Tracking the Economy CAFTA's "High Tech" Promises
Today, workers in the u.s. high tech sector are experiencing the failures of U.S. trade policy firsthand. In spite of this experience, high tech companies, with Microsoft playing a prominent role,...
...Meanwhile, under the copyright rules of NAFTA, the piracy problem in Mexico—a country long on industry and government-enforcement priority lists—has increased, not abated...
...high tech workers have seen their industries ship hundreds of thousands of jobs offshore in the past few years and have had to bargain with increasingly mobile employers who use global competition as a justification for keeping down wages and benefits...
...piracy costs from all CAFTA countries amount to less than 2% of piracy losses in China, 7% of losses in Mexico, and only 0.8% of U.S...
...But the facts do not support the industry claims: Sales to all CAFTA countries comprise little more than 1% of U.S...
...CAFTA contains similar language to NAFTA, bringing into question claims that the trade agreement is a “silver bullet” for solving international piracy problems...
...jobs...
...Namely, they are trying to sell Congress on an expansion of the NAFTA trade model to six additional countries through CAFTA...
...Given the fact that CAFTA’s text is nearly identical to NAFTA’s, the results, if CAFTA is implemented, are foreseeable: higher trade deficits, more lost jobs, and continued downward pressure on wages and working conditions...
...high tech exports and thus U.S...
...job loss...
...America’s high tech workers question how the recipe that failed to deliver promised benefits under NAFTA will succeed under CAFTA...
...In part this is a result of international trade and investment agreements that increase global competition in a sector the United States has long dominated...
...Now, despite this record of offshored jobs and stagnant U.S...
...All this has spread to the high tech sector...
...Neither the U.S...
...Furthermore, over 60% of U.S...
...Due to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), recent years have seen the loss of good jobs, the downward pressure on wages, and a deterioration of working conditions in non-high tech manufacturing...
...High Tech Industry’s False CAFTA Promises Disguise Bad Policy by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTech), Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA-IFPTE Local 2001) and American Ingenuity Alliance (AIA...
...and Canadian losses...
...Furthermore, some of the CAFTA copyright requirements—such as criminalizing unknowing end use of pirated goods and defining willful infringement to include non-commercial use of copies—are the same as aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that members of Congress representing high tech districts have sought to amend, as those rules stifle innovation and undermine consumer rights...
...Additionally, individual inventors and other creators of intellectual property (IP) in the United States have experienced the expropriation, infringement and piracy of their intellectual property rights by global corporations that in turn utilize this IP overseas in off-shoring strategies that result in significant U.S...
...High tech sector lobbyists argue that they need CAFTA in order to increase exports to an important market and to counter copyright piracy in Central America...
...ABOUT: Taken from the report The Real Pirates of the Caribbean: U.S...
...industry nor Administration officials have identified high tech piracy in Central America as a significant problem in dollar terms or as a priority for stronger enforcement relative to other countries...
...high tech wages, the high tech sector has launched a campaign to push Congress into approving the same failed trade policies that contributed to the current problems...
...But CAFTA will not lead to a significant boost in high tech exports...
...high tech exports...
...Instead, through the expansion of highly controversial copyright rules, it could undermine innovation and freedom of expression...
...They have decried employer abuse of temporary visa programs to bring lower-wage workers from abroad into the United States to perform work once done by U.S...
...Thus, they are joining forces with workers in other manufacturing and service industries, with trade unions throughout Central America, and with allies in the inventor, consumer, farm, faith and environmental communities to oppose CAFTA...
...residents...
...In spite of this experience, high tech companies, with Microsoft playing a prominent role, are lobbying members of Congress to vote for the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), claiming the agreement will boost U.S...
...high tech exports to the region—those to Costa Rica and El Salvador—already go duty-free under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules...
...This is probably because U.S...
Vol. 39 • July 2005 • No. 1
