Uphill fight for Central American trade deal

A decade after the inception of the North American Free Trade Agreement, officials and experts are still debating its merits, even as communities across the country absorb its impact.

Meanwhile, China, which continues to rack up huge trade surpluses with the US, looms on the eastern horizon.

It is in this context that President Bush's initiative for a free-trade accord with Central America and the Caribbean's Dominican Republic (known as CAFTA) continues to flounder - despite the high-profile press from the White House this week to get the signed agreement ratified by Congress.

President Bush was scheduled to greet the presidents of five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic to the White House Thursday, while Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick - the administration's past trade representative - is to give a speech next week echoing his boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who recently argued that CAFTA is essential to securing freedom - economic and political - in the region.

The administration's problem is not so much the impact of an accord with six economies that together barely match the economic heft of Pittsburgh. Rather, it's the "bad rep" that trade agreements and the notion of free trade in general have developed as the United States has continued to see a decline in manufacturing jobs and a rise in "offshore outsourcing."

Any hopes of new trade agreements - such as one encompassing the entire Western Hemisphere that the administration had once hoped to conclude this year - are probably doomed until the public, and Congress, are more certain of the benefits.

In the debate over CAFTA and free trade in general, "the two phantoms are the experience with NAFTA and what to do about China," says Jeff Vogt, a senior associate for rights and development at the Washington Office on Latin America. "That's really what's put the spook into" the Congress.

The Democrats, who were mildly supportive of free trade under President Clinton, have increasingly turned against trade agreements in recent years. Some Republicans, too, are showing increased resistance to pressure from traditional Republican free-trade constituencies, citing job losses and inadequate planning for the fallout of trade accords.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia, argues in a recent article in The Hill newspaper that while "open trade" can boost the export of US products, it also causes hardships at home - hardships the US hasn't prepared for adequately in the past.

While touting his state as a "crossroads of international trade," he adds that "Georgia was also home to a thriving textile sector that has suffered the costs of free trade...."

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