One of the most annoying things about the apologists for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (including the CAFTA 15) has been their insistence that the trade deal would do wonders for people in Central America and the Dominican Republic (which is included in CAFTA). The problem was that those apologists could not explain why there were mass demonstrations throughout Central America against the deal.

So, today, The New York Times has a story (registration required) on the debate over CAFTA in Central America. Like any good Times man, James McKinley has to find a few people who support the pact–though those pro people turn out to be mostly businessmen.

But, what actually comes out, without being underscored explicitly by the reporter (who probably couldn’t get it past his editors, even if he wanted to), is the nonsense behind the phrase “free trade.” As I have said consistently here and in many places for lo these many years, “free trade” does not exist–it’s a marketing phrase intended to blind people by using two words that few people would find objectionable (everyone likes the idea of trading and who is against something that’s FREE!!!)

In the article, you can find out that “The agreement, for instance, leaves in places the price supports for American sugar…” or “The part on textiles was also written to protect fabric and yarn factories, this times from Chinese competition” or, and this is a hallmark of so-called “free trade” agreements, “…and protect the property rights of big American pharmaceutical companies from generic drug makers here.”

So, what we have here (and in virtually every similar trade deal of this genre in the past) is not theoritical free trade (which could be written in about five pages), but rather a so-called “free trade” agreement that is a large pile of pages that shape corporate and investment rights. Oh, yeah, there are the phony labor and environmental provisions which throw a little money out to buy off some guilty-feeling liberals.

But, fundamentally, these so-called “free trade” deals set up the rules that oil the way for corporations to do as they please.

A different approach would be to draft a trade deal that starts with the first blank page stating the goal of the deal: how will this improve the lives of the workers everywhere?
And, after you set down those principles, then, and only then, do you turn to the question: how do corporations fulfill that goal?

Yeah, I’m naive. But, let’s be clear to others about what these deals are really about.