It seems like not passing it could alienate one of the few friendly nations.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1207...ews_whats_news

__________________
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A nation is compromised of millions of people...you probably mean alienating a friendly Government of elites....Free Trade is not Fair trade and it will be bad for common workers in Colombia and the United States...we are already seeing it with Mexico...expanding it is not the answer....

No, I meant the country...or at least the part that isn't comprised of drug cartels or terrorists. free trade is free trade, it can be fair or unfair...many times it can be both. Do you have any proof that NAFTA has been bad for common workers? Esp in both countries or is that empty political rhetoric? Expanding it is definitely an answer for helping Columbia. what damage will it do to the American economy? My parents are living in a south american country that has benefited greatly from free trade...I'll give you a hint, it's not the one with street protests set off by food shortages.

You need to provide at least a little substantive not just political statements, we get enough of that from TV ads.

__________________
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Fumo: "Yeah, you know me!"

This is what Colombia will experience.... I hope you are willing to take all your latin american bretheren in your home when they want to start emigrating en masse as well....

Starving the Poor
By NC

The International News

Wednesday 16 May 2007

The chaos that derives from the so-called international order can be painful if you are on the receiving end of the power that determines that order’s structure. Even tortillas come into play in the ungrand scheme of things. Recently, in many regions of Mexico, tortilla prices jumped by more than 50 per cent.

In January, in Mexico City, tens of thousands of workers and farmers rallied in the Zocalo, the city’s central square, to protest the skyrocketing cost of tortillas.

In response, the government of President Felipe Calderon cut a deal with Mexican producers and retailers to limit the price of tortillas and corn flour, very likely a temporary expedient.

In part the price-hike threat to the food staple for Mexican workers and the poor is what we might call the ethanol effect — a consequence of the US stampede to corn-based ethanol as an energy substitute for oil, whose major wellsprings, of course, are in regions that even more grievously defy international order.

In the United States, too, the ethanol effect has raised food prices over a broad range, including other crops, livestock and poultry.

The connection between instability in the Middle East and the cost of feeding a family in the Americas isn’t direct, of course. But as with all international trade, power tilts the balance. A leading goal of US foreign policy has long been to create a global order in which US corporations have free access to markets, resources and investment opportunities. The objective is commonly called “free trade,” a posture that collapses quickly on examination.

It’s not unlike what Britain, a predecessor in world domination, imagined during the latter part of the 19th century, when it embraced free trade, after 150 years of state intervention and violence had helped the nation achieve far greater industrial power than any rival.

The United States has followed much the same pattern. Generally, great powers are willing to enter into some limited degree of free trade when they’re convinced that the economic interests under their protection are going to do well. That has been, and remains, a primary feature of the international order.

The ethanol boom fits the pattern. As discussed by agricultural economists C Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, “the biofuel industry has long been dominated not by market forces but by politics and the interests of a few large companies,” in large part Archer Daniels Midland, the major ethanol producer. Ethanol production is feasible thanks to substantial state subsidies and very high tariffs to exclude much cheaper and more efficient sugar-based Brazilian ethanol. In March, during President Bush’s trip to Latin America, the one heralded achievement was a deal with Brazil on joint production of ethanol. But Bush, while spouting free-trade rhetoric for others in the conventional manner, emphasized forcefully that the high tariff to protect US producers would remain, of course along with the many forms of government subsidy for the industry.

Despite the huge, taxpayer-supported agricultural subsidies, the prices of corn — and tortillas — have been climbing rapidly. One factor is that industrial users of imported US corn increasingly purchase cheaper Mexican varieties used for tortillas, raising prices.

The 1994 US-sponsored NAFTA agreement may also play a significant role, one that is likely to increase. An unlevel-playing-field impact of NAFTA was to flood Mexico with highly subsidised agribusiness exports, driving Mexican producers off the land.

Mexican economist Carlos Salas reviews data showing that after a steady rise until 1993, agricultural employment began to decline when NAFTA came into force, primarily among corn producers — a direct consequence of NAFTA, he and other economists conclude. One-sixth of the Mexican agricultural work force has been displaced in the NAFTA years, a process that is continuing, depressing wages in other sectors of the economy and impelling emigration to the US.

It is, presumably, more than coincidental that President Clinton militarised the Mexican border, previously quite open, in 1994, along with implementation of NAFTA.

The “free trade” regime drives Mexico from self-sufficiency in food towards dependency on US exports. And as the price of corn goes up in the United States, stimulated by corporate power and state intervention, one can anticipate that the price of staples may continue its sharp rise in Mexico.

Increasingly, bio fuels are likely to “starve the poor” around the world, according to Runge and Senauer, as staples are converted to ethanol production for the privileged — cassava in sub-Saharan Africa, to take one ominous example. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, tropical forests are cleared and burned for oil palms destined for bio fuel, and there are threatening environmental effects from input-rich production of corn-based ethanol in the United States as well.

