After more than two years of campaigning, the CAFTA fight has come down to the wire with a vote scheduled to take place this week. NAFTA led to the loss of almost one million US jobs, the displacement of 1.5 million Mexican campesinos and an environmentally toxic border, all while multinational corporations gained huge profits. The passage of CAFTA is sure to presage more of the same.
As Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch argues, the passage of CAFTA “would serve to push ahead the corporate globalization model that has caused the ‘race to the bottom’ in labor and environmental standards and would promote privatization and deregulation of key public services.”
Indeed, many NGOs working in Central America contend that the pact, while delivering substantial profits to multinational corporations, would do little for the poor of that region. Organized labor, progressive farm groups, environmental groups, civil rights groups and human rights groups are all opposed to the trade agreement.
Click here today to implore your elected reps to vote no on CAFTA, click here to check out GTW’s four quick steps to help stop CAFTA, and click here to read John Nichols’s Top Ten list of the lies and deceptions put out by CAFTA’s corporate spinners.
