies in the region agreed to construct the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), in which barriers to trade and investment will be progressively eliminated. They agreed to complete negotiations towards this agreement by the year 2005 and to achieve substantial progress toward building the FTAA by 2000."

So begins the history of what President George W. Bush called "The Century of the Americas" (Summit of the Americas, 1994). Last month, the representatives of these nations met in Miami to continue their construction of the globalization of the American Hemisphere. Oddly enough, few citizens of the United States knew anything about this meeting, as national media attention centered on Michael Jackson.

Beginning in Brownsville, Texas and extending 2,000 miles to San Ysidro, California on the Pacific Ocean (a direct distance equal to that from Washington, D.C., to Phoenix), the U.S./Mexican border is a political creation which divides two cultures, languages and vastly different economies. Perhaps the best way to think of this 124,000 square-mile region is to think of a weather front where an area of economic high pressure collides with an area of extreme economic low pressure -- a storm front generating economic, political and cultural thunderstorms and tornados. This previously stationary storm front is now extending its influence deep into the United States while politicians are seemingly impotent to prevent the resulting chaos and disorder. Perhaps this is intentional? Let's consider some of the following goals and objectives of the FTAA:

Source: http://www.azconservative.org/barston4.htm

 

[poncho]

Desea vivo la nueva orden del mundo!

 

[poncho]

Bush Urges Central American Trade Pact

But the president's most passionate appeal was to opponents' patriotic interests.

"These are small nations, but they're making big and brave commitments, and America needs to continue to support them as they walk down the road of openness and accountability," Bush said. "The United States was built on freedom, and the more of it we have in our backyard, the freer and safer and more prosperous all of the Americas will be."

 

[Rocko9]

The President doesn"t understand something about that backyard he is talking about, it's my backyard too.

 

[Baptist in Richmond]

Greetings all,

You DO realize that this is part of that "mandate" to which VP Cheney referred. There is absolutely NOTHING anyone can do to stop this.

Regards,
BiR

 

[Baptist in Richmond]

Originally posted by Hardsheller:
You want freedom for yourself but you would deny it to Corporations?

I certainly hope you are kidding, hardsheller.

The class-action reform was for the corporations.
The bankruptcy law reform was for the corporations.
Social Security reform is definitely going to help the corporations.
United Airlines certainly got a nice hand, didn't they?
Check the latest news on Haliburton.

Now, let's think about this: who will derive the most benefit from CAFTA?

Regards to you,
BiR

 

[gb93433]

Perhaps some heard the news tonight that Maytag is moving to Mexico. We are already educating a lot of illegal's children in America. Now we will have products made there and paid for here and ship the money down there.

We have become a society of people who have a great need for the highly skilled and unskilled worker. That leaves out the majority of people.

It wasn't too many years ago that the US didn't want Deming so he went to Japan. We exported a brilliant man along with his ideas then and for years we have been exporting the results of our research and ideas. When will we export our military technology? We are not too far from that now.

 

[Jim1999]

All you Americans are sounding like Canadians when Free Trade first came here and all our jobs went south to the USA.

Thankfully, we recovered and built in other directions.

We tried to share our mad-cow, but that free-border closed quickly and one mad cow shut down thousands of Canadian farmers.

I am afraid we have to realize that we are in a global existence framework and we better do something to maintain our standard of living...................or else.

Instead of pointing fingers, we need a working hand.

Cheers,

Jim

We feel your pain!

 

[Baptist in Richmond]

Originally posted by Jim1999:
All you Americans are sounding like Canadians when Free Trade first came here and all our jobs went south to the USA.

Thankfully, we recovered and built in other directions.

We tried to share our mad-cow, but that free-border closed quickly and one mad cow shut down thousands of Canadian farmers.

I am afraid we have to realize that we are in a global existence framework and we better do something to maintain our standard of living...................or else.

Instead of pointing fingers, we need a working hand.

Cheers,

Jim

We feel your pain!

