US-Peru Free Trade Agreement

[mawilson 2,133]

US exports are good for America. Why should Americans place the interests of a foreign state

above the interests of their own country?

Seriously though - did ya even read the reasons why we as Americans should oppose the PFTA?

Did ya see the stat on trade deficit since NAFTA was implemented?

Please explain how dumping cheap (aka subsidized) American goods on fragile

South American markets is going to increase our trade deficit.

[Ric Flair 0]

Has this proposition been approved by the Peruvians? Don't both sides have to agree to the proposal?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Peru approves free-trade pact with U.S.

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Peru's Congress overwhelmingly voted to ratify a free trade pact with the United States early Wednesday.

In a 79-14 vote with six abstentions, the 120-member legislature approved the bilateral deal reached between Peru and Washington late last year and signed in April by President Alejandro Toledo's government.

The ratification received the full backing of President-elect Alan Garcia's 28-member Aprista party bloc.

Toledo's administration lobbied fiercely for ratification before Garcia is sworn in July 28 along with a new Congress, which will have a strong anti-free-trade bloc led by Ollanta Humala, who lost the June 4 presidential runoff to Garcia.

About two hours into the late-night debate, several legislators-elect from Humala's nationalist alliance punched and kicked their way past security guards to gain the floor of Congress, pumping their fists in the air, waving placards and chanting anti-free-trade slogans. One guard suffered a broken nose, said Pablo de la Flor, Peru's chief free trade negotiator.

The legislature's president, Marcial Ayaipoma, called a half-hour suspension of the session while the protesters were cleared from the building.

One of the protesters, Congresswoman-elect Nancy Obregon, said lawmakers had violated the public's trust by passing the measure in the pre-dawn hours while Peruvians slept.

"This free trade deal is going to greatly harm 95 percent of agricultural producers," Obregon told CPN radio.

Humala's movement captured 45 congressional seats, but recently lost at least three of them to defections by politicians who said Humala -- an admirer of Peru's 1968-75 leftist dictatorship of Gen. Juan Velasco -- had veered to far to the left.

But his group will still be the largest single bloc. Garcia's party has 36 seats.

Humala says the free trade deal, which still must be approved by the U.S. Congress, would flood Peru with subsidized U.S. agricultural goods like cotton, rice, corn and potatoes, making it impossible for local producers to compete.

Backers say the deal will raise incomes in Peru by making its industry more competitive and by further opening the U.S. market.

Before the ratification debate began, the legislature approved four measures to help Peru's agricultural sector, including one offering compensation to Peruvian producers of cotton, yellow corn and wheat.

Agricultural Minister Manuel Manrique said the fund would provide about $36 million to those sectors during the first year the trade deal goes into effect.

Congressman Michael Martinez, of the Union for Peru party that backed Humala's failed presidential bid, said the subsidy package falls far short of his estimates of projected losses: $5 million for Peruvian cotton, $16 million for corn and $52 million for wheat.

Socialist Congressman Javier Diez Canseco argued that the free trade pact would limit Peru's ability to renegotiate or cancel contracts with transnational mining and gas companies to force them to be more environmentally responsible because the deal stipulates conflicts be resolved through international mediators.

Conservative Congressman Rafael Rey said opposition to the pact had little to do with the deal, and everything to do with opposition to the United States.

"The problem is not the free trade agreement. It is not the terms of the negotiation," Rey said. "The problem is the United States and it is a purely ideological issue."

Peru and the United States, along with Colombia and Ecuador, entered into talks in May 2004 for a deal to lower trade barriers.

The three Andean nations enjoy preferential trade with the United States for more than 6,000 products through a program aimed at helping countries on the front lines of the drug war, but that agreement expires at the end of this year.

Colombia also reached an accord with Washington earlier this year that must still be ratified.

Free trade talks between Washington and Ecuador stalled last month after Ecuador canceled U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s contract and seized its facilities over a long-standing contract dispute.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

US exports are good for America. Why should Americans place the interests of a foreign state

above the interests of their own country?

Seriously though - did ya even read the reasons why we as Americans should oppose the PFTA?

Did ya see the stat on trade deficit since NAFTA was implemented?

Please explain how dumping cheap (aka subsidized) American goods on fragile

South American markets is going to increase our trade deficit.

Well, relatively speaking in terms of the US, was NAFTA successful? The answer is a definitive, NO. In Gupt's article, one of the proponents of the PFTA contend that the opponents are just ideologically against the U.S. and that's just a smoke screen. I'm all for trading with South America or any other region of the world, so long as we ensure fair trade that maintains true competition and does not play favorites to multinational corporations.

The U.S.-Peru agreement text is the exact same failed NAFTA – guaranteed to cost more good paying jobs, making more farmers bankrupt and give more power to corporations to use international trade tribunals to attack U.S. sovereignty.

The other part of Gupt's article states that Peruvians overwhelmingly support PFTA and that is not accurate.

The people of Peru don’t want this agreement. The National Electoral Council of Peru certified nearly 60,000 signatures submitted by anti-FTA coalitions.

Here's some facts about NAFTA that help explain why this is BAD for you and me as Americans:

NAFTA was a radical experiment - never before had a merger of three nations with such radically different levels of development been attempted. Plus, until NAFTA “trade” agreements only dealt with cutting tariffs and lifting quotas to set the terms of trade in goods between countries. But NAFTA contained 900 pages of one-size-fits-all rules to which each nation was required to conform all of its domestic laws - regardless of whether voters and their democratically-elected representatives had previously rejected the very same policies in Congress, state legislatures or city councils. NAFTA required limits on the safety and inspection of meat sold in our grocery stores; new patent rules that raised medicine prices; constraints on your local government’s ability to zone against sprawl or toxic industries; and elimination of preferences for spending your tax dollars on U.S.-made products or locally-grown food. In fact, calling NAFTA a “trade” agreement is misleading, NAFTA is really an investment agreement. Its core provisions grant foreign investors a remarkable set of new rights and privileges that promote relocation abroad of factories and jobs and the privatization and deregulation of essential services, such as water, energy and health care.

Remarkably, many of NAFTA’s most passionate boosters in Congress and among economists never read the agreement. They made their pie-in-the-sky promises of NAFTA benefits based on trade theory and ideological prejudice for anything with the term “free trade” attached to it. Now, ten years later, the time for conjecture and promises is over: the data are in and they clearly show the damage NAFTA has wrought for millions of people in the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

http://www.citizen.org/trade/nafta/

[Fandango 1,439]

Steven: trying to make you stand accountable for all the things you say is like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands

[mawilson 2,133]

Well, relatively speaking in terms of the US, was NAFTA successful?

Sure.