The WTO is the least democratic organization holding significant power in the world. The meetings are held in secret. There is no means of input to the people of the world into it's decision making processes.

Any international trade structure based on the WTO is inherently flawed due to the manner in which the WTO makes decisions.

And if free trade agreements didn't tend to protect/exempt DuPont, ConAgra, and Nestle from competition with African farmers, I might tend to be more sympathetic to the push for free trade.

As it stands, however, the rank unfairness of "free" trade agreements is enough to make your head spin - particularly if you're looking to free trade to provide opportunity for small farmers and businessmen in the developing world.

You're being rather selective, Daniel. Yes, massive subsidies in the US and Europe to farmers to grow crops that aren't needed are wrong. But so is insisting that India stop making cheap AIDS drugs, even if thousands will die as a result (the US did not honor foreign copyrights or patents for most of its history, after all). And so is allowing Methanex, a Canadian company, to sue California for billions because California banned MTBE, which has contaminated drinking water all over the state, causing a huge cleanup bill. Apparently the way NAFTA is written, nothing trumps trade, even if the traded item is poison.

And thanks to "fast track", it's all or nothing. Bush appoints corporate lawyers to the negotiating team, and they bury their goodies in thousands of pages of fine print, but Congress has to vote the whole thing up or down. Vote it down; the US and Europe can decrease the farm subsidies you rightly complain about independently of these bad agreements.

We don't know that. We can't see the meetings for ourselves to determine that. The meetings are all held in secret.

All the WTO trade rulings are also made in secret by gawd knows who.

The WTO needs to come under UN jurisdiction. The UN General Assembly should be able to overturn WTO rulings.

As I just posted above I do not believe that by itsefl free trade will solve all problems or that the benefits of free trade will be equally be distributed. Progressives should fight for free trade and and better infrastruture and legal structures to provide for better distribution. CAFTA is opposed by both the sugar growers and the textile industry because they would rather have Americans pay more for their respective goods. That would suggest that opposing CAFTA is ultimately about making sure Americans pay more.

CDR Adama wrote:

The WTO is the least democratic organization holding significant power in the world. The meetings are held in secret. There is no means of input to the people of the world into it's decision making processes.

...

We can't see the [WTO] meetings for ourselves to determine that. The meetings are all held in secret. All the WTO trade rulings are also made in secret by gawd knows who. The WTO needs to come under UN jurisdiction. The UN General Assembly should be able to overturn WTO rulings.

By "least democratic" I presume you mean neither YOU nor I have a vote. Neither do we have a vote in the Electoral College electing the President of the United States - as Al Gore found to his cost. In fact, the WTO makes decisions by consensus among its members. When a consensus can not be reached a decision is made by simple majority on a "one country, one vote" basis.

We do know who makes the WTO Trade Rulings. In the infamous "Import Prohibition of Certain Shrimp and Shrimp Products" case, the ruling was made by Michael Cartland (chairman), Carlos Cozendey, and Kilian Delbr

Progressives fight for it the same way greater democracy, liberal economics are fought for. Keep showing the benefits of greater legal rights for example. Work with people in our trading partners. As trade expands and countries get wealthier the depand for greater freedom, and the sort of demands we see in the west are likely.

We can't will the poorest people in the world to wage rates of a UAW auto worker. We can help life the quality of life. At the same Americans lives are improved by having the choice to purchase less expensive goods.

A bit of confusion here I think. On one hand we have international politics, and on the other domestic politics.
I think your argument is that Free Trade is good for Americans domestically, in general at least. And, that there are others things that are important, that should be argued for, but that free trade by itself is good, therefore it should be supported.

What I am saying is that domestically free trade is in general good, but that the distribution is uneven, and that there are policies that can be enacted that help even out the distribution problems (and, I think I may have left out, that roughly speaking these policies that address distibution are favorable to the losers in free trade, and unfavorable to the winners).
To bring it into more abstract terms, lets say you have a Policy A that is good for the US in general, but better for some than others, and simply not helpful for some others.
There is also Policy B, while not strictly related, has benefits that roughly go to the losers in Policy A, but is not beneficial to the winners in Policy A.
For the constituents backing Policy B, what incentive is there to simply agree that Policy A, since it is in general beneficial, should be taken off the negotiating table and agrred to, and that Policy B will be seperately negotiated?
From here, I think you can better see my point about maintaing the need to credibly walk away.

[sorry to get all abstract]

"They are represented by their gov't."

In other words, they operate in secret at the best of the rich and powerful who are unaccountable to their electorate, at least in the U.S.

Not that the mouth breathers who compose the electorate are worth much either...

DanielGree, this is not just a question of protecting blue-collar workers and farmers from competition with Central American workers and laborers (though that element undoubtedly exists), or even just about preventing a "race to the bottom."The important thing to recognize is that Central Americans are as divided about CAFTA as Americans in the US.  For one thing, there's the fact that CAFTA deprives these Central-Amercan countries of control over its own investment policies and intellectual property laws.  And while I agree with you that American agricultural policies hurt Central American farmers (though I think this is much more complicated than just agriculture subsidies), the reality is that CAFTA will likely harm, not help, these farmers, by forcing Central American countries to open their markers to American imports without a corresponsing guaruantee in American export subsidies. The story of small Mexican farmers after NAFTA is hardly encouraging.  

For some interesting information:
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/campaigns/mtf_americas/backg
round/ftaa_cafta/?searchterm=cafta

in the last sentance.

But the bottom line is this:
The current trading regime does the following -
1) it benefits US consumers through low prices
2) it hurts US manufacturing
3) it decreases the availability of good paying blue collar (and even white collar) jobs
4) its effect on the third world is, at best, uneven, and in many areas of the world has been negative .

I'm most concerned with number 4. I don't think that this is necessarily the fault of free trade as an abstract concept. What it is the fault of is people who are unwilling to acknowledge the very real flaws in which Washington Consensus-style global economics and attendant trade agreements operate and why they often allow more harm than good in third world.

Coach

I totally agree with you. I believe trade by itself is a good thing in itself. Trade improves the economic situation of the nation as a whole. However, I also agree with you that economics are not about fairness and that there are losers. Domestically that is what the social safety net is about both protecting people from the severe hardship of being on he losing side of economic changes and also to be willing to take risks.

Internationally, it is in our interest as well as that of foreign nations to help them more fairly distribute the benefits of free trade.

Even if it were true, which it is not, that under all conditions free trade would be to the aggregate benefit of the "entities" trading, it simply does not follow that issues about the distribution of benefits and harms should always take second place. Think about it for thirty seconds, for Christ's sake.

Well, if you define fair trade in that way the next question this
raises for me is what place, if any, do you see for labor and
environmental agreements in trade agreements you think Congress should approve?  Can you give an example of a trade agreement provision that you believe would justify a no vote?

I'd love to see an exchange here featuring Krugman (who said he'd set Michael Moore straight on trade issues when the crisis of democracy in our country was over), Robert Kuttner, Jeff Faux, others on what is the long-term strategy to make this a healthier middle class society again without beggaring our neighbors (ideally, helping them improve living standards, of course), and without destroying the environment.