Keep American trade free.(ECONOMICS AND REGULATION)

Frances Smith, "CAFTA-DR; Can Free Trade Hold Up to Special Interest Siege?" Competitive Enterprise Institute, May 26, 2005 (cei.org)

One of the most important advances in recent years for flee trade with developing nations is the U.S.-Central American and Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) of 2004. Yet its potential achievements are already under threat from a variety of special interests--from the sugar and textiles industries to labor and environmental activists. CEI adjunct fellow and consumer group head Frances Smith examines the threats and urges legislators to resist them.

The powerful sugar lobby is working hard to undermine the agreement. Sugar currently enjoys such a preferential place in the U.S. economy, according to one source Smith quotes, that the sugar protections "transfer a trade-distorting subsidy of over $1 billion annually to U.S. sugar growers. This is money that comes directly out of consumers' pockets." Yet Smith also points out that new imports under CAFTA would only represent 1.7 percent of U.S. consumption after 15 years, and steep tariffs would still apply above that quota. Nevertheless, sugar industry lobbying has been so successful that the U.S. Trade Representative nominee has even suggested compensating CAFTA countries for not exporting any sugar (the taxpayer, ...