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House Narrowly Approves CAFTA
Trade accord's passage a win for Bush

Thursday, July 28, 2005; Posted: 12:09 p.m. EDT (16:09 GMT)


President Bush walks to a meeting with Rep. Dennis Hastert, Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman.

Correction
An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed a quotation to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The statement "Why in the world should people stick to the path of democracy if supposedly the richest, most generous democracy in the world rejects a trade agreement with these countries?" was made by Rep. Bill Thomas, R-California.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After an all-day, full-court press by the White House, the House early Thursday narrowly approved the controversial Central America Free Trade Agreement, a pact supporters say will help strengthen fledgling democracies.

The vote also helped President Bush avoid a potentially embarrassing political defeat on an issue he championed for months.

The final vote to approve the pact was 217 to 215. House leaders held the vote open for an hour -- well past the normal 15-minute voting time -- as they rounded up enough votes to win.

In the end, 25 Republicans defied their leadership, and their president, to oppose CAFTA, while two others didn't vote. Only 15 of the House's 202 Democrats broke ranks to support it.

As the House debated deep into the night, Vice President Dick Cheney, two Cabinet secretaries and the U.S. trade representative were all in the Capitol, working with GOP leaders to secure the votes of wavering Republicans.

With Democrats nearly united in opposition to CAFTA, Bush took the unusual step of coming to Capitol Hill in person Wednesday to lobby members of his own party, painting the trade pact as a national security issue.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/07/28/house.cafta/

[bucheon bum]

one of the issues i don't agree with the Democrats.

[Gopher]

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[Ya-ta Boy]

217-215? Another example of just how weak Bush really is. I'm still waiting to hear the final resolution to the Bolton nomination.

I'm not against free trade deals, but I'd like to see them made in ways that really do benefit all parties involved, not just the big corporations. NAFTA has not been as successful as it should have been. Mexico has not boomed. Maybe before signing any more of these deals, we should all go back and see where the previous ones have not lived up to expectations, figure out solutions and get them working. Then move on to new ones.

[bucheon bum]

Part of the reason Mexico has not progressed is because Vicente Fox has been an ineffective President, partly due to the fact he does not have the majority support of Congress.

[Gopher]

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[bucheon bum]

Didn't help that Kennedy didn't go all out in support of it either. But enough about the digression.

So if things like CAFTA don't help, what do you propose? What can be done to improve the economies of Mexico and Central America?

[Gopher]

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[bucheon bum]

Yeah, that is a load of BS. I don't believe in that argument whatsoever. I do think that true free trade is beneficial economically speaking. Unfortunately a lot of FTA don't honestly create free trade environments. On the other hand, I do think they're better than what was in place before they came into existance.

[Gopher]

A lot of governements are suspicious of North American-style (and Western European-style) "free trade."

Historically it has meant, you must open your markets to us and reduce import duties, and we will do the same for you. Now, you don't have an industrial base, and this arrangement is going to keept things that way, but, hey, it's a free market, man.

I doubt we'd be making the same argument were the shoe on the other foot, so, in my mind, too, the thing is shady (or "dodgy" as our British-English-speaking colleauges would say).

Until there is a major redistribution of the wealth, and I mean a major redistribution of the wealth, we're going to be stuck in this holding pattern...

[bucheon bum]

but see, you don't need an industrial base to benefit from free trade. Thanks to farm subsidies in the EU and US, africa and latin america can't competively trade with those two. I forget the details, but the cost of producing cotton in the US is 3 or 4 times more than in western africa. Now rationally there should therefore be no cotton growers in the usa due to that huge cost difference, but since those cotton farmers are given subsides, they can beat out those poor dudes in Mali and wherever.

The same with sugar. The united states consumer pays more than anyone else in the world for it. Why? because the sugar growers' lobby is so damn powerful and FL is a "swing state."

And it isn't just the west of course; look at Japan and Korea as well. When korea signed a FTA with Chile, it excluded some key areas including rice and grapes. Why? Because of the farmers of course, who have a bigger voice in Korea (and Japan) than they should.

[Gopher]

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[Ya-ta Boy]

[Gopher]

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[Ya-ta Boy]