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Senate committee delays a critical vote on the contentious trade agreement

WASHINGTON, DC - 06/28/06 - In a last minute development, the Senate Finance Committee has said it will not hold an important vote on the controversial Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) tomorrow, as expected, delaying action on the pact by at least a day

Panel chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), cited "scheduling conflicts" and other votes as the reason for the delay.
 
The panel spent around an hour this morning to discuss the proposed trade pact and, according to press reports, will meet again tomorrow morning to decide what course to take on the issue.

According to press reports, the delay increases the chance that neither the full Senate nor the House of Representatives will consider the CAFTA before lawmakers take a week-long break for the Fourth of July holiday.

The delay gives Republican sugar-state senators on the committee, such as Senators Craig Thomas of Wyoming and Michael Crapo of Idaho, more time to see if they can broker a deal between the Bush Administration and the sugar industry, whose ardent opposition threatens to derail CAFTA.

"Sugar is a sticking point for members and we need to find an answer," Thomas said. "We ought to be able to find a solution and not just a short-term solution, but rather a sort of long-term solution for this industry."

The Administration "made a very good offer. I do not dispute that," Craig told reporters after a meeting yesterday between so-called "sugar state" Republicans and top Bush Administration officials, including US Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and US Trade Representative Rob Portman.

The CAFTA would allow Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic to ship additional sugar into the tightly controlled US sugar market.

US sugar farmers fear the agreement could drive them out of business, especially if other sugar producers such as Brazil, Thailand, and South Africa are also granted additional access in possible free trade pacts with the US.

The Bush Administration has offered to keep overall imports below a key farm program threshold level of 1.5 million short tons by paying countries cash or commodities not to export sugar to the US. 

But that plan only covers the remaining two and a half years of the current farm bill and the sugar industry needs a longer-term fix, Thomas said.

The decision to delay the vote comes as a group of prominent Democrats have rallied in support of the CAFTA, revealing a rift in the seemingly solid block of Democratic opposition to the deal signed last year by the Bush Administration, reports the New York Times.

In a paid advertisement scheduled to run tomorrow in The Washington Post, three dozen Democrats, including prominent officials in the administrations of former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, said the agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration "is good for the United States and Central America."

The statement argued that the agreement would reduce the nation's trade deficit and support the consolidation of democracy in Central America and the Caribbean.

And it criticized Democratic arguments that the trade pact does not include adequate provisions for labor rights in Central America.

"Perfect labor conditions mean little to a worker without a job," the letter said.

Perhaps most important, the letter said that if Congress rejected the Central American deal, it "would undermine confidence in the US as a partner in other trade negotiations, including those of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the Doha round of trade talks under the auspices of the World Trade Organization," the paper said.

Congressional Democrats must also contend with opposition from labor unions, who have said the agreement weakens commitments to protect workers' rights that were present in other trade deals, while a bitter climate of partisan hostility makes it very difficult for Democrats to support a trade agreement put forward by the Bush Administration.

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