On July 27, the House approved, 217-215, a bill (H.R. 3045) to implement the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). The Senate approved the measure, 56-44, on July 28. It will now go to the White House for President Bush’s signature.
Under the trade agreement, 80 percent of U.S. exports of consumer and industrial goods, including pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, immediately becomes duty free in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Tariffs on U.S. autos and auto parts are phased out within five years.
The trade agreement requires participating countries to enforce domestic labor and environmental laws, and establishes a program for those countries to improve enforcement of their labor laws. In addition, the agreement aims to build the capacity for monitoring and enforcing labor rights in those countries.
Calling the United States “a beacon of freedom and hope and opportunity for so many people,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) stated, “America spreads democracy to every corner of the world. We stand firm in the belief that every person is entitled to the freedom that we in the United States are so fortunate to enjoy. Open trade and free markets with democracies play key roles in sustaining that vision…CAFTA will be a critical tool in maintaining this momentum towards a prosperous future. Not only will it promote expanded development and openness in the region; CAFTA will also create new opportunities, economic opportunities, jobs and growth, by eliminating tariffs, by promoting transparency, and by opening markets to U.S. products going abroad. We have a commitment to work together to promote civil society, the rule of law, and to spread democracy throughout the world; and CAFTA-DR will help us achieve that commitment.”
Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA), the only Member of Congress of Nicaraguan descent, expressed her opposition to the trade agreement: “We need to go back to the table. We need to have more transparency. We need to stand up for those young women who are going to be attracted into…jobs, who are going to be abused, who are currently being abused even in Mexico. I would like to tell the Members that in Mexico, where my father was raised, in the area of Ciudad Juarez, the people who were attracted to those jobs were ages 14 to 20 years old. These are young women who were drawn into the maquiladores. They are the same type of individuals that we have drawn into these types of factories that will work in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Right now there are some free trade zones there. The people that I see lining up for those jobs are 14 and 16 years of age, working 12 hours a day, in an encampment where they are not even allowed to go to the restroom without permission.”
Contending that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to 1 million lost jobs in the U.S., “worsening squalor” in Mexico, and trade deficits with Mexico and Canada, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) stated, “CAFTA will fuel more such trade deficits as with Mexico, more illegal immigration as people, desperate, try to find some type of refuge up north. We know illegal immigration has doubled just since NAFTA passed. We know CAFTA will increase drug trafficking [and] sexual harassment of women in the workplace. Environmental conditions will worsen. CAFTA will keep Central American workers in sweatshop conditions by rolling back enforcement provisions of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, CBI. Indeed, the administration has cut the U.S. contribution to the International Labor Organization for child enforcement by 87 percent. What kind of commitment is that?”
In response, Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-CT) argued that “for the very first time ever, the International Labor Organization spent one year working with these countries to upgrade their labor laws, and, everyone agrees, their labor laws meet the core standards of the ILO. For the very first time ever, the ILO is going to be the enforcement mechanism to see that those laws are enforced as enforcement is always the weakness.” She added, “This is a unique labor agreement. It really, really pains me that there is so much ignorance about the details of this agreement. You sit with the people who negotiate an agreement, you sit with the economic ministers, you sit with the Presidents, and you get a concrete, tactical sense of the tremendous strides they have made through the agreement to improve new labor laws and enforcement capacity. This is not [the] status quo; this is going to change their world and protect their workers.”