Jim,

Greetings to you, my brother in Christ.
I was very happy to see a post from you. I haven't seen much of you lately. I hope that you and your wonderful family are doing well up North.

Thanks for making me chuckle with your "mad cow" statement.

Wishing God's Best to you and your family,

BiR

 

[gb93433]

Originally posted by Jim1999:
All you Americans are sounding like Canadians when Free Trade first came here and all our jobs went south to the USA.

When was that? I can remember when the Canadian dollar was worth about ten percent more. At the time I wanted to work in a Canadian cabinet shop and race bicycles in Vancouver, B.C. during the summer when I was in college and my friend told me I couldn't because things changed.

The past twenty years I have bought Canadian equipment made in Quebec mostly because the "American" company outsourced almost all of their machines. The Canadian company made a much better product for a cheaper price. The majority of "American" products were made in Brazil and were much lesser quality.

What is interesting is that same Canadian company in its infancy started making machines for the "American" company and then later they built there own machines to sell using the same products they were manufacturing before. The Canadian machines have continued to improve over the years while the "American" company now outsources it machines to be made in China and has steadily declined. While at the same time the Canadian company produces a much better product for a cheaper price than the "American" products made in China. However some of the products for the Canadian company are now produced in Taiwan to their specifications.

 

[gb93433]

I really think the problem lies in the insurance costs rather than a cheaper product cost.

A friend of mine owns a number of large buildings and rents them to companies. He told me about one company that makes swimsuits. When the company was making swimsuits in the US they cost close to one dollar to make. Then the company moved to another country to make them for about forty cents. Now the company is in China and the same swimsuit is made for about four cents. That same swimsuit still sells for about 100 dollars in the stores.

I think most Americans would be glad to pay 101 dollars to keep jobs here. But many of those overseas companies do not pay any taxes. Yet they continue to sell their product here and collect the American dollars. So in effect the American employer is supporting the overseas employer.

In the business I was in the number of accidents has greatly reduced but the cost per accident has gone up.

The research I did recently showed health care premiums increased:
11% in 2001
13% in 2002
14% in 2003 While at the same time the annual rate of general inflation was less than 4%.

In the year that ended in June 2004 wages increased 2.5% compared to a 2.7% gain
in 2003. While benefit costs increased 7.2% compared to a 6.3% increase in 2003
Showing an increase in benefit costs of 0.9% and an increase in wages of only 0.2%

One of the largest insurance companies reported:
March 31, 2004 net income of 365.8 million
March 31, 2003 net income of 330.0 million

March 31, 2004 operating expenditures of 983.7million
March 31, 2003 operating expenditures of 1020.4 million

During this time their net income increased 35.8 million and their expenditures went down 36.7 million.

In my business the insurance premiums went up about 400 percent in the last twenty years.

Somebody’s making some extra money.

 

[Jim1999]

Our dollar was never more than 5 cents higher than the US dollar and that was for a very short time in the mid-eighties,,lately, we are doing a little better, but for the most part our dollar was worth about 40 to 50 US cents.

When Free Trade was first enacted, we lost big time, believe me. Ask anyone in Ontario. We watched as our factories went to the US, and mostly to the South. US labour was much lower than ours, and it was beneficial for companies to move back south...mostly AMerican companies in Canada.

Yes, we face the same things as you do,,,Canadian goods made in China et al....Nike shoes made at a cost of $15.00 and sold in the USA and Canada for $150.00 plus, depending on model.

I can't possibly list all the changes, but believe me when I say we feel your pain..we already walked that path. Free Trade "ain't" as free as it sounds. It was only time before things and companies moved also to Mexico....why pay $30.00 and hour when you can pay $5.00?

To compensate, we had to change from manufacturing industries, the heart of Central Ontario, to the service industry and computers.

I just bought a snowblower made by Troy Built,,,found out it was made in Ontario to Troy Built specifications, but it wasn't cheap!

