Their wealth

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Andres Oppenheimer: Trade rhetoric



By Andres Oppenheimer -

Saturday, April 5, 2008 SANTIAGO, Chile --
Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who seem to be competing over who is the fiercest critic of the U.S. free-trade deals with Mexico and other Latin American countries, should pay a visit to this South American capital. It would only take them a few minutes to realize how wrong they are.They would only need to walk out of their hotels and look at the traffic on the streets to see the Jeep Cherokees, Ford Explorers and other U.S.-made cars that have become increasingly visible in Chile since the Jan. 1, 2004, start of the U.S.-Chile free trade agreement.....
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Their wealth
The overall situation for the people in South and Central America and the Dominican Republic is characterized by high levels of poverty and a growing gap between the rich and poor a gap that is also widening in the United States. Trade is vitally important to the development of these countries. However, a recent joint statement of Central American and U.S.Catholic bishops observed that trade is about more than economics; it is about people's lives and livelihoods.
The trade rules that make up the South and Central American Free Trade Agreement severely limit the ability of these countries to use the very tools that the United States used in the past (and still uses) to built and maintain our competitive economy.She refuses to surrender her wealth to the poor of the World, refuses to give, but is selfishly luxuriating in all kinds of extravagance, opulencea and luxuries--$20,000 bathtubs, $250,000 automobiles that guzzle the gas like mechanical drunkards, gorging themselves with food and throwing half of it away, wasting over one-half of the World's priceless resources while millions are starving!
Ted Rudow III,MA