In this thread – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=315669 – we debated the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on its member nations. The consensus was that NAFTA has been very good for Canada; very good for Mexico’s ruling elite and not so good for the mass of its people; and there’s no clear picture of whether it’s been good or bad for the U.S.
Now the Bush Administration wants to expand the free trade zone south, to Central America and the Dominican Republic, in a new DR-CAFTA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAFTA) – which itself is only a step on the path to a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would include every country in the Western Hemisphere instead of Cuba (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTAA).
Only, not all people in Latin America and the Caribbean are happy with the idea of “free trade” on U.S. terms. Some, apparently, prefer the idea of an economic union of which the United States is not a member and which exists primarily to confront the U.S. with a competing bloc. The Caribbean nations (other than Cuba and the Dominican Republic – and, of course, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) have already formed their own Caribbean Community (CARICOM) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caricom), which organizationally resembles the European Union more than NAFTA (there are even plans for a political union and currency union). There is also a South American Community of Nations or Communidad Sudamericana de Naciones (CSN) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_American_Community_of_Nations) now being negotiated, uniting MERCOSUR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercosur) and the Andean Community (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andean_Community). Full integration is expected by 2007.
Issues for debate:
If DR-CAFTA goes through, in what respects will it be good for the United States?
In what respects will it be bad for the U.S.?
In what respects will DR-CAFTA be good for the Dominican Republic and the Central American nations?
In what respects will it be bad for the DR and CA?
If the FTAA goes through, in what respects will it be good for the U.S.?
In what respects will it be bad for the U.S.?
In what respects will FTAA be good for the nations of South America and the Caribbean?
In what respects will it be bad for South America and the Caribbean?
The big question: What if we end up with a Western Hemisphere divided among three or four large economic associations instead of just one – i.e., NAFTA and DR-CAFTA vs. CARICOM and CSN, instead of one big FTAA? How will that future be different? Will the Latin Americans be more prosperous under such an arrangement? More independent? Can CSN ever become a bloc that competes with the U.S. on near-equal terms? (In this thread – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=316661 – we’re debating why South American has never yet developed an economy to equal North America’s. Under what circumstances is it more likely to do so – united in an economic union that includes the U.S., or one that excludes the U.S.?
I have to admit it’s way harder to gauge this sort of thing when you’re talking about so many countries, as opposed to just the three in NAFTA. We tend to lump all the Central American countries together, but they’re not all the same.
I am inclined to believe the potential is there for this to be a good thing for Central America, but as with Mexico, it’s not going to help the average Jose if the country’s economy is tilted against him to start with.
I can see some logic behind Central America creating its own trade bloc. The potential issue there, as I see it, is they might just be creating the opportunity to be poor together.
Brain, I think your link to the “Why is South America poor?” thread is very apt. Truth is, on the list of things that make Central America poor (relatiely speaking - it’s a lot richer than some places) free trade or lack of it with North America is not really high on the list. You may recall I am an enthusiastic supporter of Canada’s free trade deal with the US, but it’s not as if Canada was a poor nation prior to signing the FTAA; it made us richer, but only slightly so from an already rich state.
I believe free trade would help Central America, but it’s not a panacea, and that’s assuming it’s a geniune free trade agreement. The concern about farming is especially apt; the United States simply does not play fair in agriculture. It’s obviously difficult for the Guatemalan farmer to compete with American farmers that are essentially agricultural welfare queens, propped up by the Department of Agriculture’s gigantic, billion-dollar payola checks. All the free access in the world can’t fight that.
Given that a much larger percentage of the Central American workforce is involved in agriculture, the potential for a really bad correction is there as industry reorganizes itself You can’t just build factories overnight to employ the farm workers. Canada went through a significant transition phase after FTAA where a lot of people lost their jobs - but that was a jump of maybe 2 percent in the unemployment rate, in a big, rich country with more than enough resources to handle that. The price of transition in Honduras might be a hundred times worse, and that might be enough to break the deal.
Perhaps it would be better to first create a Central American bloc just so that transition phase can be more easily and slowly started.
It’s interesting that that’s the consensus, because the anti-trade folks in Canada claim that NAFTA was a disaster for Canada and benefited the United States. And there is a large group of Mexicans who think NAFTA benefited the U.S. at their expense.
Which only proves to me that special interests with an axe to grind will always look out for their own interests, and try to convince everyone that what has been bad for them is bad for everyone.
Then what’s your opinion of the effects of NAFTA on Canada, the U.S. and Mexico? (You didn’t post in the other thread.) And what does that tell us about the likely effects on the countries concerned of DR-CAFTA and FTAA (or of the alternative CARICOM and CNS)?
(I didn’t post in the other thread either…I’ve been away. My opinion is that NAFTA has been good for all 3 countries, though I think Canada has taken the biggest advantage of the situation)
I’m not going to answer each question, as I’m just dipping a toe back into this board after a rather long vacation from it and I’m not really up to anything like that yet.
Over all I’d say that for the majority a free trade agreement that would eventually encompass all of the America’s would be benificial to the majority of the people. Of course, as with any kind of free trade agreement, there would be some that would be hurt…those who benifit by protectionism, and even others while things adjust. Some would even go completely out of business in fact.
My own opinion (fwiw) is that the regions should probably form their own free trade zones first (something already happening) and gradually transition them over to join with the US, Canada and Mexico in a larger (Free Trade Area of the Americas) zone…after they have worked out the bugs and transitioned their industries to take advantage of the smaller zones.
