Central America Trade Would Work Both Ways
California's tech exports to the six nations that signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, total about us$175 million each year. That's little more than a rounding error for the tech industry.  Hewlett Packard alone sells more than that around the world in a single day.

Still, congressional approval of the trade agreement is of vital importance to export-dependent Silicon Valley, to the nation as a whole and to Central America.

CAFTA will not turn Central America into a booming market for tech gear - at least not any time soon. But it will help bring stability, strengthen democracy and raise economic opportunities in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, the six signatory nations.

All but Costa Rica are terribly poor countries. Free trade is good for developing economies.

Approval of the agreement will also revive America's credentials as an advocate of trade liberalization and help ongoing efforts to open markets to American goods.

Under the agreement, most U.S. products will enjoy duty-free access to the Central American nations, increasing exports and creating jobs here. Trade in services is also likely to expand significantly.

The deal will also create opportunities for the region's struggling textile industry, which is being displaced by low-cost Chinese producers. At the same time, it will help American textile manufacturers, which export yarn and other basic materials for use by the region's apparel makers.

Textile workers in the United States and Central America will benefit.

But CAFTA faces an uphill battle in Congress in the United States and Costa Rica. Some of the opposition comes from labor groups, which tend to focus only on the jobs lost to trade, not the additional jobs created by trade.

But some CAFTA critics have valid complaints. Most troubling are CAFTA provisions that could undermine an already fragile public-health system in the region.

Under pressure from pharmaceutical companies, the United States insisted on measures that will decrease access to low-cost generic drugs by extending the patent rights of American drug manufacturers. Poor Central Americans who need such medications will go without.

We can only hope that these draconian provisions will be overridden in the next round of global trade talks, especially since they run counter to earlier international pacts.