CAFTA Complaints

A good article in the NY Times about the possible problems with the CAFTA agreement that was rammed through the U.S. Congress on threats and bribes. It highlights the problem with calling preferential trade agreements with no clauses on eliminating subsidies 'free trade'. One of the focal points of this article is on the impact of CAFTA on small farms in the countries involved. The fear is that they will not be able to compete with the large meat factories and corporate farms in the U.S. that are heavily subsidized (part of the reason the Doha Agreements broke down was the developed countries' rejection of their phasing out. One farmer said "It's impossible for is to be competitive with all the subsidies that the North Americans have," said Emilio Rodríguez Pacheco, 48, who farms about 25 acres of rice here. "For the rice sector it's a tragedy." This highlights the difficulties of calling any reduction in trade barriers a progress towards free trade. It is only a move towards free trade if there are no subsidies involved that reduce the cost for the large corporate farms that already have a scale advantage over smaller, unsubsidized farms.