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Spoiling CAFTA

The Central American Free Trade Agreement faces a tough battle in Congress, thanks to Big Sugar's efforts to defeat it.

It's hard to imagine a more selfish spoilsport than the sugar industry. It has been busily trying to kill the Central American Free Trade Agreement in Congress because the treaty might actually expose sugar barons to market forces.

The Senate barely got the agreement out of committee because of obstruction by powerful sugar interests. Now, CAFTA faces a tough fight on the Senate floor and a tougher one in the House, mainly because while it still protects sugar's rigged game, that's not enough to please the bullies. The sugar industry isn't content with despoiling the Everglades and keeping American sugar prices (and its profits) unnaturally high. It wants to squash any potential competition before consumers wake up and realize what a bad deal they've been getting.

Even the tough-talking Bush administration had to play patty cake with Big Sugar. To try to overcome the industry's active opposition to CAFTA, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said the government might be willing to pay Central American sugar producers not to export to the United States. Instead of using money, he said, the government could pay the bribe in U.S. crops overproduced under other agriculture subsidies.

Ah, the smell of free enterprise. When it comes to corporate welfare, however, corn growers are pikers compared with Big Sugar.

There are legitimate reasons to question CAFTA details. Some Democrats, such as Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., wanted to make sure worker rights were protected both here and abroad. The administration promised to spend tens of millions of dollars to uphold labor laws and protect subsistence farmers in Central America, who might lose out under the treaty. That won Bingaman's support, and he made the right decision.

The CAFTA debate shouldn't be about embarrassing President Bush with a defeat, which seems to be the only motivation of too many Democrats. And it certainly shouldn't be about protecting an individual member's sugar-tit of generous political contributions from the industry. It should be about the inevitable course of history toward free trade, a movement that can lift all countries that have the gumption to compete.

The nations covered by CAFTA represent only a small portion of U.S. foreign trade. So nothing will change much, though maybe the agreement will bring more stability to a part of the world that has created anxiety for its neighbors in the past. Maybe some hardworking villagers will be lifted out of poverty.

And maybe, just maybe, the sugar industry will begin to lose its grip on Congress.

[Last modified July 1, 2005, 01:24:21]