Free Trade with Central America Will Cost U.S. Jobs, Protesters Say

Buffalo News

By Fred O. Williams

Holding up pictures of empty factories, opponents of the Central American Free Trade Agreement demonstrated in downtown Buffalo on Wednesday, saying the proposal will deepen the region’s economic plight.

“We cannot continue to export our jobs,” said Assemblywoman Susan John, D-Rochester, chair of the Assembly Labor Committee.

“They used to make clothes here,” she said, pointing at the former M. Wile & Co. factory on Goodell Street that served as the demonstration’s backdrop. “There’s going to be more places like that that are gone.”

The White House sent the proposed trade agreement to Congress last week. The pact would reduce trade barriers with five Central American nations and the Dominican Republic.

The Senate Finance Committee, which approved the agreement by a voice vote Wednesday, sent it to the full Senate for consideration this week or after the Independence Day recess.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the Labor Department tried to squelch government-paid studies that were critical of working conditions in Central America. A contractor, the International Labor Rights Fund, found that labor protections in the CAFTA nations are enforced weakly or not at all, contradicting administration arguments that the nations have made progress in such issues. The government blocked the findings from being released for more than a year, the AP said.

Although the CAFTA nations’ economies are relatively small, at a combined $85 billion, the proposal threatens jobs in across the nation and in Western New York, opponents here said.

“CAFTA is not really a trade agreement, it’s an outsourcing agreement,” said William J. Pienta, director of the United Steel Workers of America District 4. Garment makers that have shipped plants to the region will find it easier to exploit people in Central America, half of whom live on less than $2 a day, he said.

The event drew Democratic politicians and anti-sweatshop groups as well as labor organizations.

“If you stand at a machine or sit at a desk, your job is not safe,” said trade critic Jack Davis, president of I Squared R Element Co. in Akron.

Although Central America is not a large threat to U.S. manufacturing, past trade pacts have battered his company and others while ballooning the nation’s trade deficit, he said.

Maria Whyte, Democratic candidate for Erie County Legislature, linked the county’s fiscal crisis to past trade deals, which she said caused job losses that have eroded the tax base.

The protesters called on representatives in Washington to oppose the trade pact. Sen. Charles E. Schumer and Reps. Louise Slaughter and Brian Higgins oppose the measure, while Sen. Hillary Clinton is undecided. Rep. Thomas Reynolds hasn’t committed, according to the Steelworkers. Efforts to reach him Wednesday were unsuccessful.

CAFTA is viewed as critical to keeping alive the stalled Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA, which would include the larger economies of Brazil and Argentina and create a trade zone spanning the Western Hemisphere.

Opponents also said the trade pact could keep local governments in the U.S. from enforcing living wage laws and environmental protections that are deemed barriers to trade. Some protesters had their hands tied and mouths taped shut to symbolize the restrictions.

Central America absorbs $15 billion a year in U.S. exports, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, more than India, Russia and Indonesia combined. Under CAFTA, tariffs on 85 percent of U.S. exports to the region would be dropped immediately, while the remainder would fade out over 10 years.

“Free trade is the best way for a country to lift itself up,” Lawrence Southwick Jr., a University at Buffalo economist, said in a telephone interview. While international aid is often wasted by local politicians, the jobs created by free trade distribute economic benefits to the poor, he said.

Some companies in Western New York export to Central America, but the business usually represents a small slice of their total sales, the Buffalo Niagara World Trade Center said. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, exports from New York State to the CAFTA nations totaled $200 million last year, less than 1 percent of total exports.

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