Ja: The FTA threat

Free trade requires the opening of markets and the elimination of tariffs. That is the free market concept. Small Caribbean and Central American producers will eventually be forced to compete with the high volume, subsidised corporate farmers of Canada, the United States and elsewhere. Since there is no way to compete in the open market, foreign agricultural imports will destroy small rural producers and leave the various small states at the mercy of imports.

Even with the present system of protective tariffs, those countries cannot compete effectively with the rice, corn, bean, chicken and dairy imports. Millions of small rural producers across Central America and the Caribbean will be thrown off the land and forced into the rising tide of the unemployed and underemployed by these regional agreements. Without thoughtful provisions for adequate compensation and long-term support, these proffered free trade agreements should be forcefully resisted.

Governments throughout Central America and the Caribbean are responsible first to those they govern. They should not allow themselves to be bullied by powerful foreign governments with powerful foreign international trading allies like the Archer-Midland Daniels Company. The millions of small and middling producers need the protection offered by domestic tariffs. For these producers, it is their lives and their livelihoods that are at stake here. For the governments involved it is their sovereignty - what little is left of it.