The high price of tortillas and other, crueler vagaries of the international order illustrate the interconnectedness of events, from the Middle East to the Middle West, and the urgency of establishing trade based on true democratic agreements among people, and not interests whose principal hunger is for profit for corporate interests protected and subsidised by the state they largely dominate, whatever the human cost. -------

Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax
By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, March 12, 2008

One of the many mandates of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for oil companies to increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. President Bush said, during his 2006 State of the Union address, "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." Let's look at some of the "wonders" of ethanol as a replacement for gasoline.

Ethanol contains water that distillation cannot remove. As such, it can cause major damage to automobile engines not specifically designed to burn ethanol. The water content of ethanol also risks pipeline corrosion and thus must be shipped by truck, rail car or barge. These shipping methods are far more expensive than pipelines.

Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers -- all of which are fuel-using activities. And, it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent.

Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax -- one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone.

There's something else wrong with this picture. If Congress and President Bush say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, then why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil? Brazilian ethanol, by the way, is produced from sugar cane and is far more energy efficient, cleaner and cheaper to produce.

Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

It's easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money. The top leader in the ethanol hoax is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the country's largest producer of ethanol. Ethanol producers and the farm lobby have pressured farm state congressmen into believing that it would be political suicide if they didn't support subsidized ethanol production. That's the stick. Campaign contributions play the role of the carrot.

The ethanol hoax is a good example of a problem economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there's a large benefit for them -- higher wages and profits. The millions of gasoline consumers, who fund the benefits through higher fuel and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout. After all, who do you think a politician will invite into his congressional or White House office to have a heart-to-heart -- you or an Archer Daniels Midlands executive?

The point you are trying to make seems to be that NAFTA isn't free trade at all, but fair trade...fair for Americans. Indeed, those articles are good arguments for free trade. The ethanol push has been a disaster. As for Mexico, ethanol and US farm subsidies aside, the results have been mixed. Mexico has seen a lot of stability (unusual there). Jobs have been created in Monterrey and middle class suburbs have been springing up. Signs of change in Mexican ports are appearing as well. Still, Mexico is still run by corrupt leaders who support state monopolies and powerful oligarchs. Justice can be bought and the country, like Columbia, has been ravaged by the decidedly unfree drug trade. It's not clear to me that the mexican migration is any different than when millions of poor Italians, Irish, Poles, Germans, etc came over...except that most mexicans aren't white.

__________________
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No not at all. Tell that to American workers from Dayton and Cleveland, Ohio where 10 percent of the population is now on food stamps as noted in this article

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Food_stamp_use_hits_ alltime_high_0324.html.

I think these people would beg to differ with your assertion that NAFTA is "fair."

La-Z-Boy, Whirlpool Moving Hundreds Of Jobs To Mexico
Workers at Dayton, Cleveland Facilities Get Notices

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_125124.asp

These people getting such a "fair" deal will now be added to the growing ranks of the unemployed. 80,000 in the month of March alone...

Job losses mount, recession feared
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080404/...conomy_jobs_dc

The large sucking sound that Perot warned about is now in complete overdrive and we can thank this administration along with the previous one...

NAFTA is essentially a race to the bottom for blue collar wage earners. White collars are not immune either..they get undercut by H-1B Visa workers trying to secure a green card..see how it's done deliberately here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

As far as Mexico being a beneficiary in some respects due to Free Trade..Monterrey doesn't represent all of Mexico as you know. Think Chiapas and the south. My girlfriend is from Monterrey ironically and I was just there in December. I visit family often with her. Although it is true that there is a higher standard of living in Monterrey compared to the rest of Mexico (apart from Mexico City) and something similar to the US middle class exists due to the many industries that were once in this country and now in Mexico (such as Whirlpool, Mary Kay, etc etc.) it is still teetering on subsistance wage earning and job security is pretty much nonexistent. Her friend works for a company where if you are not 35 and under.... you're pounding sand. They can even deny you work for basic medical conditions such as a curved spine. Vacations, sick days, health insurance, pensions...pipe dreams for the most part. You are sick..you don't get paid. The state healthcare and school systems are poor but yet they have a nice riverwalk in the downtown area that cost millions so they can draw in foreigners but that their own people can barely enjoy. So much for priorities and fairness..I love how Americans can vacation in Mexico and not have to even see or speak to a Mexican because they can hole themselves up in a Green zone style resort....

Most "middle class" people in Monterrey hardly have any discretionary spending for movies or other entertainment because the cost of living is so high. Prices there were equivalent to here in the US but because the Peso is still low compared to the dollar..their buying power is half ours. People don't realize that the nominal value of a stock portfolio is not really indicative of wealth if your buying power keeps getting decreased. We're following the same path as many free trade economies if they continue to kill the dollar the way they are . American's standard of living will keep going down at this rate and we'll be in a similar predicament before too long especially if the recession is a prolonged one...

