Monday before Thanksgiving

I haven't written anything for a few days...well, I thought I hadn't anyway. Then it occurred to me that the response I made on the WKU-voice about NAFTA was actually narrative about my idea for the introduction to my book! So, YAY, I did write something and I was thinking about my topic:


NAFTA (and CAFTA) were both popular among corporate business but laborers and many others were, and still are, in opposition. The basic purpose of NAFTA was to create combined trilateral purchase/trade group among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico that would reinforce each entities GDP. Of course, many folks opposed the move for the same reasons they opposed CAFTA and the efforts of the current administration to form a free trade agreement with Columbia, Panama, and South Korea. They see both the adverse impact of moving jobs to countries where wages are low and the environmental impact of relocating factories where EPA/FDA regulations are virtually non-existent. In other words, "free" trade isn't necessarily fair, safe, or healthy trade. Some of our "free" trade agreements have been suspect of violating even very basic human rights. My guess is that we will never dissolve NAFTA or CAFTA and that many of the "free" trade agreements that have been proposed recently will be signed and passed with very little effort because corporations are far more powerful that special interest groups - despite what some people say.

The downfall to withdrawing from NAFTA is two-fold. If we move our industries back the the U. S. and abandon these countries, they are left with no source of income; hence, the global economy is weakened even future. Even if we are ripping people off, it is income that they wouldn't have otherwise (yes, harsh but true). The other problem is that U. S. prices are set based on wages payed to textile workers in other countries not here in the U. S. The luxury of purchasing a $5 t-shirt at Walmart that was made in Indonesia would cease to exist. With our economy going down the toilet, we would not be able to continue the current lifestyle most of us have set for ourselves. For example, Americans drink Folgers coffee at $3.00+/- a pound because corporate coffee importers pay farmers substandard wages for their coffee. At fair-trade prices, coffee is more like $12-$14/lb after importing, packaging, and roasting. While some of us don't mind to pay that for good fair-trade/organic coffee, most will not and/or cannot. Can we afford what it would cost to pay American workers to produce all of our goods and abide by EPA and FDA regulations? Probably not. I think that's a sad reality. We have the resources we need to provide for ourselves but it is more cost affective to send our raw materials to other countries, have them manufacture/produce the finished product, then import it back to the U.S. I do believe, however, we can make a gradually shift back to free enterprise here in the U.S. but it can't happen over night without collapsing the global economy. The small business owners, local farmers, etc. really are the backbone of our future. We cannot last forever at our current status by simply importing everything we use and relying on big business for economic stability - look where it got us this year.

Oh, BTW, buy local, eat local, live local :-)