At one time, my dress shoes came either from Mass or England. The last British maker of dress shoes closed shop last year, and I haven't seen shoes from Mass for years...Yes sir, we are all losing out to the global economy, and either we will adjust, or lose our standard of living; all of us.

Cheers,

Jim

 

[Baptist in Richmond]

Originally posted by gb93433:
I really think the problem lies in the insurance costs rather than a cheaper product cost.

Well, costs in general, but labor costs especially.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7796337/

God's Best to you,
BiR

 

[Baptist in Richmond]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,155384,00.html

......even the Heritage Foundation is onboard with this.

There is no stopping this, as it is undoubtedly part of that "mandate" to which Vice President Cheney referred back in January.

 

[Palmetto Boy]

I'm bothered by the posts here. A lot of people seem to speaking from ignorance. Have any of you studied economics or trade policy, aside from from what you hear from bomb-hurling pundits?

You can oppose free trade for political reasons if you like, but it is a matter of economic science that free trade makes countries more prosperous. I hear complaining here about jobs being sent to other countries, but I don't hear anyone complaining that our retail products aren't more expensive.

Take away the free trade that we DO have and virtually every product in our stores gets more expensive. I think that NAFTA is largely responsible for the relatively low inflation since it was instituted even as our country was hit with other serious economic setbacks. Likewise if there was free market for oil, our gas prices would drop immediately.

The jobs that go to other countries are the jobs that don't pay as well or require as much education. Our workforce is geared toward higher-level service work (which cannot be easily outsourced), so this is a natural progression. It just makes sense for every country to specialize in what it does best (and what it has the resources to do). This is called comparative advantage.

Plus, even if we don't institute free trade agreements, companies are going to continue to move operations offshores. If we are to keep manufacturing jobs we will have to keep taxes in check and lower minimum wage. Are you willing to make that sacrifice, or are these jobs that we can afford to send to other countries?

Finally, has anyone researched the founders' views on trade? I think you will be surprised at what you find.

 

[Conservative Christian]

Why CAFTA Must Be Defeated

* "Taken together, the six CAFTA nations have a minuscule consumer economy — but represent a huge pool of low-wage labor. Thus the only export encouraged by CAFTA would be U.S. manufacturing jobs.

* CAFTA is a critical steppingstone toward creation of a 34-nation Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an embryonic regional government modeled after the socialistic European Union.

* Under CAFTA, barriers to agricultural imports from our "trading partners" would be removed immediately, while barriers to U.S. exports wouldn't be lifted for anywhere from 10-20 years — thereby crippling U.S. agricultural producers. And this precedent would almost certainly be followed in the FTAA.

* Promoters of CAFTA clearly perceive the pact to be a form of foreign aid to "emerging democracies" in Central America — tacitly recognizing that it wouldn't result in genuine free trade, but rather a huge transfer of wealth from the U.S. to the region."

www.stopcafta.com

 

[Conservative Christian]

"Free Trade" — or Foreign Aid?

"Chief among the objections offered by NASDA and many other CAFTA critics is the fact that the supposed "free trade" agreement would impose what amounts to unilateral trade disarmament on U.S. agricultural producers. The six foreign nations included in the pact would be granted immediate access to U.S. food markets. However, U.S. producers would have to wait for years, or even decades, in order to be granted reciprocal access.

If, as expected, the FTAA follows the CAFTA model by opening U.S. domestic markets first, with access to foreign markets coming only years later, the results for U.S. farmers would be nothing less than devastating. During the prescribed interval, Guebert observes, "nations like Brazil, Russia and India will become food exporting powerhouses to both the U.S. and the world while American farmers become calendar watchers."

If the point of CAFTA is to promote free exchange of goods and services between producers and consumers, why is the pact designed to offer artificial competitive advantages to foreign food producers? Rather than promoting what could honestly be called free trade, CAFTA amounts to a foreign aid program — using nonreciprocal access to U.S. markets as a roundabout subsidy for agricultural programs in foreign nations.

