April 17, 2005

Pact Would Hit Florida Sugar, Boost Cane Gas

That ‘wooshing” sound in Washington, D.C., last week was not jobs fleeing to Mexico – as Reform Party candidate Ross Perot asserted in 1992 regarding the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Instead it was heated arguments concerning a new free-trade agreement between the U.S. and six Central American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.

Thus, we have a splendid new acronym -- CAFTA - - that sounds like a new coffee blend.

A decade ago. Americans worried that NAFTA would outsource jobs to our neighbors.

Some did, but increased prosperity there made Canada and Mexico our largest trading partners -- superceding Japan, China, Germany and United Kingdom. .

The Bush administration proposal to lower tariffs to and fro with Central American countries tears the scab over old, economic wounds.

This time, the Florida sugar industry is directly involved – perhaps fatally. Sugar beet farmers in Wyoming and Oregon also are shaking in their boots.

Removal of key tariffs between the U.S. and Central America nations is said to improve our exports of Iowa corn and Oklahoma beef.

Great! Except that under our existing tariffs, Florida has already been severely wounded by cheaper (and inferior) oranges and tomatoes from our southern neighbors.

U.S. tariffs for decades have protected American sugar producers from cheap sugar imports – principally from Cuba.

As a result, sugar workers in 19 U.S. states provide 50,000 to 300,000 jobs -- depending on who does the counting and the location of migrant workers at any given time. .

Even with tariff advantage, Florida producers are able to pay comparatively low wages to recently arrived workers from Mexico grateful for jobs native Americans disdain. .

CAFTA is widely considered to be an opening wedge for a Western Hemisphere free-trade agreement.

Tariffs on imported products are an ancient defensive tactic. They worked to some degree when nations were self-sufficient in foodstuffs and had a near monopoly of desirable products:

Tea and silk in China. Fine wine and cheese in France. Coal and textiles in Britain. Steel and automobiles in America.

Technology is rapidly leveling the commercial playing field -- jet liners, computers, television, nuclear energy, satellites, automation, wireless communication.

With each technological advance, tariffs become less effective. Increasingly it comes down to “cooperate or die”

People with nothing to trade but muscle are increasingly marginalized. Who needs sugar when we have Splenda?

Technical progress today is at warp speed. Yet, Nature wisely programs people to adapt by generations to changing circumstances. Mistakes would be fatal to the human race.

Trade tariffs are designed to shift the burdens of adjustment to people outside our cultural group. However, cultural change is a two-way street. Television, travel and international trade is creating one culture.

Tit-for-tat tariffs throw the least skilled and/or motivated workers into desperate situations.

In a perfect world, there would be no tariffs. Yet, the urge to shift hardships somewhere else is strong in our nature also.

People benefiting from “progress” have a natural obligation to succor others in distress – at home or abroad.

Which brings us to the tipping point of the tariff debate – what to do for hard-working folks displaced by techno-cultural change?

The long-range solution is practical education and mingling of cultures.

In the short range, we can continue providing re-training and limited unemployment compensation.

Beyond that we come to welfare and state pensions. Communists tried that: “From each, according to ability. To each, according to need.” Kablooey!

Human nature has two other, conflicting instincts -- work only as necessary for simple needs, or work harder for advantages.

Free-trade agreements are the wave of the one- world future. Eventually human nature, or Mother Nature, will adjust human population to the most benign balance with resources.

Until then, we take from the diligent in the form of taxes to give to the needy or – here’s the optimum – subsidize declining jobs. Work is more appreciated than charity.

The outcome is the same -- being careful to avoid encouraging sloth and discouraging ambition.

NAFTA worked. CAFTA is headed in the right direction.

As for the Florida sugar producers, start thinking cane ethanol.

The way things are going in the petroleum industry, we will be willing to pay more for automobile propellant than for chocolate bars.

Lindsey Williams is a Sun columnist who can be contacted at linwms@lindseywilliams.org