A rchive Date
[ 20-10-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/2167628
CAFTA means more jobs for Houston, U.S.
By U.S. REP. KEVIN BRADY
Oct. 19, 2003, 6:40PM
THIS week Houston hosts the Eighth Negotiating Round of the United States-Central America Free Trade Agreement. It's a historic event -- a first for Texas.
The eyes of Central America will be focused on Houston. Hundreds of negotiators, trade ministers, business leaders and government representatives from Central America and the United States will undertake a series of intense negotiations. Progress will be pursued on such key issues as agriculture, labor, textiles and mutually beneficial access to each other's markets.
Houston is the right place for such talks.
Texas recently became the largest exporting state in the nation. Within Texas, Houston is the largest exporting region. Few states create more jobs from international trade, and few regions benefit more economically than ours.
Many Houston-area residents have strong family ties to the Central America countries of Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras.
Why is trade with Central America important?
The answer is: jobs. Good jobs. The kind you can raise a family on.
Passage of a comprehensive and commercially meaningful trade agreement with The Centrals will level the playing field for American products competing to sell there. Enhanced trade with The Centrals means new jobs for America, especially for Texas and the Houston region.
With a population comparable to Canada, Central America is a proven trading partner. Today Central America buys more U.S. goods than Russia, India and Indonesia combined.
Even better, for every dollar in products Central America sells to the United States, it buys back $1.36. Compare that positive surplus to our trade deficit with China, which buys back only two cents for every dollar it sells us. We need more trading partners like Central America.
Here at home, more than 1,200 Houston companies have already established trade in Central America's growing market. More than $611 million in Central American cargo moves through the Port of Houston each year, and another $49 million in air cargo trade.
With the right free trade agreement, this could just be the beginning of a long and prosperous partnership with our Central America friends.
Enhanced trade with The Centrals is important to Texas and U.S. agriculture. The region is a growing buyer of industrial products. It offers exciting new markets to technology-related companies. American service firms of all size, including small business, are already finding new clients there. These are Texas' economic strengths.
This trade agreement will help preserve American manufacturing jobs. For example, a forward-looking Central America trade agreement is especially critical for textile and apparel companies who face an onslaught of Chinese products when the worldwide quota system expires in 2005. If America fails to create a progressive new partnership with The Centrals right now, textile and apparel industries in both the United States and Central America won't long survive. We either partner up or perish.
There is more at stake than just jobs.
A strong trade agreement with The Centrals will also lock in recent progress in democracy, rule of law, labor rights and environmental protection in Central America.
Central America is a region long characterized by poverty, civil war and violence. To its immense credit, in a little more than a decade Central America has transformed itself -- embracing political and economic reforms that a free trade agreement will help lock in.
I saw the power of trade firsthand in a recent trip to Central America. Guatemalan officials were shoring up their cooperation with U.S. drug-trafficking efforts and redoubling efforts to ensure free and honest elections. Anything less, they reasoned, might jeopardize the trade agreement.
In El Salvador, dedicated human rights activists and environmental leaders were passionate that a Central America trade pact is critical to their cause by promoting the rule of law. They are seeking a higher standard of living for the poor. "Fighting poverty with dignity" is how one activist described enhanced trade with the United States.
I also toured a maquila -- a Salvadoran factory that employed workers sewing underwear in a clean, safe warehouse with health care on site and higher-than-average salaries for their workers, many of whom are single moms.
Predictably, anti-trade organizations in the United States have begun their media assault on our Central American friends, unfairly degrading impressive progress in labor rights.
To the contrary, Central American nations have ratified more International Labor Organization conventions -- 226 in all -- than the United States, which has only agreed to 14. And a recent ILO assessment confirms these countries are in substantial compliance with the reforms.
Labor rights are bearing fruit. For example, the minimum wage has risen three times in the past three years in Guatemala. It only takes 35 signatures in El Salvador to create an employee union. Standards of living are rising.
Amazingly, these gains for workers have come in the very short time since Central American countries emerged from crippling civil strife. Truth be told, Central American countries have achieved more worker rights in the past decade than U.S. labor gained in its first 100 years of existence.
But perhaps the most impressive reform is that many of these new labor rights are not merely laws, but enshrined in their national constitutions -- a much higher level of worker protection than here in the United States. Today, with new standards now in place, Central American governments are turning their attention to strong enforcement of worker rights. America is insisting on strong enforcement and the trade agreement will include stiff penalties for anything less.
It is time to lock in this progress. It is time to create a stronger economic partnership that recognizes the values of hard work, family and democracy shared by people in Central America and the United States.
The United States and Central America Free Trade Agreement is expected to be signed in December just one year after President Bush launched the effort.
History will show that Houston played an important role in moving this important trade agreement forward.
Brady, R-The Woodlands, is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, charged with overseeing international trade agreements.
He is also spearheading Congressional support for the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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