In the early morning hours of July 28 the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives and the Bush administration twisted one final arm to pull out a win on the Central America Free Trade Agreement with a vote of 217-215.

This was the tightest trade vote since Bush won Trade Promotion Authority by a similar margin just before the August recess in 2002. It was by far the smallest margin ever for legislation implementing a free trade agreement.

This is not a victory that the Bush administration should be proud of. They won not on substance, but by fear mongering and vote buying. After holding up a transportation bill to both entice and threaten lawmakers’ on their CAFTA votes, the House leadership passed through a weak bill meant to challenge China on trade practices – a bill that will most likely not be taken up at all in the Senate, and should it pass may actually face a veto from Bush. The China Bill was simply theatre to provide political cover to Republicans in textile districts who would have otherwise voted “No” on CAFTA.

The final push was a quite unusual personal visit to Capitol Hill by President Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney the day of the vote. In a flashback to the red-baiting idiocy of the 1980s, Bush argued that CAFTA was a national security issue – needed to halt radical populism and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez from gaining a foothold in Central America. This was an argument articulated by most of the Republicans during their floor speeches prior to the vote.

For those of us that have been working on this since January 2002 when Bush first promoted the idea as a way to rejuvenate failing talks for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) it is a tough vote to lose. But of course when we started no one thought it would even be close.

You and the many grassroots activists around the country that visited members of congress, wrote letters, and answered the many calls to action managed to push this back for 15 months, past several deadlines set by the administration, and finally to a vote that was very close – a shift in one vote, and we would be declaring victory.

CAFTA will most likely go into effect on January 1, 2006. It has been ratified by the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras.

But now the fight turns to Nicaragua and Costa Rica the only two countries that have not ratified the agreement. Opposition remains high, and we will do what we can to help that struggle. In September 12,000 people marched in Managua against CAFTA.
The Sandinista leadership, which control the National Assembly though the rest of the year, has refused to hold a vote unless a series of compensatory measures are passed – many of which would likely violate the agreement itself. The popular sector in Costa Rica has promised a national strike should the government attempt passage. There is some indication that president Abel Pacheco may attempt to push the agreement in the next month, but that is still uncertain.

The CAFTA fight also highlights new battles ahead: 1.) All of the nonsense about Hugo Chavez signals that the mood in Congress is once again shifting toward direct intervention in Latin America. Military assistance is growing in Central America– scheduled to nearly triple to El Salvador. 2.) The Andean Free Trade Agreement and an agreement with Panama loom on the horizon as the Bush administration continues to apply pressure on the countries involved to accept U.S. demands regarding agriculture, investment rules, and intellectual property protections guaranteed to raise the price of medicines. Bush is using the CAFTA victory to put new momentum behind stalled FTAA talks. We will be working with new coalitions to try and stop that (See article on Alliance for Responsible Trade).