Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
The Unions and the Dems put up a strong push to defeat it and he invested a lot of political capital to get it through.
|
When I said, "how so?," I was looking for some sort of amplification, not repetition. In what way did Bush spend political capital on CAFTA?
Let me give you an alternative hypothesis. Bush and the GOP like free trade as an issue because it is important to big business (read: $$$$) and lets them draw distinctions in this regard with Democrats (read: deny Dems $$$$). So there are advantages on the GOP side to keeping the issue alive and to forcing votes along party lines, rather than with big bipartisan majorities.
OTOH, there are few advantages to the GOP to making deals that actually promote free trade in a big way, for two reasons. One follows from what i just said -- if they give big business what they want, they lose the issue. Better to keep things simmering. This reason is secondary to the second, which is that entering into free-trade agreements with countries that really matter -- e.g., Doha -- will require the country to make politically unsavory deals -- i.e., to piss Americans off. The majority will benefit, for reasons you and I agree on, but the minority speaks loudly and throws around the $$$$.
Bush and the White House have been utterly unwilling to spend the political capital that it would take to enter into real free trade agreements with major impact, as opposed to a handful of minor Caribbean countries without the clout to demand anything from us. They just won't take the hit. One sign of the White House's disinterest in Doha was replacing the U.S. chief negotiator in the fina stages of the talks, and bringing in someone without any pull on the Hill.
Quote:
|
The Doha round is stalled because of European intransigence on the CAP. Until they are willing to compromise on the CAP, the third world will not move forward, and they shouldn't. The US has been pushing harder on Doha than anyone else.
|
No one who follows this issue believes this for a second. I'm not saying that it all falls on the U.S., but it's ridiculous simply to blame the Europeans. Your perspective on free trade plainly derives from GOP happy talk rather than from experience with the business community's perspective. If you want to open your eyes, try following the coverage of something like Doha from a pro-business perspective of a source like the
Financial Times, who's readers are more interested in free-trade policy than in carrying Bush's water.
