The New York Times has found new heroes for the poor. The champions of the downtrodden of Central America and the US are the fifteen Democrats who voted for the Central America Free Trade Agreement, "The CAFTA fifteen", who the Times applauds in an editorial. Their 'independence and good judgment' will supposedly benefit the poor in Central America by stimulating economic growth: "CAFTA is a modest trade pact, hardly likely to lift the six countries' economies into the 21st century. But it may be enough to lift them into the 20th century by lowering tariffs." Additionally, "CAFTA will benefit the most underrepresented constituency in America: consumers, particularly the lower-income consumers who find that a 50-cent difference in the price of a T-shirt actually means something." Both of these arguments are so silly as to barely require refuting; nevertheless, the fact they appear on the Times editorial page does make them significant.

First, all of the economies in Central America ARE currently in the 21st century. There is no wormhole south of Mexico to a sleepy, backward past. As is fairly well known, Costa Rica depends heavily on 'eco-tourism', and Dell Computers owns a substantial chunk of the country. All of the countries of Central America already are defined by export agriculture and low-wage manufacturing. They also count on remittances sent by migrants working in the US, which probably strengthened the US when negotiating the treaty (because any threat to the flow of those remittances would be a disaster in Central America). The notion that we in the colossus of the North can pull those backward lands into the 21st century smacks of the most rank forms of, well, 19th century racism. During the last hundred years, Central America lived through an all-too-real 20th century, including 20th century forms of state violence and torture, ecological and cultural degradation, political dictatorship, and the very 20th century process of kicking most peasants off their land to make way for agro-export industries.

CAFTA is an attempt to lock them into a similar 21st century, making it more difficult for them to pass laws protecting their industries, or to confront malignant multinationals, or to work together to produce alternative production or financial networks.

What of those underrepresented, impoverished consumers in the US? First of all, it is not clear that if a manufacturer saves fifty cents on the production of a t-shirt, the savings will be passed on to consumers. Most consumers don't have the time to compare prices at Wal-Mart, Old Navy, etc. In any case, their goods are not exactly the same, complicating price comparisons. In fact, even the prices of identical pieces of clothing vary wildly, by 60% or more, depending on the time in the calendar year they are being purchased, whether they are being sold at Marshalls or a department store, or whether a clerk remembered to put up one of those 'take an extra 25% off lowest price' signs. The notion that a marginal savings in labor costs will show up with crystal clarity in the price consumers pay is laughable.

More importantly, by what calculation can a saving of fifty cents make much of a difference in anyone's life in the US? Fifty cents is less than the price of a pint of milk. Our poor consumer would have to purchase two hundred t-shirts to save a mere one hundred dollars, which still will not go very far in terms of meeting the housing and health costs that increasingly dominate the budgets of most low-income Americans. By contrast, a single worker losing a well paying job, and moving either to un-, semi- or minimum wage employment has immediate and devastating repercussions. He or she may well lose the ability to cover the health or housing costs for the family, and stress within the family is likely to soar. The loss of five or ten thousand dollars in income will rebound on local retailers they typically shop at, causing further shrinkage.

Far from being 'the most underrepresented constituency in America', 'consumers' (who apparently live in a parallel universe separate from 'workers') have been the justification for most economic policies of the last twenty five years, most notably the spread of Wal-Mart and shopping malls, and the neoliberal policies epitomized by NAFTA, the WTO, and now CAFTA. That investors, rather than consumers, are in fact the major beneficiaries does not prevent these arguments about consumers from being hauled out time after time.

If the CAFTA fifteen believed that voting for CAFTA would help Central Americans or poor US citizens, they were sadly mistaken. We cannot afford such errors in judgment, and should reward them with vigorous primary challenges next year.

Steven Sherman is a sociologist who lives in Chapel Hill North Carolina. He can be reached at threehegemons@hotmail.com.

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