[QUOTE=xtismeMy own opinion (fwiw) is that the regions should probably form their own free trade zones first (something already happening) and gradually transition them over to join with the US, Canada and Mexico in a larger (Free Trade Area of the Americas) zone…after they have worked out the bugs and transitioned their industries to take advantage of the smaller zones.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, well, there’s an important difference there. CNS and CARICOM are consciously modeled on the European Union – which is a quasi-government in its own right, independent of the governments of its member states, and which has a European Parliament directly elected by the people of Europe without their national governments’ involvement. So CNS and CARICOM will probably have such parliaments, sooner or later. But NAFTA is purely a trade union negotiated by the three participating national governments, and has no directly elected, supranational parliament of its own. If all of these were ultimately merged into a hemisphere-wide FTAA, it would have to decide, at some point, to go with the one model or the other. Which would be better? And which would be politically possible?
Over all I’d say the NAFTA type model is ‘better’ than what you call a ‘quasi-government in its own right, independent of the governments of its member states, and which has a European Parliament directly elected by the people of Europe without their national governments’ involvement.’ Why do I think its ‘better’? Well because, at least initially, I think its less complex and more immediately benificial. Even the Europeans are having a lot of bumps in the road getting their vision across, and there is a lot of resistance to the direction the EU is going. Had they gone with an apolitical free trade agreement though I think they could have gotten that through a lot less painlessly…and again, this is in Europe. In the region we are discussing I see myriad more problems and complications trying to create a European model union…even if they want to create a union that will directly oppose or compete with the US (i.e. they are adamant that they don’t want to join the US in any kind of trade agreement).
BrainGlutton, I looked again at this thread, and the lack of repsonses may have something to do with this being the worst thread title in the history of Great Debates. I mean, that’s kind of… intimidating.
Really? I just finished The United States of Europe by T.R. Reid (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1594200335/qid=1116824163/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-2985247-8377523?v=glance&s=books&n=507846), and I got just the opposite picture: There are some Euroskeptics but the younger generation, whom he calls “Generation E,” mostly are very bullish on the Union as a political project, and culturally identify themselves primarily as “Europeans” rather than French or German or Italian. And there is a new form of Union-level politics in which alignments follow ideological rather than national lines – i.e., Christian Democrats from several different countries will caucus together in the European Parliament.
Why “more problems”? The European Union incorporates 25 distinct national cultures and they all speak different languages, and some are Catholic, some Protestant, and they were all more or less constantly at each other’s throats from the fall of Rome to the end of WWII. In Latin America, practically everybody is Catholic and practically everybody speaks either Spanish or Portuguese. I think LA is a much likelier candidate than Europe ever was for a real, effective international political union.
I’m not sure that’s the right way to look at it. Yes, European countries have cultural and linguistic differences LA countries might not have. However, it’s simply the case that most of the EU nations are rich, industralized and politically stable nations with a vested interest in cooperation. Latin American nations don’t have the same infrastructure and industrial base, don’t have the same level of education and technical expertise, don’t have the capital. They just don’t have the same wherewithal to make such a thing work - or at least that may be their own perception.
We still haven’t had any Latin American Dopers post in this thread – and they would presumably have well-informed opinions on the subject. Where are you, Rashak Mani?
But why would international cooperation make more sense, or be easier, for rich countries than poor ones? Seems to me the essential element is that no one member state of the union is so much richer and stronger than all the rest that it overshadows them and uses the union as an instrument of its own hegemony. And there is no such state in Latin America.
Really. Least thats how I’m reading things as an outsider who travels to Europe and has friends in several countries there. Maybe one of our Euro-Dopers will chime in at some point to discuss this tangent.
I was reading an article today about how the Dutch are appearently voting on the constitution that would ratify the next phase of the EU…and that it has a very good chance of failing. I also recall that there is growing opposition to some of the provisions in such nations as France and in the UK. And I recall a comment that if the French decide to pull out (which is a possibility) that the whole thing would come down like a house of cards. If I have time later, and if you really havent’ been following the same news I’ve been reading, I’ll see if I can back track and find that article on the Dutch and on France.
Personally I think that the French WILL ratify things, and that the Dutch and the English will also. But you are turning a blind eye if you think that there isn’t serious opposition to some of the provisions, or that its a foregone conclusion that a ‘United States of Europe’ is inevitable. And Europe has a much greater sense of connectedness (at least Western Europe) than the nations we are talking about.
Because Europe has always had a sense of shared history and connectedness, especially western europe. THere is no similar shared history or connectedness with the various artificially created (and exploited) nations in central and south america (IMO, and again as an outsider looking in…my own family is from Mexico and I can say that there is no sense of connectedness between Mexico and the nations in Central America save perhaps language and religion). Yes, a lot of the Europeans shared history is in who killed who or took who’s land…but its still a shared history. In addition, you had a sort of huddling together effect post-WWII (in Western Europe anyway…and I suppose an imposed huddling together in Eastern Europe as well, enforced by the Soviets) where the threat of a Soviet invasion coupled with the economic desire to rebuild not just their nations but their economies (with a hefty dose of US forcing them to band together through economic and military pressure to combat the Soviets), and with a pinch of ‘lets not EVER do this again’ sentiments.
All that combined to bring the various Western European nations together and keep them together since, say, the mid-50’s…and it paved the road for whats happening today. Show me something similar, some corresponding coming together of the nations of Central or South America that indicates that the way would be open for something more than a mere free trade agreement…something like a ‘United States of Central and South America’. I’ve seen zero indications that the nations feel even the tenuous bond that the EUropeans do, nor do they have a shared history together (good or bad). That leaves language and religion…which isn’t enough IMO, not for that level of cooperation.
I mean, that’s kind of… intimidating.