Stuart Eizenstat and David Marchick, both longtime Democrats who served in the Clinton administration, have an op-ed up in the WSJ today urging Democrats to support the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Democrats should, however, support Cafta for two fundamental reasons: First, the agreement is deeply in our national interest and will create, not destroy, jobs. Second, if the Democratic Party wants to regain the White House and control of Congress, it has to take pro-growth, pro-jobs positions on key issues, including trade agreements.
Cafta follows the same template as the United States' free trade agreements with Australia, Singapore, Jordan, Chile, Morocco, Canada and Israel -- agreements which garnered substantial Democratic support. Cafta would also open markets to U.S. goods and services, lower tariffs, create transparent government procurement processes and adopt trade facilitation measures. In fact, exporters from Central America can already sell products in the United States at zero or low tariffs. Cafta lowers tariffs on U.S. products exported to Central America.
There's a deeper reason to build close trade ties with Central America.
Although they don't note the pink tide, it is certainly the case that recent events reflect the political consequences of economic trends in the region. Moreover, as Eizenstat and Marchick rightly point out:
The implications of Cafta extend into regional geopolitics. The agreement would solidify the United States as the leading supplier of goods and services to Central America and the Dominican Republic at a time when China is making serious inroads as an investor and exporter in the Western Hemisphere. Late last year, for example, China's president announced with great fanfare plans to invest $20 billion in Latin America. The United States needs to maintain its leadership position in Central and Latin America -- and this agreement would help American exporters retain a competitive edge.
In a global market, countries that are complacent are open to losing their preeminence in significant ways.
Absolutely agree. But you can expect all the usual suspects to bitch and whine about losing their privaleged economic positions, as they always do. But in the long run free trade is good for everybody.
In the long run, we're all dead.
The only reason this agreement has garnered such a large opposition is because of its phonetic cousin NAFTA, which people bitch about every day. If the agreement had a name like Free Trade Agreement of Central America(FTACA) then I beleive the opposition would not be so great.