[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17157]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 CENTRAL AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, this week we will address one of the most 
important national security issues of the 109th Congress. It also is an 
extraordinarily important economic issue, when it comes to the 
challenge of growth in this country and throughout this hemisphere. I 
am talking of course about the Dominican Republic Central American Free 
Trade Agreement.
  As I listened to my colleague from Oregon just a few minutes ago 
decry the problems of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the 
fact that there will be overpromising when it comes to the Central 
American Free Trade Agreement, I was struck by the fact that he really 
did not get the message that was provided by that great former senator, 
democratic presidential candidate from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, who 
said, the problem with my democratic party is that they love employees 
but they hate employers.
  The fact of the matter is, if you look all the way across the board, 
we know that globalization is inevitable. And as Prime Minister Singh 
said in his address to us a week ago tomorrow, right here in a joint 
session of Congress, we cannot ignore what is taking place in any other 
part of the world because of the fact that the globe is shrinking.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I am not going to overpromise and say passage of 
the Central American Free Trade Agreement is all of a sudden going to 
solve every ailment of society. But I do know this, 22 years ago, we, 
with a huge bipartisan vote passed the Caribbean Basin Initiative, 
which, instead of sending aid, provided an opening, an opportunity for 
the Caribbean nations to have access to the U.S. consumer market. That 
has helped us and it has helped them.
  Right now, with the Central American Free Trade Agreement, all we are 
saying is let us have a reciprocal arrangement. 80 percent of the 
goods, including 99 percent of agricultural products from Central 
America come tariff free, tax free to U.S. consumer. That is a good 
thing. It has allowed us, Mr. Speaker, to allow the high standard of 
living that we have as Americans.
  Now, what we are saying is, through this agreement, let us open up 
their markets so that the 44 million consumers in the Dominican 
Republic and the 5 Central American countries can have access to U.S. 
manufactured goods.
  Now, one of the challenges that we face, of course, is our 
competition that is going on with the Pacific Rim. We, at the end of 
last week, saw finally moves toward re-evaluation of the yuan, the 
Chinese currency. And we know that if we are going to compete, it is 
important for us to implement hemispheric wide trade here so that we 
can compete with Asia and, specifically, with China.
  One of the things we also know, Mr. Speaker, is that if you buy a 
shirt from China it has a little more than 1 percent of U.S. content. 
If you buy a shirt from Central America that is manufactured in Central 
America, over 60 percent of it has U.S. content. So this agreement is 
going to enhance our ability, not only as a Nation, but as a hemisphere 
to be more competitive.
  We put together a wide range of agreements over the last several 
years, bilateral agreements with Jordan, Singapore, Australia, Chile, 
Morocco. They have all been great bilateral agreements. But right now, 
Mr. Speaker, we have the opportunity to put together a very important 
multilateral agreement with six countries. That also will lay the 
groundwork for the very important effort that we have that will begin 
in the coming days to proceed with the Doha round with the WTO in 
Geneva. Why? Because the goal as was set forth back in 1947 when the 
general agreement on tariffs and trade was established was to eliminate 
tariffs. And we all know, Mr. Speaker, that a tariff is a tax. And so 
cutting taxes enhances the standard of living and the quality of life 
for people. This is a win-win for the United States of America, for the 
Central American countries, and for our region as a whole.
  I hope very much that our colleagues join in a strong bipartisan way, 
doing exactly what we did in 1983 when we passed the Caribbean basin 
initiative. Let us send this to the President so that it can be signed 
and so that we can have this win-win all the way around.

                          ____________________