[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16285-16286]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         REASONS AGAINST CAFTA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Poe). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, tonight I wish to suggest eight more reasons 
to vote ``no'' on CAFTA.
  First of all, CAFTA continues the failed neo-liberal trade regimen 
that puts freedom last rather than first. CAFTA assumes, like NAFTA 
before it, that trade will bring freedom. But where contingent 
liberties do not really exist, such flawed trade approaches bring not 
freedom but exploitation and hardship on the majority of the people 
struggling to get into the middle class.
  A ``no'' vote on CAFTA will result in its renegotiation to expand 
liberty, opportunity, and hope. Respect and dignity for workers, fresh 
water, clean air, treated sewage are rights that should belong to every 
human being. Surely our continent, our hemisphere deserves better than 
CAFTA.
  Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is that it will outsource more 
U.S. jobs and worsen our burgeoning trade deficit. NAFTA's supporters 
promised us millions of jobs, as the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Jones) has stated, as well as a trade surplus for our country. Exactly 
the opposite has happened.
  The U.S. has lost over 1 million jobs to Mexico and Canada resulting 
from NAFTA, and each year we have fallen into deeper and deeper trade 
deficit with those nations.
  Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is it will fuel more illegal 
immigration. Just like NAFTA, millions of people will be uprooted from 
the rural countryside with no hope, no continental labor rights, and 
become an exploitable class of people used by the most unscrupulous 
traffickers on the continent.
  Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is that Central American 
workers will continue to be subjected to sweatshop conditions because 
the enforcement provisions that exist in the Caribbean Basin 
Initiative, CBI, will not apply. Right now CAFTA countries are not 
robust democracies. But what the CBI does in the Caribbean is assures 
that trade rights are linked to access to the U.S. market and 
enforcement of labor provisions.
  CAFTA backslides on this lock-tight trigger. It basically has some 
encouraging language to nations to enforce their labor laws which may 
be poor or non-existent, and no matter how weak, gives them a go-ahead 
and then sets aside money in the agreement to give to the very 
governments that are not enforcing those laws anyway.
  Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is it hurts U.S. agriculture. 
In fact, CAFTA nations already are saturated with U.S. agricultural 
products which consume about 94 percent of their market, so there is 
not much room to grow there. And, more importantly, CAFTA provides that 
Brazilian ethanol and other imports, if processed inside of these 
Central American countries, and 35 percent of the processing occurs 
there, can be back-doored into the United States. So it will be the 
same kind of back-dooring into the United States of products from these 
other countries that has happened with NAFTA, Mexico and Canada.
  Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is it will regress democratic 
reform in CAFTA countries. CAFTA does nothing to advance democracy in 
the six nations that are a part of it. In fact, the civil societies in 
those countries are broadly opposed to CAFTA. Huge demonstrations 
against CAFTA have occurred in every one of those nations, and the 
manner in which this is being voted on in those countries is truly 
troublesome. Three countries have used emergency procedures, bringing 
up late at night, the public does not know what is happening. And in 
the other three countries it has not even been voted on. Not exactly a 
way to carry forward the idea of democratic liberties across the 
hemisphere.
  Another reason to vote ``no'' on CAFTA is its lack of real 
environmental enforcement and our knowledge that with NAFTA drug 
trafficking has snubbed up right against the U.S. border at Juarez. 
When you have these trade agreements that do not have other contingent 
policies attached to them, what you end up doing is empowering some of 
the worst forces in the hemisphere.

[[Page 16286]]

  Finally, CAFTA will hurt women workers disproportionately in 
societies where women's rights are already marginalized. How would you 
like to be a woman in a textile plant in one of those countries? Or how 
about in a banana-packing shed? What do you think your future would 
look like? Sixty percent of those working in these sweatshop conditions 
are women workers with absolutely no labor protections. CAFTA is doing 
nothing to improve their standing in our hemisphere, and it will do 
nothing to obliterate the sweatshops that are so very much a part of 
their lives.
  The combined purchasing powers of all of these Central American 
countries is the same as Columbus, Ohio or New Haven, Connecticut. They 
really do not have the kind wherewithal to purchase value-added 
products from our country.
  So what is CAFTA really about? CAFTA is merely about expanding the 
NAFTA model to six other countries, providing more export platforms to 
the United States of goods, both agricultural and manufactured are 
back-doored into this country, and providing none of the advances in 
freedom, liberty, opportunity and hope that should be the hallmark of 
this country at home and abroad.

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