Rep Rangel comments on Lou Dobbs last night.
DOBBS: Do you agree that with most of the people we`ve talked with that CAFTA hasn`t a chance in the world of being passed this election year?
RANGEL: You`re right. Even the president`s people are beginning to say that this is a loser. The president signs it, but the committee hasn`t got enough votes really to do anything with it.
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DOBBS: Turning now to our poll question: Do you expect the president`s speech tonight to significantly alter your view of the situation in Iraq, yes or no? Cast your vote at CNN.com/Lou. We`ll have the results later in the broadcast.
Coming up next, the next free trade giveaway, the United States preparing to sign yet another free trade agreement. Congressman Charles Rangel says it will hurt American workers and business. He`s our guest.
And "Broken Borders." A new system to track foreign visitors to the United States could be built by a foreign company, a foreign company exporting American jobs overseas. We`ll have a special report.
And then wild weather sweeping across the Midwest, tornado warnings still in effect across much of the region. We`ll have the very latest for you on the weather tonight affecting a large segment of the entire country.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Tonight, the free trade giveaway. The White House this week will sign yet another free trade agreement, this one with Central America, the so-called CAFTA agreement. It is the latest in a growing list of controversial trade pacts that appear to show free trade as anything, certainly, but free.
Kitty Pilgrim reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick is on a trade push. Free trade agreements have been negotiated with eight countries in the last six months, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Australia, and Morocco.
LAEL BRAINARD, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Since day one, the administration has been very clear that they were going to go full steam ahead in this very radically new direction for U.S. trade policy, which is to sign as many as bilateral free trade agreements as possible. What`s interesting is that the economic benefits to the U.S. just aren`t that big.
PILGRIM: CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, to be covered on Friday, will cover Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras,El Salvador, and Nicaragua.
CAFTA critics say the labor and environment provisions are not acceptable, among them, John Kerry and Dick Gephardt, who, while campaigning, accuse the Bush administration of -- quote -- "selling out American workers with a bad trade deal" -- unquote. The U.S. trade agenda suffered a setback with the collapse of global trade talks in Cancun, Mexico.
GARY HUFBAUER, INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS: It was a complete breakdown. You could not ask for a more complete breakdown. After Cancun, that was when the Zoellick, you know, enlarged the list of new bilateral free trade agreements. Looking at that, he said, let`s make business where we can make business.
PILGRIM: The U.S. already has free trade agreements with Canada, Mexico, Israel, Jordan, Chile and Singapore. Last month, the United States started on a neighboring region to CAFTA. The first round of negotiations with Panama has started and also Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Negotiations with Bahrain have also begun and also five nations in Africa.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Now, Congress has yet to sign off on these deals. The first test is the agreement with Australia. And it`s generally accepted as a favorable deal for the United States, but few expect CAFTA to go before Congress in advance of the November election -- Lou.
DOBBS: Thank you very much, Kitty.
My next guest has been one of the outspoken critics of CAFTA in Congress. And Congressman Charlie Rangel says this agreement is unfair to American workers and business. Congressman Rangel is the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.
And we thank you for being here.
REP. CHARLES RANGEL (D), NEW YORK: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: CAFTA is certainly controversial, but the president is going to sign it. What is your basic objection to it?
RANGEL: Well, you know, since they passed fast track, it meant the Congress was out of any input at all in any of these negotiations. So the private sector meets with our trade representatives. They meet with the foreigners. And the only thing we get a chance to do is to vote up or down. In Washington, when you say you`re against a particular free trade agreement, you`re an isolationist, you`re unpatriotic, you`re trying to stop jobs.
But one of the things that we protest is that the good old days used to say made in the USA and there was a sense of pride in what you were doing. People would want those things that were made there. And generations would work someplace and even the logo would be something that they would wear. In this particular agreement, we are being driven by the lowest price in labor. There are no standards over there in terms of what they can organize, whether this is going to be child labor.
We say the least that they can do is have the minimum international labor standards, so that there would be something for them to look for disposable income and buy from the USA.
DOBBS: Do you agree that with most of the people we`ve talked with that CAFTA hasn`t a chance in the world of being passed this election year?
RANGEL: You`re right. Even the president`s people are beginning to say that this is a loser. The president signs it, but the committee hasn`t got enough votes really to do anything with it.
DOBBS: You have -- you`ve been a supporter of free trade agreements over the years. We are seeing a gradual shift in this country, in my opinion, to people taking a new, harder look at free trade and the high cost of that free trade in terms of jobs in this country, in terms of the wages that have been depressed. Is that your sense of what is happening now with these free trade agreements, particularly NAFTA?
RANGEL: You know, there`s always been the rhetoric that we get back more jobs than those that we`re shipping abroad. But if you work in a community and the only industry is a factor there, they close down, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people are without salaries, pensions, health care.
And the jobs that we get back are not necessarily to that community and they`re not necessarily in any volume compared to what we are losing. And we are losing not only the jobs, but we`re losing the technology. We`re losing privacy. We`re losing that sense of pride that Americans used to feel. And overseas, it`s not even certain that the people are benefiting from it, that they`re getting the minimum care.
DOBBS: In point of fact, as you know, Congressman, several recent studies have shown that, in Mexico, after NAFTA, a decade of NAFTA, Mexican wages are lower than they were when it began.
RANGEL: And do you than some of the people that we`ve talked with had been prepared to accept amendments in the agreements, where they would have minimum standards and it would be our trade representatives that would not want them there? And when you`re dealing with international forces, then you can`t bring up national pride anymore.
DOBBS: And the issue of lost sovereignty is another issue. I hope you`ll come back and we can address that, Congressman.
RANGEL: Well, the World Trade organization is really the World Trade Organization. It`s not ours.
DOBBS: Absolutely.
Congressman Charlie Rangel, glad you`re ours. Thanks for being here.
RANGEL: Thanks for what you do, Lou.
Guatemala to sign trade deal after spat with U.S.
230 words
25 May 2004
01:29 am GMT
Reuters News
English
(c) 2004 Reuters Limited
GUATEMALA CITY, 24 May (Reuters) - Guatemala will sign a free trade agreement with the United States after U.S. officials backed down in a spat over protecting staple crops like rice and corn, the Guatemalan government said on Monday.
"We are satisfied to end this phase and be able to proceed to the signing on Friday together with the other Central American countries," Guatemalan Economy Minister Marcio Cuevas told reporters.
The announcement ends speculation that Guatemala might be left out of the agreement, known as CAFTA, which was negotiated between the United States and five Central American countries in 2003.
Doubts about Guatemala's position arose last week when Vice President Eduardo Stein told Reuters the United States was threatening Guatemala with exclusion from the agreement if it refused to drop clauses protecting staple crops from sudden exposure to subsidized U.S. imports.
"Guatemala didn't concede. Instead, the U.S. has adopted a more consensual position to reach this agreement," Cuevas said.
Despite commitments from Central American countries to sign, many doubt U.S. President George W. Bush will risk pushing the agreement through Congress before elections in November.
Central America and the European Union are expected to push forward a new free trade agreement at a summit to be held in Mexico at the end of the week.
