My friend Geoff Norman may think that the biggest games of the weekend occurred in sports stadiums. I beg to differ. To me, it was Sunday's vote in Costa Rica to approve, by a margin of 52-48, a free trade agreement with the U.S.
Senator Sanders recently traveled to Costa Rica to lobby against the vote. As he explained here, the Costa Rican vote was the first time any trade agreement had been put to a popular vote anywhere in the world.
They way Senator Sanders laid out the case, he would win the argument over trade no matter which way the vote went. If the trade agreement was defeated, it would show that the citizens of Costa Rica had risen up against the oppressive capitalists and plutocrats (his term, not mine) that have ruined the United States, Mexico, and evidently most other countries of the world that have embraced increased and freer trade.
If the voters approved the agreement, it was only because opponents were
heavily outspent by the moneyed interests, ...opposition from the Costa Rican government and the U.S. ambassador,...[and] an extremely hostile media
The agreement did pass.
Maybe the citizens of Costa Rica really did heed the advice of Senator Sanders when he wrote
In the past six years, millions of good-paying jobs in the U.S. have been lost as companies shut down here and move to China and other low-wage countries.
I disagree with that statement about job losses, but it's possible that Cost Ricans realized that they are citizens of one of those low wage countries and they might just benefit by having unrestricted access to the largest market and wealthiest country on earth, and by voting against the agreement, they very well might have been shooting themselves in the foot.
Update: The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801422.html) editorializes about the Costa Rican vote, with a mild rebuke of Senator Sanders. It concludes
A 2005 World Bank study found that if DR-CAFTA follows the pattern set by previous trade agreements, it will increase growth by more than half a percentage point per year in Central America, making for nearly half a million fewer Central Americans living in poverty by 2010. Small wonder that Costa Rica spurned the shortsighted counsel of Washington Democrats [and independent Senator Sanders --ed.] and voted in its own self-interest.
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