And this is hardly the only way in which CAFTA amounts to a foreign aid scheme disguised as a "free trade" initiative."

http://www.stoptheftaa.org/artman/publish/article_279.shtml

 

[Palmetto Boy]

The sources you are citing are highly partisan. Please reply with your own analysis or observations from evaluating the legislation.

Trading with another nation benefits both parties. If both parties were not better off for making the trade they would not transact business.

Does this mean that we are giving a form of aid to other countries? I guess, but we aren't losing anything in the process. In fact we are gaining because our businesses have new markets to sell their products in and new sources to get products and materials less inexpensively. This makes our economy more efficient and the products we buy less expensive.

 

[Conservative Christian]

"The sources you are citing are highly partisan. Please reply with your own analysis or observations from evaluating the legislation."

You have borne false witness.

The sources I provided are not "highly partisan". They are completely non-partisan. They are not affiliated with any political party, and have no financial interest in opposing the phony "free trade" agreement.

I am not required to reply with my own analysis or observations. The sources I provided have already done an excellent job of refuting your tripe.

"Trading with another nation benefits both parties. If both parties were not better off for making the trade they would not transact business."

CAFTA benefits politicians and a select group of their business cronies. You would know that if you had bothered to read the articles I linked to.

"Does this mean that we are giving a form of aid to other countries? I guess, but we aren't losing anything in the process. In fact we are gaining because our businesses have new markets to sell their products in and new sources to get products and materials less inexpensively. This makes our economy more efficient and the products we buy less expensive."

Virtually all U.S. agricultural and textile interests are staunchly opposed to CAFTA, so it's obvious you don't know what you're talking about.

You sound like a parrot, reciting vacuous phrases about a trade agreement you've thus far shown that you know virtually nothing about.

 

[Conservative Christian]

Transfer of U.S. Wealth, Sovereignty

"The CAFTA accord would be a bad deal even if it were to boost U.S. exports — which it won’t — and thereby help with our horrendous trade deficit. It would still be a bad deal even then because no temporary prosperity it might provide could compensate for the infringements of our national sovereignty that the pact entails. We would be like Esau selling our birthright for a bowl of pottage. The preamble to the massive CAFTA agreement states that the party nations are resolved to “promote regional economic integration.” It states further that they will “contribute to hemispheric integration and provide an impetus toward the establishment of a Free Trade Area of the Americas.”

This “integration” agenda was central to the CAFTA/FTAA campaign from its initial launch at the Miami Summit of the Americas in 1994. Mack McLarty, President Clinton’s chief of staff, noted at the time that “this summit is much broader than [lowering tariffs], and that’s how it should be looked at. This is not a trade summit, it is an overall summit. It will focus on economic integration and convergence.”

McLarty, now president of Kissinger McLarty Associates, is a major player in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Council of the Americas (COA), two of the organizations that have been most influential in the design and promotion of the FTAA and CAFTA. When McLarty and his fellow CFR/COA globalists talk about “integration and convergence,” they mean full-blown economic, political and social merger. They mean an end to U.S. sovereignty and independence and the subjection of U.S. citizens to the “laws” and administrative dictates of a regional, hemispheric suprastate.

As we have detailed in these pages previously, these one-world architects have repeatedly announced their intentions to follow the model of the European Union (EU) in merging the countries of the Western Hemisphere into a unitary system, with a single currency, and, eventually, a central government enforcing international law as mandated by the United Nations. Each Summit of the Americas has produced Declarations and Plans of Action, all of which are replete with commitments to implement UN treaties, conventions and programs on environment, labor, education, population, health care, transportation, housing, water, agriculture, energy, immigration, terrorism, law enforcement, elections, etc. UN agencies and the UN “family” of multilateral lending agencies — IMF, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) — have been given a lead role in the CAFTA/FTAA process."

http://www.stoptheftaa.org/artman/publish/article_131.shtml