Meat + Poultry - December 2007 - 50

FREE TRADE

Labor Party (DLP), stated to thousands
of protestors gathered in downtown
Seoul. "The more powerful U.S. will
eat the common and vulnerable people of our nation alive." Late last year,
violent anti-FTA demonstrations organized by the Korean Alliance Against
the U.S.-Korea FTA left 63 people injured, including 35 police officers, and
caused heavy property damage, according to police.
In Costa Rica this past summer,
opposition-party leaders claimed
Costa Rica, which is the richest nation in Central America, had nothing
to gain and everything to lose from
joining CAFTA. In a speech he made
in Washington, D.C., in July to an anti-FTA protest, Otton Solis, who lost
Costa Rica's 2006 presidential election
to Arias, said, "There is no way for us
to compete with the wages in those
countries,¡¨ referring to Guatemala,
Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and
the Dominican Republic. "We have to
compete based on our comparative
advantages." He pointed to NAFTA to
underscore his argument. "If NAFTA
has been such a success, then why is
the US building a wall along the border with Mexico?" he asked.
Congressional leaders are hearing
some of the same arguments from anti-FTA organizations in the US., including labor, environmental, social-justice
and even church groups. A faith-based
coalition representing several denominations has called on Congress to reject the US-Peru bilateral FTA. "The
US-Peru FTA will cause lost livelihoods
in rural communities, reduce access
to life-saving medicines and perpetuate the global 'race to the bottom' for
workers and environmental protection," the Interfaith Working Group
on Trade and Investment stated. "The
US-Peru FTA, as currently negotiated,
will not bring stability or development
to the region."
Neil Hart, an agricultural economist at
Iowa State Univ., says that even though
FTAs are making generally positive
headlines, "Congress has turned more
negative about FTAs than in the past
54

MEAT&POULTRY

December 2007

couple of decades. When it comes to
trade, Republicans are talking like
Democrats." He thinks election-year
posturing has a lot to do with it, in addition to the product-safety problems
sourced to China. "The Republicans are
very worried about what will happen

"We've just seen, with
the Topps debacle,
what just a little
contamination can do
to one company; how
one food-safety issue
can endanger a whole
company."
in '08," Hart says. "They feel vulnerable on the trade issue and don't want
to look weak to voters."
USMEF's Lynn Heinz agrees. "Right
now, we're under severe political pressure. Everybody who's up for re-election
is worried whether they'll get enough
votes to go back to Washington. There's
a lot of role-playing going on," he comments, adding, "but that doesn't mean
Congress is anti-trade."
He remains optimistic that FTAs will
continue to create significant opportuwww.MEATPOULTRY.com

nities for US meat. "Sure, an FTA opens
the US up to cheap competition, but
our product is a high-quality product.
Foreign buyers can't buy it anywhere
else. South Korea has extremely high
tariffs on US meat right now, but our
product lands there and it moves. If
we can reduce a 40 percent tariff to
zero through an FTA, it's better for all
concerned."
He also thinks an FTA with Japan,
which is notoriously protectionist, isn't
a pipe dream. "The Japanese are protectionist, yes, but they're also realists.
They still have to import something
like 60 percent of their total food supply, including meat." Japan has already
signed a bilateral FTA with Mexico,
"which does put us at a disadvantage,"
points out Heinz. "In our negotiations
with Japan, both countries are trying
to hang their hats on the Doha Round
of the World Trade Organization talks.
In fact, a lot of these FTAs that we've
seen lately, and not just the ones involving the US, are the result of the
Doha Round taking so long. So we'll
see what happens."
Steve Bjerklie is M&P's East Coast correspondent,
based in Franconia, N.H. He has worked as a journalist covering the meat and poultry processing industry
for more than 25 years.
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e-mail at: meatpoultry@sosland.com.

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Meat + Poultry - December 2007

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