The city of Monterrey is also becoming massively overpopulated and thus polluted because so many subsistance farmers that once used to get by selling their agriculture from their own labor can't compete with US agribusiness which dumps US taxpayer subsidized corn and other agricultural staples in the mexican market. As a result they have to move in increasing numbers to cities such as Monterrey and Mexico city to find work. If they don't secure work, they get involved in drugs. Indeed, I'm sure most people would get involved in an underground economy if they were desperate and had no other means to eat! Consequently, because of the large labor pool who will work for 5 dollars a day (minumum wage) at a Soriano food market, they don't have to grant "fair" working conditions, benefits or worker's rights. Moreover, part of free trade and globalization is the ability of transnational corporations to "freely" leave once wages rise because of "populist" pressures. They just move to another Free trade zone in Colombia or your parent's country for example and the low wage game goes. Meanwhile the people who depended upon the company for "stability" in their lives kicks them to the curb for the next cheap wage market and wage earner willing to earn anything so that they can put food on the table.

With the dollar getting tanked by the Fed interest rate cuts..the US is going to quickly become the next large free trade zone. Labor is already becoming so cheap because of the debasement of the currency that Germany is moving some of their automotive operations to Alabama. This all sounds good but try telling that to somebody who used to work for GM making 40 dollars an hour but now because he/she has to "compete" with the rest of the free market world his/her choice is to move from Detroit to good ole Alabama and work for 10 bucks an hour if they are even lucky enough to get the job considering how there is such rising unemployment and increasing labor competition in this country as well. Even if he or she gets the job they will probably still have to be supplemented with food stamps due to rising food inflation and energy costs. Moreover, they will have to get placed on the Medicaid dole for healthcare if they even qualify for decreasing federal/state government funds. This is what I mean as far a race to the bottom. The Walmart business model is part of what you consider free and fair trade.

Americans are getting all bent out of shape because what the rest of the world has been experiencing for decades ,particularly in latin America thanks to the IMF and "Free" trade, is now hitting home. They are looking for scapegoats and blaming "illegals" who just want to come here and earn 5 dollars an hour instead of 5 dollars a day and make better lives for themselves and their families. Xenophobe brown shirt nativists like Lou Dobbs spew out intolerant messages for the ignorant masses and berate illegals for "not waiting in line" when there is no line in the first place because being "illegal" means US business can have a permanent underclass that they can exploit and pay crap wages to because the wages in their country are even crappier. You want their labor but won't give them papers. People like Dobbs offer up simplistic emotional explanations for the "illegal" immigrant situation in this country that is more the result of unfair trade practices driven by NAFTA and CAFTA as well as a foreign policy that supports puppets such as Calderon and Uribe because Calderon is providing us with much needed Mexican oil and Uribe is allowing US defense contractors to sell him Bell helicopters to kill political opponents and squash populist movements under the guise of a "war on drugs." The drug trade is actually a boon for the Colombian government..they get billions of dollars in foreign aid from the US to fight a war of their own making...it's quite a RACKET (happy now thunda by the way it's thunder!)...

Buenas Noches....

Still nothing you said is a substantive argument against free trade

Um...the US is already a free trade zone, and always has been.

Foreign-based car companies have been opening factories in the US South since long before the current plunge in the dollar. The two aren't really connected. Hyundai, Toyota, Honda, etc., choose to locate outside of the traditional auto regions because labor is less expensive and also more flexible, ie: no union rules. Blame the US auto industry (and the labor itself, represented through its unions) for being uncompetitive with other parts of the country, much less the rest of the world.

Also, your statements regarding the high price of, sigh, flour tortillas also has rather little to do with NAFTA. Prices for ag commodities have been skyrocketing all over the world due to US idiocity over ethanol as well as a drought in (I think) Australia which limits supply. In fact, it's really an argument in favor of markets less distorted by ridiculous intervention, ie: freer.

I think you mean "racket." A racquet is for tennis.

Nothing? Cut me a break...it seems like your critical thinking skills need some polishing and you are either intellectually challenged or intellectually dishonest or both. Your cat in the hat retort is based on um NOTHING as far as sources to back up your so-called substantive argument. The US has not always been a free trade zone...it became quasi free trade under GATT and then moreso after GATT became NAFTA . Before we used to have bilateral trade negotiations with countries and trade was more even handed.

Foreign based car companies began opening up car factories once trade started to become more lenient with NAFTA. The plunging dollar is just accelerating the race to the bottom...

SIGH....The statements based on flour tortillas were not mine..the source is an MIT professor of Linguistics and foreign policy who is more of an authority than somebody who goes by the name of Thunda and provides no substantive sources to back up his assertions/preconceived fixed notions....oh by the way..it's Thunder...how silly to parse words right?

Were there tariffs or quotas on interstate commerce prior to GATT? Were there restrictions on the flow of labor or capital between states? If I am wrong, please correct me, but I'm pretty sure that the US has always been a common market, ie, a free trade zone.

Toyota's first plant in the US (a joint venture with GM) opened in California in 1984, ten years before NAFTA. Honda began building motorcycles in the US in 1978 (Marysville, OH) and cars in 1982 while Volkswagon began operation at its New Stanton, PA facility in 1978 - again, before NAFTA.

Sigh. This is an online message board; we all have handles. Yours is either the Roman god of war or a candy bar.