Why support CAFTA?

In an e-mail, Slate and New York Times contributor Daniel Gross asks a fair question: “unless you’re a really, really, passionate free trader–which few congressional members, republican or democrat, are–why would you vote for CAFTA?” Actually, it’s not like free traders are terribly enthusiastic about the deal. In NRO, Bruce Bartlett conveys a free trader’s feelings about the deal pretty well:

The problem for many free traders, like myself, is that the Bush administration has played politics with trade since day one. This has done serious damage to the fragile alliance that still supports free trade. The administration imposed utterly unjustified tariffs on steel, torpedoed the Doha round of multilateral trade talks by supporting a huge increase in agriculture subsidies, and has never missed an opportunity to demagogue China for all our trade woes. Having destroyed the prospects for a multilateral trade agreement, which was primarily to be about eliminating agriculture subsidies, the Bush administration has tried to salvage some semblance of a free-trade agenda by pursuing bilateral trade agreements…. While the amount of activity is impressive, the results are not very great in terms of opening trade.

In the end, there are three reasons I can give to support CAFTA:

1) If CAFTA goes down, you can kiss the Doha round goodbye. There is simply no way developing countries will put serious negotiating effort into a trade deal that Congress will be likely to torpedo. And I’m not sure how financial markets will cope with the collapse of a WTO negotiating round. 2) As hemispheric foreign policies go, rejecting CAFTA would fall on the more idiotic end of the policy spectrum. In the region where we’re supposed to be the leader, rejecting an agreement that six other countries want doesn’t send a great message about leadership. CAFTA, like NAFTA before it, helps to lock in rules that promote open markets and open societies. Even free trade critics like Dani Rodrik generally acknowledge the foreign policy benefits of these kind of deals. 3) For Democrats convinced that the Bush administration has pissed away U.S. soft power, answer me this question: what kind of a signal does the U.S. send to the rest of the world when its legislature says, in effect, “We won’t ratify this deal because we’re scared of six states that combined are smaller than the Czech economy”? Improved access to our markets remains one of the best incentives the U.S. has to proffer to the rest of the world. If we deny even hemispheric allies this benefit, what do you think the rest of the world will think?

There are many things I don’t like about this agreement — but there are even more things I don’t like about the policy environment for trade if CAFTA goes down. UPDATE: As God is my witness, I did not coordinate this blog post with Donald Rumsfeld. One final reason for supporting CAFTA if you’re from the Midwest — CAFTA puts an ever-so-slight dent in the wall of sugar protectionism, which would help to staunch the flow of candy manufacturers across the border.