Central American Free Trade Agreement Misses Implementation Date
Around midnight on July 27th of 2005, the House of Representatives approved the Central America-Dominican Republic-United States Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA in a 217-215 vote.
Since CAFTA was so damaging to American workers, it wasn't able to pass on the merits. CAFTA's passage was bought by an outrageous amount of pork barrel politics, and fake side deals, and unbelievable pressure from the Bush Administration. Check out Global Exchange's account of the purchase of CAFTA.
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch has launched an extremely useful and informative CAFTA Damage Report, an on-going series of reports that track the consequences of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in districts where members of Congress voted for the agreement despite opposition from constituents or their own misgivings.
Yet resistance to CAFTA is still growing. CAFTA was supposed to be implemented by January 1, 2006, yet this date has passed. Central Americans are becoming increasingly disgruntled with the myriad domestic laws that would have to be changed to comply with CAFTA.
But the vote also seals the fate of the future of NAFTA expansion. If CAFTA, a deal with the tiniest economies in the region, squeaked by with only a razor-thin margin, there is little possibility that Bush could get a deal approved with economies that would actually impact the US, such as the Andean Free Trade Agreement. The Bush dream of a Free Trade Area of the Americas is even farther away than before the CAFTA vote.
Together with citizens across Central America, we have organized against CAFTA because we believe in a better vision of economic integration with our neighbors. The approval of CAFTA shows that money values of big corporate interests trumped human values of worker's rights, fair trade, and environmental protection.
Based on the failed model of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), CAFTA will expand corporate rights over some of the poorest countries in the region, including Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic. NAFTA also caused the loss of 38,000 US family farms, while pushing 1.5 million Mexican farmers off their land.
CAFTA will undermine workers rights, drive countless family farmers off their land, and expose communities throughout Central America and the U.S. to privatization of essential public services like water, electricity, health care and education.
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