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July 24, 2005 08:00 AM UTC

Beauprez Goes CAFTA

  • 22 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Congressman Bob Beauprez made an interesting move on Saturday with his op-ed piece in the Rocky Mountain News supporting DR-CAFTA (no, not the supplemental insurance).

…the House of Representatives will vote next week on DR-CAFTA, the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement.

I support DR-CAFTA because it would expand the market for U.S. goods to the 44 million consumers in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica and would level the playing field for U.S. workers by immediately dropping tariffs on 80 percent of U.S. exports entering those countries.

This is a pretty simple party-line position for Beauprez, but it’s a bit of a gamble for a guy running for governor. CAFTA is not likely to be a popular measure on the Western Slope, and his eager support could come back to bite him in a general election. As Congressman John Salazar points out in his own op-ed on the issue:

The Colorado Farm Bureau has publicly expressed its opposition to this agreement because of the potential adverse effects it would have on agricultural sectors. In particular, the Colorado sugar industry could be devastated by increased imports of sugar from the Dominican Republic. According to estimates, the effect of lower sugar prices after increased imports could be nearly $180 million. This means the loss of nearly 150,000 sugar-industry jobs. A report prepared by the United States International Trade Commission estimates job loss in the sugar industry will be 38 times higher than the next most harmed sector.

If Beauprez were to win the Republican nomination for governor and face off against a Democrat who is popular along the Front Range (someone like Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, for example), he’s going to need the support of rural Colorado to counteract that Metro-area popularity. Being so vocally supportive of CAFTA won’t cause him to lose the Western Slope, but it won’t help. It’s one thing to vote in favor of CAFTA, but it’s another thing entirely to speak so openly in support of it – and in print, no less.

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22 thoughts on “Beauprez Goes CAFTA”

  1. Beauprez didn’t have much of a chance of winning over the Western Slope before (thanks to his support of Referendum A), and now he has even less of one. Evidently, Beauprez doesn’t understand he, like Gov. Owens, needs the Western Slope (winning there was what put Owens in office the first time around).

  3. Good for Beauprez. Instead of sucking up to a few sugar farmers, he’s looking out for the interests of all Coloradans.

    The Salazars are playing the typical vote buying game with their votes on Cafta, which would put the powerful sugar lobby in its place—out of work.

    Like their misplaced support for ethanol, the Salazars’ support of the sugar lobby is anti-consumer, anti-American and pure political hackery.

  4. I fail to see how CAFTA benefits all Coloradoans, or a majority of them for that matter.  As Ross Perot once said, it’s “the great sucking sound”.

  5. And where is Ross Perot now, Unnamed?  He is an obscure rich guy with big ears, whom everyone laughs at.  And it was “giant sucking sound”. . .

    You either believe in free trade, or you don’t.  The Salazar boys are sleeping with their union buddies on this one.  Protectionists drive me nuts.

  6. Oh no.  Not union buddies.  How dare they. 

    Tell me how CAFTA will benefit the country.  Instead of condescending, tell me how it will benefit us.  As in us regular people.  That is who I care about.

  7. Unnamed: go to your local community college and enroll in a little course call Macro Economics.  It will explain a few things to you about markets and why free trade is better than protectionist schemes to stop outside goods via tarrif.  We all benefit from more markets in which to sell our goods.  Doesn’t mean that our industries don’t have to change and evolve in light of new competition, but it does open up new channels of commerce, which some people believe to be good.

  8. Jon:  “It will explain a few things to you about markets and why free trade is better than protectionist schemes to stop outside goods via tariff”

    Bull-kaka.  Wanna see where “free trade” is taking us?  Look at the IT industry here in Colorado.  It’s disappearing buddy.  The only people who benefit from free trade are the owners and shareholders of businesses who take advantage of overseas workers willing to work for pennies-a-day.  Nice plan.  Make us compete with child laborers who have a choice of working for 50-cents a day, or starving to death.  IT workers have either lost their jobs, or seen their wages drop through the floor the past four years.  That’s globalization, buddy.  The only thriving IT sector left in Colorado is the one the government-funds in and around Buckley, and that’s because foreign workers will never be welcome there, no matter how skilled they might be.

    Take a history course and learn what happens to politicians who preside over falling wages and a dwindling middle class.  You might come across some wise words from Henry Ford:  “If I don?t pay my workers more …. who will buy my cars??  Perhaps you think we should emulate the Chinese, and manufacture goods for export that we cannot afford to buy ourselves.  Wouldn’t that be ironic. 

    In a thriving economy (like we had in the ’90s) business is dependent on workers, and workers are dependent on business.  But when one side becomes overly dominant and cripples the other side, everyone loses.  That’s Economics 101, baby.  When Republicans (and Clintonesque Democrats) support measures like CAFTA, which further weaken labor, they tip the balance further and further in favor of business.  I can’t wait ’til the “globalization” trend starts to hit doctors, lawyers, and accountants.  They will rue the day they voted for a$$holes like Bush, and foisted this crap on the rest of us…

  9. Jon:  I have a college degree, I have taken Macroeconomics and while I think protectionism is extreme, I fear CAFTA will be too extreme the other way.

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