[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16718]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              CAFTA MYTHS

  (Mr. ENGLISH of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ENGLISH of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, it has struck me as I have 
listened to the debate here that there are many myths propagated about 
CAFTA, the proposed free trade agreement between the Dominican 
Republic, Central American nations and the United States.
  One is that we are somehow dropping all of our tariffs across the 
board. With very few exceptions, the products which CAFTA countries 
export to the United States have actually entered duty-free for 20 
years. By contrast, products that the U.S. has exported to CAFTA 
countries face steep tariffs.
  Currently the CAFTA countries apply an average tariff on U.S. 
industrial goods ranging from 4.1 percent in Nicaragua to 7.8 percent 
in the Dominican Republic.
  What we are doing here is creating a two-way street for trade between 
the United States and CAFTA countries. This is a big trade issue for 
Pennsylvania because merchandise exports to CAFTA countries totaled 
$353 million from Pennsylvania in 2004, the ninth largest among the 50 
States. And Pennsylvania's exports to the CAFTA region have grown 21 
percent between 2000 and 2004.
  I sympathize with the concerns that have been raised by CAFTA 
critics, but if we look at the details I think this is an agreement 
that we can afford to pass.

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