ambar
04-29-2005, 02:46 PM
Excerpt from the President's press conference...........
We need to continue to open up markets for U.S. products. As you know, there will be a vote for the Central American Free Trade Agreement here, hopefully soon. I'm a strong believer that that's in the interest of American job creators and workers, that we open up those markets. I know it's important geopolitically to say to those Central American countries, you've got a friend in America. We said we'd have an agreement with you, and it's important to ratify it. It'll help strengthen the neighborhood.
We've also got to make sure that we continue to reduce regulation.
Excerpt from news article
This also aims to help Central American textile and apparel companies compete in the increasingly cutthroat global textile market. The regional textile sector has lost jobs rapidly to Asia following the end in January of global production quotas to textile powerhouses like China to prevent them from edging out smaller countries like Bangladesh and Nicaragua.
The legacy of the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1994 by Mexico, Canada and the United States has made many wary of CAFTA.
Although NAFTA opened the gates to a staggering new wave of trade among the neighbors, it is not without its detractors. In the United States, many owners of small- and medium-sized businesses complain such agreements have allowed jobs to flow out of the country because of lower manufacturing costs in Mexico. Environmental and social justice groups, on the other hand, say many U.S. companies were allowed to skirt stricter regulations by relocating operations south of the border.
Many of these same parties also oppose CAFTA.
The U.S. Business and Industry Council says the United States will only see reduced wages and unemployment by sending to Central America more textiles to be assembled and sent right back to the United States.
Alan Tonelson, a research fellow with the council, said CAFTA is an outsourcing agreement that allows American multinational companies and retailers better access to low-wage production.
"Expanded trade with Central America will become one more force adding to already dangerous high U.S. trade and current account deficits, and increasing downward pressure on the U.S. dollar," he told United Press International in an e-mail. "It will also increase the migration abroad of the types of relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs that generations of working-class Americans have relied on to build middle-class lives for themselves."
Tonelson and his colleagues propose many modifications to CAFTA and to U.S. trade policy in general, including higher external tariffs to create real preferences for free-trade-area members and stricter enforcement of agreements in the face of what they call "the nation's manufacturing emergency."
I don't know if anyone else is worried about this statement from the President. From what I have seen, NAFTA has not been the best thing for the American workers. The sheer number of businesses that have moved out of the US, and not just for NAFTA, is alarming. I have a strong fear that "strengthening the neighborhood" will weaken what options the American worker has available from an already dimenishing pool of opportunites.
I am also afraid that the additional statement about reducing regulation also has wider implications in regards to the environment and business practices.
I am also fairly sure many of you will disagree with me.
We need to continue to open up markets for U.S. products. As you know, there will be a vote for the Central American Free Trade Agreement here, hopefully soon. I'm a strong believer that that's in the interest of American job creators and workers, that we open up those markets. I know it's important geopolitically to say to those Central American countries, you've got a friend in America. We said we'd have an agreement with you, and it's important to ratify it. It'll help strengthen the neighborhood.
We've also got to make sure that we continue to reduce regulation.
Excerpt from news article
This also aims to help Central American textile and apparel companies compete in the increasingly cutthroat global textile market. The regional textile sector has lost jobs rapidly to Asia following the end in January of global production quotas to textile powerhouses like China to prevent them from edging out smaller countries like Bangladesh and Nicaragua.
The legacy of the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1994 by Mexico, Canada and the United States has made many wary of CAFTA.
Although NAFTA opened the gates to a staggering new wave of trade among the neighbors, it is not without its detractors. In the United States, many owners of small- and medium-sized businesses complain such agreements have allowed jobs to flow out of the country because of lower manufacturing costs in Mexico. Environmental and social justice groups, on the other hand, say many U.S. companies were allowed to skirt stricter regulations by relocating operations south of the border.
Many of these same parties also oppose CAFTA.
The U.S. Business and Industry Council says the United States will only see reduced wages and unemployment by sending to Central America more textiles to be assembled and sent right back to the United States.
Alan Tonelson, a research fellow with the council, said CAFTA is an outsourcing agreement that allows American multinational companies and retailers better access to low-wage production.
"Expanded trade with Central America will become one more force adding to already dangerous high U.S. trade and current account deficits, and increasing downward pressure on the U.S. dollar," he told United Press International in an e-mail. "It will also increase the migration abroad of the types of relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs that generations of working-class Americans have relied on to build middle-class lives for themselves."
Tonelson and his colleagues propose many modifications to CAFTA and to U.S. trade policy in general, including higher external tariffs to create real preferences for free-trade-area members and stricter enforcement of agreements in the face of what they call "the nation's manufacturing emergency."
I don't know if anyone else is worried about this statement from the President. From what I have seen, NAFTA has not been the best thing for the American workers. The sheer number of businesses that have moved out of the US, and not just for NAFTA, is alarming. I have a strong fear that "strengthening the neighborhood" will weaken what options the American worker has available from an already dimenishing pool of opportunites.
I am also afraid that the additional statement about reducing regulation also has wider implications in regards to the environment and business practices.
I am also fairly sure many of you will disagree with me.